Prairie State Wire

The Illinois Municipal League is pushing a plan that would put local governments in control of any money earmarked for them from the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package instead of Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

“If there is a federal relief package, we’re hoping the money will flow directly to communities, and without additional restriction put on by the state, which was the case with the federal CARES Act last year,” Illinois Municipal League Executive Director Brad Cole said, The Center Square reported.

With as much as $7.5 billion from the plan possibly headed to the state budget and another $5.7 billion for local governments, Cole said he doesn’t want to see Pritzker lump all the funds together.

Last year, the state handled how to administer the federal relief funding to local governments, The Center Square reported. The Municipal League also opposed the 2020 policy.

Cole said local governments were supposed to receive 10% of the funds when Illinois approved an income tax decades ago but over time that shank to roughly half of that.

Cole added he doesn’t want to see local governments essentially penalized, with the governor resorting to such measures as cutting state funding to them if funding is directly distributed to the jurisdictions.

“That money can’t be in lieu of our regular state-shared resources that provide for the operations of the community just in regular times,” he said.