(The Center Square) – With limited Illinois tax dollars, state officials are laying out their priorities amid ongoing budget pressures such as the hundreds of millions of dollars for migrant care.

Promoting the taxpayer-funded $250 million Smart Start early childhood education initiative, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said the state will have to balance such future spending with other pressures.

“And, if we don’t have enough resources for everything that everybody wants, what can we look to do in the future or what should we stop doing in order to make sure that we’re balancing expenditures with revenues,” Pritzker said at an event in Rochester Thursday.

(The Center Square) – With limited Illinois tax dollars, state officials are laying out their priorities amid ongoing budget pressures such as the hundreds of millions of dollars for migrant care.

Promoting the taxpayer-funded $250 million Smart Start early childhood education initiative, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said the state will have to balance such future spending with other pressures.

“And, if we don’t have enough resources for everything that everybody wants, what can we look to do in the future or what should we stop doing in order to make sure that we’re balancing expenditures with revenues,” Pritzker said at an event in Rochester Thursday.

Coffey said it becomes more difficult to balance programs like the Smart Start early childhood program with the ongoing hundreds of millions of dollars being spent for migrant care.

“As we go forward into the General Assembly and money becomes tighter and tighter and tighter after we’ve gone through COVID and all that, what are we going to do for these types of programs, and this migrant crisis, having gone down there, it’s a national crisis that has to be addressed by the president of the United States,” Coffey said.

Illinois legislators return to Springfield Feb. 6. Pritzker delivers his State of the State and budget address Feb. 21.