Kane County Reporter

Republican state House candidate Laura Curtis frets at the way Gov. J.B. Pritzker continues to compound the COVID-19 pandemic with more errors.

“Everything he’s doing in Springfield this week seems shortsighted and not in the best interest of the state,” Curtis, now running to replace outgoing Rep. Karina Willa (D-West Chicago) in the 49th District, told the Kane County Reporter of this week’s special pandemic session in Springfield. “Deficits across the state have only increased because of the virus and trying to increase spending is the wrong thing to do.”

Early reports are the governor is refusing to consider cutting spending as part of the new fiscal year spending plan, even if it means having to borrow more to delicately hold things together.

“That makes no sense when you consider we’ve already got billions in deficit,” Curtis added. “Our pension fund system is already broke and more debt just seems crazy. What we need to be doing is opening our state economy back up and letting businesses fully operate so that we can have those tax revenues.”

Curtis said she’d also like to see the governor let go of his progressive tax pipedream and not cause any more stress to the state’s already shaken foundation. 

“It’s not a good move to be talking about any changes to the system at this point and time,” she said. “The only changes along those lines we need to be considering are pension reform and an amendment to the state constitution that would allow us to do something like that.”

Curtis said Pritzker’s rigid handling of the coronavirus crisis has reaffirmed an annoying characteristic that’s long been known to be shared by Democrats.

“I think that it shows most Democrats don’t have confidence in our small businesses and really don’t understand the role they play in our society,” she said. “It’s really insulting that the governor would shut them down across the state and declare most of them ‘nonessential’ to our daily lives."