Springfield-- Governor Pat Quinn’s State of the State address drew mixed results from lawmakers across the state.
51st District State Senator Chapin Rose said he took some good out of the speech, but he didn’t believe it focused enough on the issues of the present.
“I will certainly join him on his ethics reform because it is necessary, so I was happy about that. When he talks about jobs, though, I don’t know where he is coming from. I haven’t heard one person say, ‘we’re fine, we don’t need jobs,’ in fact, as I tour my district I hear the exact opposite. Bottom line is that we are among worst in the country in job creation and unemployment,” Rose said.
State Representative Bill Mitchell echoed many of Rose’s comments, but took offense to the fact that much of central Illinois has remained underfunded and somewhat ignored.
“He needs to make a visit to Decatur where we have 11% unemployment. He made his address more about reelection than about the issues facing the state… let’s just face it; Quinn is going to go down as just not a good governor,” Mitchell said, following the address.
State Representative Sue Scherer took a different approach, she said she liked that Quinn touched on all the hot button issues because it gave oversight to the state’s problems, but she will be interested to see how Quinn plans to pay for everything during his budget address in March.
“I just felt like he hit on all the topics that are important at the moment. He didn’t get into any of the specifics, but I expect that to come during his budget address in March,” Scherer said.
Throughout the speech, Quinn touted ‘this is our Illinois’ and tended to focus on some of the positives over the last few years while only touching on subjects like finance reform, educational funding, and the pension crisis.
