Economics
Pritzker Finds Running Most-Troubled U.S. State Only Gets Harder
- Governor J.B. Pritzker confronts a big Covid budget deficit
- Illinois’s bonds have the worst rating among all the states
This article is for subscribers only.
J.B. Pritzker certainly knew what he was getting into when he ran for governor of debt-laden Illinois in 2018, a position once dubbed the worst job in American politics.
But the billionaire scion of the Hyatt hotel fortune could not have imagined a global pandemic that would decimate his state’s budget and push its bonds back to the brink of junk status -- a fate that would be unprecedented for a state. Its rainy day fund is down to a mere $818,000 and last year its pension plans for state workers were underfunded in the amount of a record $138 billion.