© 2024 WVIK
Listen at 90.3 FM and 98.3 FM in the Quad Cities, 95.9 FM in Dubuque, or on the WVIK app!
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Illinois Governor's Tax Relief Plan

Governor Pritzker at the QC Botanical Center in Rock Island, with QC Chamber CEO Paul Rumler
WVIK News
Governor Pritzker at the QC Botanical Center in Rock Island, with QC Chamber CEO Paul Rumler

Starting this summer, Illinois residents and businesses can look forward to tax relief. That was the message Thursday in Rock Island from Governor JB Pritzker promoting what he calls the Illinois Family Relief Plan.

As outlined in his recent budget address, he is proposing property tax relief, freezing the gas tax at its current level, and cutting the sales tax on groceries.

"But I do want to remind everybody that the only reason Illinois is really able to to provide that relief is because we balanced our budget and so being responsible is hugely important for us to be able to give the relief, to provide the relief."

Now that the state's economy is improving from the worst impacts of the pandemic, the governor says it's time to give some of the benefits back to residents and businesses.

"We can't pick the ways that this pandemic affects our lives, but what we must do as a government is to soften the impact, however we can in whatever ways we can."

He also wants to pay more into the state pension funds than required to save millions of dollars in the future.

All told, Governor Pritzker says this will add up to one billion dollars worth of tax relief for residents of Illinois.

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois. While a graduate student in the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois at Springfield (then known as Sangamon State University), he got his first taste of public radio, covering Illinois state government for WUIS. Here in the Quad Cities, Herb worked for WHBF Radio before coming to WVIK in 1987. Herb also produces the weekly public affairs feature Midwest Week – covering the news behind the news by interviewing reporters about the stories they cover.