Lake County Gazette

Senate Minority Leader Dan McConchie (R-Hawthorn Woods) is slamming Gov. J.B. Pritzker for using the state’s $8.1 billion in COVID relief funding on “questionable” spending, such as $300,000 that went to Black Lives Matter of Lake County. 

McConchie urges that Illinois should completely resolve the state's unemployment insurance trust fund, stressing that "paying part of the debt is not responsible when you can pay off the entirety of the debt."

“Despite these troubling reports, Gov. Pritzker and Illinois Democrats thought this organization was deserving of this money," McConchie said in a statement. "All while, just this week, they voted to underfund Illinois’ unemployment insurance trust fund, only using $2.7 billion of ARPA money to fill the $4.5 billion deficit, which will result in a major tax increase on employers and reduced benefits for workers. Democrats and the governor just couldn’t help themselves. They picked away at the federal dollars for their special projects and gave employers, those hit hardest by the pandemic, the leftovers.” 

The monies were first disclosed in February by the Lake County Gazette. Clyde McLemore of Zion launched Black Lives Matter of Lake County in 2019. In August 2020, the organization opened a downtown Waukegan office at 111 N. County St., directly across from the Lake County Courthouse. It received $300,000 in COVID relief funds.

McLemore, 63, was charged with felony battery to a police officer and disorderly conduct in Kenosha, Wisc., in February 2021 after reportedly kicking a door at the Kenosha Courthouse and threatening to "break the fingers" of a Kenosha police officer. He previously pled guilty to criminal felony battery and criminal misdemeanor battery, as well as facing orders of protection for stalking, according to Lake County Court records, most recently in 2020 and 2019.

McConchie also panned SB2803, which appropriated $2 billion in COVID relief funds for paying down the state’s debt to the Department of Employment Security for payment to the Illinois Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund. The fund is $4.5 billion in debt. SB2803 passed by a partisan vote of 68-43 on March 23. 

Illinois House Majority Leader Greg Harris (D-Chicago) announced the bill only days before it went through the General Assembly in a partisan effort. The payments "represents an agreement between" House and Senate Democratic leaders and Pritzker on "what the state of Illinois would fund toward solving that $4.5 billion problem," Harris said. 

The bill has been enacted after the governor approved and signed the measure on March 25.