Illinois State House District 97 issued the following announcement on May 1.
State Representative Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield) stood alongside his House Republican colleagues in the Capitol for a press conference on the federal investigation surrounding Governor JB Pritzker. Last week it was announced that Governor Pritzker and his family are under investigation for a property tax appeal that the Cook County inspector general’s report called a “scheme to defraud” taxpayers out of more than $331,000.
The news of the federal investigation comes on the heels of the Democrat’s push of Governor Pritzker’s progressive tax proposal, which would permanently remove the flat income tax guarantee from the Illinois Constitution.
Representative Batinick has strongly opposed the progressive tax hike since it was introduced, but today emphasized his opposition in light of the federal investigation of the Governor, and his disbelief that this tax hike was still being steamrolled through the legislative process.
“The Governor is under federal investigation for a scheme to defraud taxpayers,” said Batinick. “If that’s not concerning enough, he wants to ask honest taxpayers to pay even more through a progressive income tax. It’s a slippery slope proposal that has no guarantees. He refuses to say for certain that these tax rates won’t continue to increase, and continue to tax Illinoisans out of the state. How can we ask our hard working Illinois residents to pay more taxes, when the Governor isn’t honestly paying his own taxes?”
While the federal investigation is still ongoing, the House of Representative is likely to see the progressive tax proposal in the coming weeks, as the final five weeks of legislative session commence in Springfield.
Original source can be found here.
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