Fritts, Arellano cue up talks on pension reform, roadwork and energy cost concerns at Dixon legislative update

DIXON – State Sen. Li Arellano Jr. and state Rep. Bradley Fritts addressed key areas of concern Tuesday, June 10, 2025, during a legislative update at Dixon’s Post House Ballroom.

Arellano, R-Dixon, said he is using his first year in office to focus on relationship building, particularly with lawmakers from Chicago, as he navigates what he describes as a steep urban-rural divide in Illinois politics. He pointed to the excessive influence of Chicago in state government, arguing that gerrymandered political maps often leave rural regions such as his with little say in major policy decisions.

“It [Chicago] is so large that when you gerrymander the state, you tilt the representation and the underlying democracy in favor of one city,” Arellano said.

Contrasting Illinois with states like Wisconsin and California, Arellano said urban centers tend to balance one another out.

“In Wisconsin, it’s fairly gerrymandered, but it’s not gerrymandered to favor Madison. … In Chicago, there is no counterbalance to that,” Arellano said.

Arellano said that imbalance often forces rural legislators into tough positions.

“You get forced into some votes where you don’t have a lot of input in how the bill was created,” Arellano said. “You might not like the end results.”

Arellano said he is participating in legislative exchanges, including upcoming sessions in Chicago and Boston, to learn how lawmakers in other states handle similar challenges. He said that, ultimately, fostering dialogue across regional lines is key, adding that “a lot of times there are things that can be solved by just creating more understanding.”

Another pressing and longstanding challenge Arellano addressed is reform of the state’s pension system, which Illinois lawmakers declined to address during the spring session. While critical of Gov. JB Pritzker on various issues, he noted the state’s pension crisis predates the current administration.

“With the exception of [Rod] Blagojevich, none of them have caused one of the critical economic problems in Illinois,” Arellano said. “And that is, we have the worst pension funding of any state per capita.”

Although California has a higher total pension debt, Arellano pointed out that when adjusted for population, Illinois ranks as the most underfunded. He described the practical consequences of that shortfall, citing the state’s recent budget figures.

“This last budget year, we missed an actuarial accurate pension payment by about $5 billion,” Arellano said. “This year is about $5.1 billion. There’s about $8 billion in this year’s budget that we just passed that is purely pension debt payment, not pension payment. That’s a little over $12 billion. Of that $12 billion, $8 billion is debt, which tells you that if we were a normally funded state, we would have a $3 billion to $5 billion pension payment.”

Arellano suggested the scale of Illinois’ pension debt continues to crowd out other budget priorities, reinforcing the importance of long-term fiscal reform. He also pointed to what he described as a cascading effect on the state’s infrastructure and transportation systems, particularly the Illinois Department of Transportation and urban transit in Chicago.

“We gutted, in part due to our debt nature, the Illinois Department of Transportation,” Arellano said. “Because they contract almost everything that they do, they cost us about 140% per roadwork mile in Illinois.”

Arellano argued that the heavy reliance on contractors instead of in-house work has driven up costs, placing additional strain on already limited state resources. He connected these cost issues to recent legislative debates around tax hikes aimed at supporting infrastructure in Chicago.

“You might have seen in the news the big Amazon tax, the delivery tax, the service tax, ... that was all bailout infrastructure in Chicago,” Arellano said, adding that the state’s pension debt not only eats into operational budgets but also leaves Illinois lagging in essential investments.

“That is the scenario I walked into, which is the state’s deeply in pension debt,” Arellano said. “Because of the pension debt, we’re behind in infrastructure and utilities.”

Arellano also touched on energy policy, highlighting key priorities for rural lawmakers, including support for nuclear development and relief from restrictions on fossil fuel infrastructure. He said that while negotiations around the energy bill stalled, he emphasized the need for long-term solutions that balance environmental goals with economic realities, particularly in rural communities that often bear the costs of urban-focused policies without seeing the benefits.

With those challenges in mind, the conversation turned to Fritts, R-Dixon, who shared reflections from his second term in office and key bills he passed out of the House, including legislation to adjust audit requirements for townships, revitalize the state’s motorcycle rider safety program and prohibit assessment fees on electronic statements for seniors.

One of Fritts’ key initiatives — a measure he introduced after passing a similar version in the previous General Assembly — adjusts audit requirements for townships and other small units of government.

Fritts stated that under the current law, local governments with combined revenues of more than $850,000 must complete annual audits. Those under the threshold must do so only once every four years or when there’s a change in administrative leadership. However, conflicting interpretations between the audit statute and township code, particularly over whether to include road fund revenues, have created widespread confusion.

“Right now, 70% of Illinois townships are out of compliance on their audits,” Fritts said, explaining that many townships inadvertently exceed the threshold once road funds are factored in, resulting in costly and sometimes unmanageable burdens for small governments with limited budgets.

“I’ve heard anywhere from $15,000 to $25,000, and you’re talking about small municipal budgets,” Fritts said. ”That’s a lot of money.”

The new bill adjusts those requirements and ties the audit threshold to inflation using a Consumer Price Index escalator, ensuring the law stays relevant without needing repeated legislative updates.

Another piece of legislation championed by Fritts and supported in the Senate by Arellano focused on township-level flexibility in road funding.

The bill, which Fritts said came out of Whiteside County, allows townships to improve resource allocation between funds without creating imbalances, giving local governments more control over how they compensate highway commissioners and manage infrastructure budgets.

Fritts also highlighted the revival of Illinois’ motorcycle rider safety program, calling it “incredibly important” for public safety and community outreach.

“The rider safety program was something that was put in years ago to train motorcyclists on riding,” Fritts said. “It was being managed by some of the university systems that put it on their bottom priorities.”

According to Fritts, advocacy from the motorcycle community played a key role in pushing the issue forward. The result was legislation to restructure the program and bring it back into focus by shifting its delivery to local communities.

Fritts’ final bill addressed concerns over letters people were receiving informing them that assessment fees would be levied against them if they did not switch to electronic statements and automatic payments for their bills, a move he believes is “terribly unfair” to senior citizens who might have trouble navigating electronic technology and for those living in rural areas where access to the internet is limited.

“I was able to push through the House a prohibition on that,” Fritts said.

Other topics Fritts addressed included concerns over multiple tax increases included in the fiscal 2026 budget, transit funding issues, the safe gun storage law and the potential federalization of education, emphasizing the need for a smooth transition and equitable funding.