PONTOON BEACH, Ill- Gov. J.B. Pritzker has a message for counties putting ballot questions up in November asking voters if downstate communities should look to secede from the Chicagoland area.

“I simply want to remind everyone here that we are one Illinois,” Pritzker said Thursday while here to celebrate the opening of a Madison County Transit Authority administration building that was largely paid for with state funds. “Madison County is just as important to our state as Chicago is. It’s too easy to let partisanship and regional differences divide us. Instead, let’s all row in the same direction.”  

The secession question will also face voters in neighboring Jersey County. Board members there authorized it this week, or more specifically, a question asking voters to grant the county board to talk about it in further detail with other county boards.

Gary Krueger, Jersey County Board Chairman, told Spectrum News he supports it as a protest vote, but acknowledges that as a practical matter, it’s unlikely to be something that comes to fruition in his lifetime. 

State Attorney General Kwame Raoul has already issued an opinion that home rule counties do not have the ability under the state constitution to secede, and would run into further hurdles at the federal level.

“The admissions clause grants Congress the power to admit new states and prevents a subdivision of an existing state from breaking away without the state's consent,” Raoul wrote last year.

A former Illinois Department of Transportation employee, Krueger’s point of contention is with how he believes spending on transportation projects is doled out to more urban areas, including areas that are downstate, including Belleville, over rural parts of the state.

The facts tell a different story, Pritzker argued. He says the Chicagoland area gets roughly 80 cents on every dollar spent in taxes, while Southwest Illinois gets roughly $1.40 for every dollar, with that figure growing to $2 when all of southern Illinois is considered.

A 2021 study by researchers at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale said “downstate voters are the most alienated or disenchanted with their lot from state government as compared to their peers in the other two regions of the state. They are the group most convinced (66%) that they are not receiving their fair share,” the study said while concluding that “with four years of data over very different budgetary conditions, it is quite clear that downstate taxes are not being disproportionately siphoned off and spent in the city of Chicago.”

“The idea that some place in Illinois wants to kick out another place in Illinois should not be on the ballot, shouldn’t be something that’s part of the lexicon and discussion of politicians. We’re one state, supporting eachother,” Pritzker said.

Madison County Chair Kurt Prenzler could not be reached for comment, but Chris Slusser, the County Treasurer who defeated Prenzler in the spring primary and will take over the post in 2025 says he supports putting the question on the ballot.

"There were a lot of voters who wanted it. It’s a non-binding referendum. I guess the governor got his feelings hurt over it. But he probably will get his feelings hurt whenever he sees the vote totals in November,” Slusser told Spectrum News. “People who are hyperventilating over this like it’s such a horrible thing, at the end of the day we’re not going to start forming a new state if this passes, if the voters say that they’re in support of this. It’s just a non-binding thing where they’re just voicing their opinion and then we’ll just move on from there.”

Krueger also said he thought people were getting unnecessarily nervous about the idea the vote would come out in favor of secession.

“I don’t think anything will come of it,” he said.