Prairie State Wire

As the pandemic has caused a record number of Illinois residents to lose their jobs, a Republican lawmaker is attempting to recall Gov. Pritzker for his failure fix the state’s outdated unemployment claims website. 

“The governor has had ample time to fix this website,” State Rep. Allen Skillicorn (R-East Dundee) said in a recent statement. “I called him out on it, and nothing has been addressed nor has there been a plan presented to fix the problems. Enough is enough. The incompetence cannot continue.”

Skillicorn started the process to recall Pritzker, which requires a recall affidavit that must be signed by 20 House members and 10 senators. After lawmaker’s signatures are obtained, Illinois citizens have 150 days to sign a petition that must reach at least 15% of the votes cast for governor from the preceding general election from at least 25 counties. If the petition garnered enough signatures, a recall election could be held. 

Skillicorn told TristateHomepage.com that Republican House members Brad Halbrook of Shelbyville, Blaine Wilhour of Beecher City and Darren Bailey of Xenia have agreed to sign the ballot petition.

“I have constituents who tell me they have dialed in hundreds of times a day for weeks without getting through,” Skillicorn said. “Governor, it’s not the claims you're processing, it’s the calls you're missing.”

Skillicorn claims that his attempt to recall Pritzker is not a partisan one, and is hopeful that the governor will finish his job instead of getting removed from office. 

“Frankly I just hope the governor fixes the unemployment system, so people can get their unemployment and we should move on from this,” the state representative said. “I mean, I would much prefer that.”

Skillicorn said Pritzker refused help from the federal government to try to fix the unemployment website his own way. 

“The governor decided the best way to fix the website was to hand out a lavish no-bid contract,” Skillicorn said. “Now secure data has been unleashed into the public domain. It is an epic failure.”

Pritzker defended himself in a recent press conference. 

“When this became clear that we were going to see a rush of applications, we acted as quickly as we could with a system that, frankly, you can’t just snap your fingers and replace,” Pritzker said. “We continue to work very, very hard to respond to people who could not get their application filed online, but again I want to say to anybody out there that has not filed for unemployment that needs to file for unemployment, that your best bet is to go online."