A Republican lawmaker has launched an attempt to recall Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
State Rep. Allen Skillicorn of the 66th district said the governor’s inaction to fix the state’s unemployment claims website has gone on long enough.
“The governor has had ample time to fix this website,” Skillicorn said in a statement. “I called him out on it, and nothing has been addressed nor has there been a plan presented to fix the problems. Enough is enough. The incompetence cannot continue.”
There have been numerous reports of Illinoisans experiencing difficulties with the Illinois Department of Employment Security website, and problems getting through to the call center.
“I have constituents who tell me they have dialed in hundreds of times a day for weeks without getting through,” Skillicorn said. “Governor, it’s not the claims your processing, it’s the calls your missing.”
Skillicorn said the federal government reached out to help Illinois with the problems.
“The U.S. Department of Labor offered to help Illinois but our governor refused the help,” Skillicorn said. “The governor decided the best way to fix the website was to hand out a lavish no-bid contract. Now secure data has been unleashed into the public domain. It is an epic failure.”
The recall affidavit must be signed by at least 20 House members and 10 senators. Once the minimum number of signatures is obtained, the affidavit would then be filed with the State Board of Elections.
From there, Illinois citizens would have 150 days to circulate a recall petition, which would require a number of signatures totaling at least 15 percent of the votes cast for governor in the preceding general election from at least 25 counties in order to hold a recall election.
Pritzker said Skillicorn's voting record showed he has been in favor of hollowing out state government and the governor defended his response to problems at the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
"Well, you couldn’t possibly anticipate that we would have a number of unemployment filings that was an enormous multiple of that which occurred during the Great Recession," Pritzker said Tuesday afternoon. "The IDES website was designed 10 years ago, we’ve talked about this. And of course, when this became clear that we were going to see a rush of applications, we acted as quickly as we could with a system that, frankly, you can’t just snap your fingers and replace. ... So people are getting their calls answered, and about the clip of 2,000 per day. And we continue to work very, very hard to respond to people who could not get their application filed online, but again I want to say to anybody out there that has not filed for unemployment that needs to file for unemployment, that your best bet is to go online."
