Illinois legislators on both sides of the aisle are responding to the governor's State of the State address, Wed.
“But what we have to do is give those universities a budget. And we have to give them some revenue. But on the flip side, what those universities have to do for us, is performance-based funding, we have to see what we’re getting for our investments, and we have to see truly where the money’s being spent.” - Rep. Dan Brady (R-Bloomington)
“I was very disappointed that he didn’t touch on higher education more. He’s driving our future out of the state. Every university in the state is seeing declining enrollment, you know, if we had a budget we could reinvest in our education system." - Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch (D-Westchester)
“This governor, his speech style is pretty consistent. These are our problems, these are my ideas to solve them, if you have ideas I want to hear them.” - State Sen. Dale Righter (R-Matoon)
“The fact that we have to have this quasi-process of actually having a budget come out of the Senate as opposed to coming out of the governor’s office — if that’s what we have to do to get it done, I’m all for it.” - Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth (D-Peoria)
“If he’s interested in coming to an agreeable solution on the state budget that can be bipartisan in both the House and the Senate, then there needs to be actions to back that up.” - Sen. Andy Manar (D-Bunker Hill)