Dozens of Editorial Boards Join Forces to Demand End to Illinois Budget Impasse

Editor’s note:

Enough. End the crisis that is crippling our state now. In unprecedented unity, about 65 daily and weekly Illinois editorial boards and their newspapers are running editorials today through the beginning of July, many on their front pages, on the need for an end to the state budget standoff and resolve the state’s budget crisis. From the city, to the capital in Springfield, the suburbs, from eastern to western Illinois, the editors, who frequently serve and represent the citizens in their communities, have a powerful message to the state’s political powers and the rank-and-file lawmakers who purport to represent us: Enough.

You can join them by using #ILEnough in your social media posts over the next few days. The Chicago Sun-Times editorial is reproduced below in full with permission. Others are excerpted. Links to each newspaper’s website follows their editorials.

Chicago Sun-Times

Here’s a number for you: $8,031,269,046.06.

That’s how big a deadbeat the State of Illinois is. That’s how far behind the state was in paying its bills as of noon on Tuesday, when we started writing this editorial.

Here’s another big number: $9,634,987.

That’s how much Illinois has spent in the last year on late fees and interest for failing to pay its bills on time. Plain and stupid credit card debt.

And here’s a third big number: 60.

That’s the percentage of human service agencies surveyed by the United Way of Illinois that have had to cut back on how many people they help because they’re going broke. If the state keeps stiffing the agencies, not paying what’s owed, a third of them say they’ll likely close in the next six months.

But numbers can be cold. Let’s make this flesh and blood. As of Thursday, Illinois will have gone a whole year without passing a budget. As a result, to cite just a few examples of the damage done, drug addicts are not getting counseling, old people with dementia are not being cared for, rape victims are not getting help. State museums have been closed. Young offenders cut loose by social service agencies are back to committing crimes. Teenagers trying to steer clear of gangs are not going to after-school programs or study centers.

Our state is crashing. Yet Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Democratic-controlled Legislature can barely manage to sit in the same room and talk, let alone approve a budget that lays out reasonable expenditures and sources of revenue. They can’t even agree on a stop-gap budget for six months, both sides possibly more interested in how they can spin this crisis to their advantage in the November elections.

We have repeatedly called out Rauner for blame, especially for his cavalier disregard for Chicago. He marched into Springfield a year and a half ago vowing not to work with the opposition, but to bend them to his will. He badly miscalculated his ability to do so. Now he expresses bewilderment that the same legislative leaders he dismissed as corrupt won’t cut a deal with him.

To be clear, this is no defense of Rauner’s opponents, beginning with House Speaker Mike Madigan and, to a lesser extent, Senate President John Cullerton. For decades the Legislature, aided and abetted by governors from both parties, has given away the store in negotiations with public sector unions, allowed debt to pile up, shoved off the day of reckoning for funding pensions and approved dishonest budgets.

But it was Rauner who set the rules of this fight. He would approve no tax increase, which is essential to any honest new budget, until he got his way on specific pro-business, anti-union policy changes. He has gotten nothing. Instead, the entire state, especially Chicago, is being destroyed by Springfield’s inaction. Whatever the merits of Rauner’s “Turnaround Agenda,” he has failed politically.

On this first anniversary of no state budget, the numbers tell the story...

See the Chicago Sun-Times editorial and more on the state crisis here.

Daily Herald

… Lawmakers are returning to Springfield today, presumably to take up a “stopgap” budget intended to maintain some basic services and possibly even let schools open on time. To them, we say it is not enough to try. This is the barest of bare minimums that must be accomplished.

Gov. Bruce Rauner, House Speaker Michael Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton and senators and representatives, each and all of you, we have had it.

Not just we inconsequential newspaper and media institutions, but we all-important citizens of Illinois, who have watched as you allowed the state’s economy to be pushed to the precipice of bankruptcy and its credit rating to plummet to the depths of ignominious junk.

… The governor, the House speaker and the Senate president should be embarrassed to appear in public with so little to show for the labors — if that’s an accurate word — of the past two years. Lawmakers who support them and report to them share equally in their shame.

The stopgap proposals available today should be the minimum citizens expect. And should they be adopted, the very next step should be to take up responsible long-term school-funding reforms — and they’re out there — that provide adequate support for schools and equality of opportunities throughout the state without taking money away from suburban school systems.

See the full Daily Herald editorial and more here.

You can read more excerpts from editorial boards across the state here.

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