North Cook News

The Better Government Association recently released a report that showed that Gov. J.B. Pritzker has invested in the Centene Corp., which has received billions of dollars in state contracts for Medicaid, and Rep. Deanne Mazzochi took issue with this in a recent press conference.

According to the report, a blind trust that was set up to manage Pritzker’s finances bought stock in Centene in 2020. The stock purchase was made on behalf of Northern Trust, which handles Pritzker’s personal finances. Centene received more than $2.6 billion from state Medicaid contracts in 2021, the report stated.

“Despite Gov. Pritzker’s promises to not invest in companies, he did invest in Centene Corp., who has received billions of dollars in state contracts for Medicaid services,” Mazzochi said. “(Our conflicts of interest statute) says that it is prohibited for any person holding elective office in the state to have or require a contract or any direct pecuniary interest in any contract that will be wholly or partially satisfied by the payment of funds appropriated by the general assembly. So let's be clear, a pecuniary interest means the opportunity directly or indirectly to profit or share and any profit derived involving a transaction in a stock or security.”

According to the report, Pritzker’s communication director Jordan Abudayyeh said that Pritzker has not been involved in contracting with Centene and any of the decision-making involving his trust, however. 

“There is nothing he would have to recuse himself from,” Abudayyeh said, and then referred all questions about the trust to Pritzker’s campaign team. The report said that Centene has denied that it knew that Pritzker was a record holder of the stock. Pritzker’s lawyer and campaign spokesperson have said Pritzker’s trust is blind and that he is not a part of any decisions involving investments.

However, experts like Eleanor Eagan of the Center for Economic and Policy Research feel otherwise, saying there is a conflict of interest.

Mazzochi is calling for Pritzker to be more transparent.

“The time has come for the governor to come clean with the residents of Illinois and be open, honest and fully transparent about his financial interest during his tenure including what he owns what got bought, what got sold,” Mazzochi said. “And he needs to back it up with honest records including his full tax returns.”