Illinois state lawmakers’ spending plan surpasses last year’s budget by $2 billion, requiring taxpayers to pay over $800 million in additional costs for yet another year of record spending.

With just over 24 hours to conduct a full review, the Illinois General Assembly approved a record-setting $55.2 billion budget for 2026, after a 75-41 House vote sent the 3,000-plus page plan to Gov. J.B. Pritzker. lt follows a familiar fiscal playbook: spend more, fix nothing, hand taxpayers the bill – and toss in a raise for those casting the votes.

To cover the rising costs of education, state pensions and health benefits for government workers, the budget uses short-sighted fixes and ignores structural problems. Once again, it’s taxpayers who will pay the price.

Just before its deadline, Illinois lawmakers passed a record $55.2 billion budget, featuring over $394 million in tax increases, $237 million in fund sweeps and $216 million in delaying funds.

Despite lawmaker claims of budget cuts, the 2026 budget increased by $2 billion compared to 2025. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has grown Illinois’ budget by $16 billion and enacted over 50 tax hikes since taking office in 2019.

Notably, the budget cuts the state’s Property Tax Relief Grant, resulting in an effective $43 million property tax hike. Lawmakers will also receive more than $6,000 in pay raises for the coming year, while public pensioners will receive a benefit spike valued at more than $13 billion. Meanwhile, the budget contributes $5 billion less in pension funding than is necessary to keep the system solvent for future retirees, according to the pension system’s actuaries.

On the revenue side the budget features more than $800 million in revenue gimmicks featuring tax hikes, fund sweeps and temporary measures that fail to truly balance the state’s budget. The process was so rushed that even bill sponsors seem unclear on the exact amount taxpayers will be asked to pay.  Among the revenue adjustments are:

• $195 million – $228 million from a new tax amnesty program.
• $171 million from delaying motor fuels tax revenue transfers to the Road Fund.
• $237 million in fund sweeps.
• $72 million in corporate tax hikes.
• $45 million from shorting the state’s Budget Stabilization Fund.
• $36 million from a new sports wagering tax.
• $15 million from removing hotel tax exemptions from short term rental platforms.
• An additional tax on nicotine analogs.

The 2026 budget continues Illinois’ practice of irresponsible and speculative budgeting. Rather than focusing on policy solutions such as a spending cap, right-sizing employee health care costs and constitutional pension reform, lawmakers have opted for a status quo budget. Constantly relying on taxes and fund sweeps encourages irresponsible budgeting, which erodes voters’ trust in Springfield. These tactics reduce the state’s competitiveness, risk potential credit downgrades and can worsen Illinois’ challenges with high unemployment and sluggish growth.

Illinois’ 2026 budget continues the state’s habit of patching budget problems using short-sighted fixes with long-term consequences. Without structural solutions, such as adopting a spending cap and constitutional pension reform, Illinois has continued its cycle of reactive budgeting at taxpayers’ expense.

In many ways, it looked like any college graduation. There were balloons, flowers and squares of frosted marble cake. Rows of family and friends faced a lectern in the fluorescent-lit gymnasium.

But the uniformed guards patrolling the gym underscored that this was no ordinary commencement. It was the first of its kind to take place inside the East Moline Correctional Center, a minimum-security men’s prison on the Illinois-Iowa border about two and a half hours west of Chicago.

As the procession music played from a tabletop speaker, three students in caps and gowns marched up the aisle on Tuesday to become the first graduates of Augustana College to earn their bachelor’s degrees while serving prison sentences.

“This moment is causing a lot of mixed emotions,” said one incarcerated student, Brandon Johnson, addressing the room. “They say there’s no crying in prison, but I brought some tissue just in case.”

The Augustana Prison Education Program, or APEP, began full-time in the fall of 2021 and gained accreditation the following spring. It now has about 30 people enrolled. Students take college courses on everything from physics to poetry — but without access to the Internet and sometimes writing assignments by hand.

“It’s the same Augustana degree requirements, same professors, same rigor — in a prison,” said Sharon Varallo, the program’s executive director.

The first to graduate, David Staples, finished his degree on-campus last year after his release from prison in 2022. Now, he has been joined by four more graduates, including the three present at Tuesday’s ceremony: Jorge Herrejon, Brandon Johnson and Chris Allen.

“I’m so proud of him. He’s taken a bad situation and made the best of it,” said Jim Allen, Chris Allen’s father.

He said he drove three hours from central Illinois the previous night to see his son, who was locked up as a teenager, graduate from college.

There is high demand for educational programs in prison but very few opportunities. Incarcerated students describe their time in the classroom as transformative, and it helps many earn time off their sentences. But only about 600 of the more than 29,000 people in Illinois prisons are enrolled in higher education programs, according to the Education Justice Project at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Steven Cardenas, a first-year student locked up at East Moline, said it took three tries before he was accepted into APEP.

“It’s an opportunity that’s not given in a lot of different facilities and one that I jumped at immediately because it’s like I get to do something positive with my time,” he said.

Herrejon said he enrolled in college not just for himself but primarily to set an example for his younger siblings. His little brother attended the ceremony.

“I had to change, and they had to see that,” Herrejon said. “And I am proud to say that none of them have followed in the footsteps that I walked before I was incarcerated.”

Herrejon said he’s not sure what he’ll do with his degree once he’s released. He is 31 and has been incarcerated since he was 17.

“I do know that I wanted to be in service of people who are underprivileged, underrepresented…and teach them that there are options in life,” he said.

Lauren Frost is the lead producer of WBEZ’s Prisoncast!, a journalism project serving incarcerated Illinoisans and their loved ones. Listen at 2 p.m. June 15 on 91.5 FM, and go online to wbez.org/prisoncast.