Gov. J.B. Pritzker | Facebook
Gov. J.B. Pritzker | Facebook
Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s economic status has raised questions from Republicans like Rep. Deanne Mazzochi.
Mazzochi said understanding Pritzker's finances is a “critical issue.”
“Back in 2019, he was warned he should tell his blind trust operators not to invest in any corporations that had state contracts,” Mazzochi said. “Why didn't that instruction get made? Because, if it had, this shouldn't have happened.”
The Illinois governor’s large income “brought stock in one of the state’s biggest Medicaid contractors in 2020.”
The Better Government Association (BGA) recently reported that billionaire Pritzker’s blind trust bought stock in health insurance giant Centene Corp. In 2020, Centene was one of Illinois's biggest Medicaid contractors.
BGA noted, “the investment in Centene — which collected more than $2.6 billion from state Medicaid contracts in the first half of 2021 alone — demonstrates the pitfalls of a blind-trust arrangement that still leaves the nation’s richest governor open to potential conflicts of interest.”
Fox News reported that Pritzker’s “lawyer wrote, in part, ‘his blind trust is just that: blind. He receives no information regarding potential investments ... He has no knowledge of the trust’s current assets. To suggest otherwise is ... potentially libelous.’”
Pritzker has a net worth of $3.6 billion, according to Forbes, making him among the richest politicians in the country.
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