From State Rep. David McSweeney:

On May 31st, the legislative session came to an end and the General Assembly passed another unbalanced budget.

David McSweeney

It has revenue adjustments, interfund borrowing and a handful of buzzwords that simply translate to more spending.

The recently passed $35.7 billion budget relies on the same practices that gave us a backlog of unpaid bills.

Practices such as raiding $650 million of special funds to pay our past and current obligations.

Among those funds potentially being swept are ones earmarked for specific purposes such as the Red Cross.

But here’s the good news…

The House Speaker has failed in his efforts to make the temporary income tax increase permanent.

Attempts to implement a progressive income tax increase in Illinois have also been defeated.

Additionally,  a “millionaires” surtax that would have hurt small businesses failed before it got started.

Recall that back in 2011, the Democrats in the legislature passed a 67% ‘temporary’ tax hike which was supposed to pay of old bills.

This increase cost the average taxpayer about $1,100 last year.

For now, attempts to make that tax increase permanent have failed.

The message is clear – we cannot tax our way out of our state’s financial mess.

That’s why I introduced House Bill 5311, a property tax freeze bill.

House Bill 5311 would institute a one-year freeze on township general fund tax extensions in townships that have populations of less than 100,000 and are in counties subject to the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law, such as Cook, Kane, Lake and McHenry Counties.

With the passage of this bill out of the House, we can finally tell the people of Illinois that there is a real tax relief proposal on the horizon.

We now need to put pressure on the Senate to pass this important legislation.

I am proud to have sponsored more legislation to bring jobs to Illinois and transparency to state government. Some of the specific legislative proposals include:

• House Resolution 928 requests that the Auditor General provide a complete list of the grants made by entities of the State of Illinois in fiscal year 2013 from funds paid by fees and taxes imposed on its residents. This disclosure of state grants will shine a light on the practices of bureaucrats.I
• Illinois’ 49 community colleges and campuses already operate numerous job-oriented programs and offer many courses intended to work with students looking to maintain, expand, and establish their job skills. My House Bill 4910, which unanimously passed the House and Senate, would take this push to the next level by working with community colleges to set up voluntary advanced manufacturing technology partnership boards. The boards will be private-public partnerships that will work cooperatively to ensure that qualified graduates of an advanced manufacturing program will be well-situated to find immediate employment.