Illinois Lawmakers Got 26 Seconds Per Page To Read State’s 2025 Budget

As of now, the state hasn't passed Governor Pritzker's 2026 budget.

I've seen a lot of chit-chat this spring about Illinois' budget for the 2026 fiscal year, as proposed by Governor J.B. Pritzker. The new budget hasn't been passed yet and we're wondering how much time legislators are getting to read it all.

We do know the budget as it's presented doesn't include tax increases and it doesn't address the fiscal cliff in regional public transit. The budget proposal totals $129.4 billion across all operating funds. So basically, it's a lot of money and you need to pay close attention to what you're signing off on before you vote yay or nay.

But lawmakers don't have a ton of time for that. According to Illinois Policy, in the last 9 state budgets, lawmakers had an average of 67 seconds to read each page.

For the 2025 year, they only had 26 seconds. They have to read the budget outline quickly, as thousands of pages can be dropped on them at the last minute, right before they have to go vote. It's been a page count of over 3,000.

The shortest budget page count was when the budget was 638 pages in 2018. In 2016, the budget was an easy 11 pages because of the standoff between Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan and then-Governor Bruce Rauner.

The Illinois Constitution has something about this. To hopefully avoid voting without reading, it requires every bill to be read on 3 separate days before it can be passed into law so lawmakers know what they're voting on.