Prairie State Wire

Former Illinois State Rep. Jeanne Ives opposes a bill that she said she finds trivial to have advanced out of the Senate.

She hopes it would be stopped in the upper chamber, because to her, "the bill, shamefully, flew out of the Senate unopposed."

“That’s Right!!! – COVID-19 is over but because our people who live on the border fled to neighboring states to fill up with gas, shop, and dine out because of Pritzker’s lockdown policies, we ALL will pay to support a grant program to help them out. It is as STUPID as it sounds," Ives said in the Breakthrough Ideas weekly newsletter. "To read more about Outmigration by county in Illinois, check out this Wirepoints article. Please note, some border counties actually gained population, another reason this bill makes no sense.”

The bill would alter the Illinois Home Grown Business Opportunity Act to subsidize “The Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity shall create the Border Community COVID-19 Mitigation Grant Program. Subject to appropriation, grants provided under this Section shall only be provided to businesses and municipalities located geographically close to bordering states,” a portion of the text of SB3930 reads.

The bill would subsidize the communities in Illinois that were close to bordering states where businesses were not as harmed as much by COVID protocols. The bill passed the Illinois Senate 55-0 on Feb. 24 and 10-0 at the House Appropriations Committee on March 23. Wirepoints suggested Republican legislators “can’t go on the record rejecting aid to struggling downstate communities. So they all voted for it.”

Ives is a West Point graduate who served three terms as a state representative. According to Ballotpedia, she also she served in the Wheaton City Council in 2011-2012. She now runs Breakthrough Ideas, a policy advocacy and education network that advocates for taxpayer-centric policy and promotes liberty.