State Sen. Gary Forby and State Rep. Brandon Phelps make it absolutely clear in a Southern editorial whom Blago’s “Illinois Works” would benefit:
The capital bill would have yielded $1,763 per person to Southern Illinois and only $645 per person for Chicago. Did Glenn let us down? We think not.
And just where will this magical windfall of money come from? Oh, duh. Not from Southern Illinois: instead, we’ll just steal the money from Chicago, just like we always have! After all, it would be unfair to just let those Chicago scoundrels keep the money from their businesses, leaving us free-loaders with nothing.
Under this bill, gambling would only be expanded in Chicago, and we believe it eventually will be anyway, with these new revenues now only benefitting Chicago, leaving Southern Illinois with nothing.
And just why do Southern Illinoisans deserve 273% more money than we Chicagoans, even though our votes theoretically count the same? Do I count as just one-third of a citizen of Illinois? After all, Chicago has bike lanes which serve more people than entire Interstates downstate. We deserve our fair share, and it’s obscene that the state’s leaders (like Blago and Jones, both of whom seem to spend an awful lot of taxpayer money to access Chicago’s transportation infrastructure) would allow such an unbalanced program (which threatens Chicago’s, and thus the state’s, future prosperity) to get this far.
west north 
Same story as what happens on the national scale. The most heavily-subsidized state in the union is Mississippi, I believe. Most of the GOP strongholds in the south are net consumers of federal revenue.
I had heard them called “Moynihan maps,” since Sen. Moynihan was one of the first to call attention to the problem. What’s most shocking about the Illinois Works disparity, though, is that the bill was ostensibly crafted (according to the press releases) with regional funding guarantees — and that Emil Jones and G-Rod, both slimy Chicago machine loyalists, have lined up behind it knowing full well that it screws over their own constituents.
What’s equally troubling: the governor is willing to tightly pin much-needed infrastructure investments to gambling — an industry that the Wall Street Journal recently highlighted as “highly vulnerable to the economic downturn” and whose stocks and bonds “have tumbled dramatically” in value.
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The most heavily subsidized state, per capita, is Alaska.
But, in total dollars, Mississippi could be true.
Anyway, I actually clicked to comment because I wanted to note that, as someone who grew up downstate and now lives in Chicago, the prevailing belief (the conventional wisdom) downstate is that all their tax dollars are being sucked up by Springfield and sent to Chicago. And that animosity has grown with Chicagoans holding most, if not all, of the reigns of power in Springfield.
Chicago has long subsidized downstate, and downstate blames Chicago for all its problems.
Downstate Illinois would be a hellhole without Chicago tax dollars flowing there.