DeKalb Times

Dixon Mayor Liandro “Li” Arellano is convinced change can’t come to Springfield fast enough following a year where the state shed its most jobs in history.

“I think what we’re seeing is a reflection of the COVID crisis and a slew of deeper problems that have residents and industries fed up enough to want to give up on the state completely,” Arellano told the DeKalb Times. “COVID has certainly taken a heavy toll, but the high taxes and the state’s inability to build up infrastructure are definitely representative of deeper problems that are fueling the struggle just as much.”

During 2020, the state reportedly shed somewhere in the neighborhood of 423,000 jobs. That decline represented 7% of the state’s workforce.

While many job declines impacted each metropolitan area, nowhere was the loss more pronounced than in Chicago. The Windy City’s unemployment numbers more than tripled over a yearlong period ending in December to 8.7%

“We’re going to need to get real spending discipline back in place and to get our tax structure back in place so that people will want to stay or come to Illinois,” Arellano said. “Right now, big employers hate what we’re doing with taxes, debt and regulations in terms of this being a place where they would want to do business.”

Arellano said the pain and suffering have been so widespread not even Democratic leaders like Gov. J.B. Pritzker can continue to ignore it.

“I think he’s starting to face reality, and you can see it with the way he’s talking more about spending and tax cuts,” he said. “Even he sees that cuts have to be made.”