North Egypt News

A bill to use federal COVID funds to pay off the state's unemployment fund debt met opposition from Sen. Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro).

"When the sponsor closed on the bill today, she said that it was wrong to say that labor and business were opposed to this. I believe what she said was, she quoted me saying, 'This is bad for business, bad for labor and bad for Illinois.' The fact is, labor and business are not in support of the bill as it's written today. They didn't oppose it because, as one of my friends in business said, 'if someone (is) holding a gun to your head to do something, then you don't necessarily oppose something.' So, in this case, a gun was not literally held, but figuratively a gun was held to labor and to business on the way this bill is written and (were) basically told 'take this or it's going to be worse because we're not going to give you anything,'" Bryant said.

The Democratic-backed bill passed the Senate and House without Republican support. It was signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on March 25.

The bill makes supplemental appropriations from the Pension Stabilization Fund for financing the unfunded liabilities of the General Assembly Retirement System, the Judges Retirement System of Illinois, the State Employees' Retirement System of Illinois, the Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois, and the State Universities Retirement System. It also appropriates $250 million from the General Revenue Fund to the Illinois Student Assistance Commission.