By Cole Lauterbach/Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – With little more than three weeks before Illinois is without a formal spending plan, Republicans are saying Speaker Madigan is stalling.
Two weekend meetings of the state’s political leaders have resulted in more questions than answers on what’s going to happen on Jan. 1, when the state’s stopgap spending plan expires. House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, says the best way forward is to craft another short-term, stopgap budget akin to what the state has been running on since July of 2015. That’s when lawmakers failed to pass a balanced budget, leaving only a number of six-month long spending bills that kept state services from shutting down but resulted in record levels of spending without adequate funding.
“Illinois, over the last two years, has done budget making on seven occasions following a certain format. If that were to be done again here, we could have a successful budget-making,” Madigan said, frustrated with the amount of attention Rauner’s reform items have gotten in meetings. “Yesterday, I reported that we didn’t spend time talking about the budget at all. Today, we talked about the budget for 14 minutes.”
Republican Minority Leader Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, accused Madigan of stalling to create another crisis that would allow for another six months of spending without reforms Gov. Bruce Rauner has demanded be a part of a new budget agreement.
“I am alarmed by the lack of urgency to bring this impasse to closure,” Durkin said. “It is my sense that the Democrat leadership, particularly Speaker Madigan, is not engaged on working with us on reforms that we believe are important to put this state back on track and to stop this reversal that we’ve seen for so many years with our economic climate and the loss of jobs.”
Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, says the speaker is stalling so that the governor will have to sign another spending plan without reforms or suffer a full shutdown of state government on Jan. 1. “They’d like to run the clock out. We have a deadline facing us on Dec. 31 where there will be no appropriations,” she said. “The tactic here is to stall, stall, stall, create a crisis, and then force the state into another stopgap budget.”
To stall further, Radogno says Madigan has brought up hypotheticals that would need to be addressed before he would entertain a budget. “Some of which we may never know in time such as ‘what is the effect the Trump Administration may have on this budget?’ If we’re waiting on that, we’re certainly not going to know in by Dec. 31.”
Republicans say they’re willing to vote for another stopgap budget only if it includes a property tax freeze and term limits on state legislators and constitutional officers.
The House and Senate have adjourned for the year but can be called back at leadership’s discretion. The leaders are scheduled to meet again Tuesday afternoon in Chicago.
Should the state continue operating on short-term, stopgap spending plans, the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget says Illinois’ backlog of unpaid bills will go from $10.4 billion to $47 billion in only five years.
