Republican state Rep. Allen Skillicorn (East Dundee) is questioning the state’s priorities amid reports the wife of House Speaker Mike Madigan is seeking funds for her private Arts Council as part of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s $41.5 billion capital bill plan while the lack of funding is widely considered one of the primary factors accounting for the recent deaths of 112 children under the state’s care.
“Illinois politicians have been focused more on politics than the lives of residents for years,” Skillicorn told the McHenry Times. “Children that die under our care are just the latest victims of politics and the corrupt agenda of Speaker Madigan, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and now Gov. Pritzker.”
The Chicago Tribune reports that Pritzker is seeking to set aside as much as $4.4 billion of the capital bill windfall for state facilities. Shirley Madigan has run the Illinois Arts Council Agency for more than three decades. Meanwhile, the overwhelmed and underfunded Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has failed to prevent scores of tragic fatalities of children under their watch over a two-year fiscal period beginning in 2015.
State Rep. Allen Skillicorn (R-East Dundee)
“If you have staff that are overburdened, you’re going to have errors,” Meryl Paniak, inspector general for the DCFS, told the State Journal-Register. “Our child protection staff will tell you in certain areas, they have received too many cases and they can’t manage them.”
Skillicorn said it’s clear to him what needs to happen.
“First we need pass reforms that address directly this,” he said. "We could start with my proposal to amend the constitutional amendment to impose term limits, then my constitutional amendments on pensions and the way we construct the senate. This would take away all the power Chicago has to dominate rest of the state. When too much power is consolidated into the hands of just a few individuals this is the kind of thing you can expect to happen.”
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