SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Governor JB Pritzker gives his annual State of the State and Budget address Wednesday, and some Republicans in the Illinois Senate want Pritzker to include energy bill relief in his proposals.
Those lawmakers say bills for many customers have doubled, and that’s not right.
“This is a significant crisis. It is a serious crisis,” said Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet), at a State Capitol news conference Tuesday. “Families cannot afford what is happening to them. If you saw the inflation report (Monday), far from inflation coming down, it is still over six percent.”
The GOP is wanting money appropriated to an already-passed bill providing an average household with $170 in rate relief, broken up into bill credits between April and October.
“The Governor and the General Assembly have an immediate obligation and responsibility to address this crisis — and it is a crisis — facing our families providing their energy bills,” said State Sen. Jil Tracy (R-Quincy), who claims bills have risen as much as 90 percent still last May.
State Senator Win Stoller (R-Germantown Hills) says in a news release he backs the relief, saying that residents shouldn’t have to choose paying their power bills over something else.
The GOP also wants “red tape” lifted from the Illinois Environmental Agency providing permits for new power plants to go online. Another measure creates a task force called the “Power Grid Task Force” to look into the impacts of various energy policies.
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