SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Teetering on what most could consider bankruptcy, the state of Illinois next week could break new ground when it comes to lousy public financing and money management.

 

For starters, if state leaders such as Gov. Bruce Rauner and House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago) don’t produce some type of spending plan by July 1 during the current special legislation session, some 700 road construction projects likely will be halted. Standard & Poor’s already has said it will downgrade the state’s bond ratings to junk status – the first time for any state.

And not even those who oversee gambling think the state is a good bet: Officials with the groups that operate the national Powerball and Mega Millions games say they will pull Illinois out of the mix as early as Saturday if the state does not have a spending plan in place.

It has been since July 1, 2015, that Illinois has not had a full-year budget in place, due in large part to the widely recognized rift between the Republican Rauner, a first-term governor, and Democrat Madigan, a longtime speaker of the House.

Since then, the state has built up a backlog of bills that total nearly $15 billion. Illinois essentially has operated on a series of court orders that mandate payments to pension funds, certain employees and select service providers.

But all that can change come Saturday, because the state is so depleted in cash reserves that it may not be able to meet some of its payment obligations within a matter of weeks, including payroll, according to State Comptroller Susana Mendoza.

Elementary schools, high schools and universities could see funding from the state dry up completely, while the Illinois Department of Transportation said it will have to shut down all current construction projects. Mendoza last Friday told House Democrats – the only group not to put forward a budget proposal during the current session – that the backlog of bills due is about half of what the state takes in tax revenue in a year, approximately $31.1 billion.

She said without a budget by Saturday, the state no longer will be able to pay court-ordered bills and still meet the state’s “core priorities” such as general state aid payments to schools, employee salaries and funding for nursing homes and hospice care.

“Come August, there is no flexibility,” Mendoza explained. “If they’re worried about taking tough votes, they should be more worried about telling parents why their children aren’t going to start school on time, why people are going to be dying in their districts.”

Rauner called a special session of the legislature that started June 21 and runs through this Friday, but Rauner, Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago), Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno (Lemont) and her counterpart in the House, Rep. Jim Durkin (Burr Ridge), have not even settled on when to meet as a group.

Radogno and Cullerton note the Senate already has passed a package of bills it believes will right the ship, chief among them a take hike package that raises the individual income tax rate to 4.95 percent, along with a series of new service taxes.

Rauner has said, only recently, that he would support a tax increase as long as legislators build in at least a four-year property tax freeze as well as implementing term limits for all of the state’s top leaders. He also had sought a host of other reforms that Democrats have called anti-union measures, but the Governor had dropped most of those requests as the legislative session wound down to a close May 31.

Meanwhile, leading into the final days this week of the special session, the dysfunction was obvious.

“This is a real embarrassment,” Cullerton told reporters Friday. “It’s totally avoidable.”

Rauner took aim at the Democratic majority. “They seem to just rather have no budget and have chaos and failure and destruction in the state. That seems like it is their preference. I assume that all they want to do is point fingers."