SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Gov. J.B. Pritzker must walk a fine line between hopes for additional spending and calls for restraint when he proposes his second annual budget Wednesday after a whirlwind first year in office in which he saw many of his promises enacted.

The Democrat already has promised to boost funding for the states' child-welfare agency by $147 million after a particularly troubling year. An inspector general's report released in January indicated that 123 children who died last year had been in contact with the Department of Children and Family Services.

Pritzker's plan will increase the number of agency employees to 3,056, up from 2,758 in 2018. One goal is to reduce the workload of caseworkers who monitor families that have had contact with the department — for example, where there's suspected child abuse or neglect. Other employees would be assigned to the agency's hotline, which receives calls about suspected abuse.

The agency's $1.46 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 would represent an 11% increase from the current year.

“It’s a priority, and that’s why you’re seeing this budget number," Pritzker told the Chicago Tribune. "But, yes, you do have to make adjustments to the budget in order to make your priorities.”

The adjustments are necessary because revenue remains a question and Illinois is billions of dollars in debt.

Pritzker has yet to win approval for the centerpiece of his 2018 campaign: a proposal for the state to switch to a graduated income-tax structure that taxes higher salaries at higher rates. He contends that would generated $3 billion in additional annual revenue, but it requires a change in the Illinois Constitution. Such a move would need approval from voters and wouldn't affect state coffers until next year at the earliest.

To get ahead of Republicans' calls for frugality, Pritzker told reporters last week that “government efficiencies” that his administration found in his first year in office would cut spending in the coming budget by $225 million and by at least $750 million during the next three years.

The bulk of that, he said, comes from new agreements with public employee unions that reduced health care costs, saving the state $175 million next year and up to $650 million through fiscal 2023.

Republicans said it doesn't go far enough in cutting spending. Rep. Tom Demmer of Dixon noted that Pritzker in the fall asked his cabinet to outline ways to cut 6 1/2% from the budgets they submitted to him.

“Only a small portion of it was actually from reduction in operating budgets,” Demmer, the House Republicans' budget negotiator, said Tuesday. “That's a far cry from the 6 1/2% agency directors were asked to identify.”

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Follow Political Writer John O'Connor at https://twitter.com/apoconnor.