As Gov. Rod Blagojevich prepares for his State of the State address on Thursday, he is enjoying widespread support across Illinois.

However, some DeKalb and Sycamore residents are expressing concern about his performance as he starts his second year in office.

A Chicago Tribune poll released Tuesday found that 55 percent of Illinois voters approve of how Blagojevich is doing as governor, but at least one local official wasn’t as satisfied.

State Sen. Brad Burzynski (R-Sycamore) said Blagojevich’s potential went unfulfilled.

“I think he started off with a great deal of promise,” Burzynski said. “It seemed like there was a world of opportunities for him to make some changes in the way we go about doing business in Springfield, but my opinion is, what we saw is that it is still business as usual, just done in a little bit different way.

“We see very little communication between the governor and the general assembly, and not just from a Republican standpoint, but even among his own party. A lot of Democratic leaders are very concerned because they really don’t know what his agenda is and they don’t know what he wants, so it makes it very difficult for them to try and work through some of the issues that are important to them as well.”

DeKalb Mayor Greg Sparrow is worried about the state of the budget, but he said he understood Blagojevich’s tenuous situation.

“I think the concern that we have, as local government, is the additional fees and the loss of revenues and the things that affect us on our levels,” Sparrow said. “Our hope is that we aren’t going to see more bloodletting and we are actually going to see a recovery and revenues coming back. To be honest with you, I know he inherited a pretty big deficit and the question is, ‘How do you balance it?’

“If you are going to say that you are not going to raise taxes, which he stuck to, that’s a pretty tough stand to take and then actually follow through with it. In the polls that have been taken, his popularity seems to be pretty high with the public. I think they feel that he has followed through with the promises that he made. It’s certainly going to be another tough year, though.”

Eileen Dubin, chairwoman of the DeKalb County Democrats, said Gov. Blagojevich has changed the political climate of Springfield.

“It’s a been a very difficult year with the budget concerns that we have that aren’t cleared up yet, but I just got back from California and, compared to them, we are not in such bad shape,” she said. “I think he has tried to indicate that it is not necessarily politics as usual and maybe that we need some changes particularly after the former governor, who is obviously indicted. He has done a number of positive things in a very difficult climate.”

Michael White, a senior political science major, said he wasn’t impressed.

“I like that fact that he’s a Cubs fan, but that’s just about it,” he said. “He didn’t really do a good job of uniting the different parties and he was hardly in Springfield. He is trying to run things from Chicago. George Ryan was a lot better when it came to spending money on education.”

NIU President John Peters would not comment specifically on the governor’s job performance, but he said he had praise for state government as a whole.

“All of our public officials have had to grapple with a terrible economy,” he said. “I think all of them have to do a very tough job and I really admire the work they have done in a very difficult situation.”

Junior history major Peter Gerlachsaid the governor hasn’t done a bad job – at least by comparison.

“No matter what you say about him, at least he’s not his three predecessors, who were complete bozos,” he said.