McHenry Times

State Sen. Dan McConchie (R-Hawthorn Woods) argues the new state budget, even at 3,088 pages, was crafted with the needs and concerns of millions of residents being mere afterthoughts.  

“The minority — me, my budget team — reached out multiple times in an attempt to find a way to partner in the budget process in order to ensure that the needs of the entire state are met. But it's clear from the majority's lack of engagement that there is not even the pretense of care on what is important to three to four million Illinoisans that we represent,” McConchie said from the Senate floor. “You have silenced their voices again and again. You silence them through the redistricting process, you silence them by stifling debate, and now tonight and then through this entire spring you stifle them through this budget process.”

McConchie said all the talk about bipartisanship strikes him as just lip service, prompting him to stand in opposition to Senate Bill 2017, which would create the fiscal year 2022 budget implementation act paving the way for changes in state programs so that the governor’s budget recommendations can be implemented.

 “We've heard a lot about bipartisanship at points in time that seem convenient," he said. “For example, on ethics there has been a significant talk about working together in a bipartisan basis but on anything other than ethics for which your party clearly needs some cover it's obvious that we have very different views on what bipartisanship means. It seems that the majority’s version of bipartisanship is the majority doing whatever it wants and the minority choosing whether or not we're going to go along with that.”

McConchie laments about how lawmakers in Springfield now so rarely seem to work together for the common good.

“If you're not really interested in an exchange of ideas and then votes on the merit of those ideas then it appears we do not have a well-functioning democracy in this state," he said.

McConchie argues the people of the state are the ones who suffer when Springfield fails to work as one.

“Now there are many in this room who will go back to their districts and will brag about inclusion but I can tell you from experience that this year has been about exclusion," he said. “That is a failure of the democracy in this body and in this state.”