Letter: Thank our governor for state's positive news

Thank you for a positive and long-overdue report on the State of Illinois. On Feb. 2, the Daily Herald published some positive facts, the state of Illinois has a surplus of billions.

What is not mentioned or emphasized is the fact and not fiction that this only happened thanks to our much maligned and sued Gov. Pritzker, who managed wisely to lift Illinois out of debt and deficit and increase payment of pensions. Yes, it meant increasing taxes, although he wanted a progressive tax, meaning the rich pay more and the lower-income pay less. He achieved that despite fictionally unpleasant complaints.

Also not mentioned is the fact that the state of Illinois is trying to accommodate desperate fugitives who are not invaders in our state and country. These maligned fugitives, willing to work, take nothing from the Americans whose parents or grandparents once were fugitives to this country and actually took away from the Indians. There are actually complaints that about 100 homeless fugitives were accommodated in an empty school building in a suburb.

We are lucky and grateful to Gov. Pritzker for reducing our debts and achieving a surplus even though our state did not get its portion of federal money, collected annually by the federal government to be divided equally, which indstead was given to well-to-do states in the U.S. not collecting income tax.

I consider myself lucky to have a governor who wisely uses the money working on our infrastructure, repairing roads and bridges, making sure that the very poor don't go hungry, that we survived the worst time of the epidemic, protects our environment and introduces a humane gun law.

Please, no more vile and nasty comments about our great state of Illinois.

Bea Johnson

Palatine