For all the talk about the urgency of reaching a balanced budget, it was more political theater than honest effort before the spring legislative session ended in Springfield, the founder of an online news outlet said on a radio talk show recently.
"I think it's going nowhere," Wirepoints founder Mark Glennon said on the Chicago-based "Illinois Rising."
The General Assembly did pass a few pieces of legislation, including a minimum wage hike of $15 per hour, but there has been no real progress toward producing the constitutionally required balanced budget, Glennon said.
Wirepoints founder Mark Glennon
"Nothing of any real substance," he said.
Glennon talked with co-hosts Pat Hughes and Illinois Policy Institute writer Joe Kaiser. Kaiser filled in for regular co-host Dan Proft, a principal of Local Government Information Services, which owns this publication.
After the session ended on May 31, the House and Senate passed a resolution to remain in continuous session over the impasse. Passing a comprehensive and balanced budget is the most urgent matter facing Illinois, House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago) said in a statement in which he also blamed the budget deficit on Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
“House Democrats will continue our efforts to address this challenge, end this destructive impasse and close the Rauner budget deficit," Madigan said in his statement. "The House Democratic Budget Working Group led by Representative Greg Harris will hold public hearings and continue working in June to prepare a budget for the coming fiscal year."
Those hearings began on Thursday, June 8, in Chicago, but House Minority Leader Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) pointed out in an open letter to Madigan that such working groups have been tried before.
"Past experience has shown House Democrats use working groups to slow the process and eventually walk away from the negotiating table," Durkin wrote.
Gov. Rauner said Democrats in the Legislature are motivated less by the good of the state and more by trying to keep him from being re-elected.
"You see where they're going; you see what this is about?" Rauner said. "They are damaging communities like Hegewisch. They are damaging human services for political gain."
Madigan has no intention of passing anything that would amount to any progress, Glennon said, adding that Madigan's only real intention is to "make Rauner look bad," despite the state's plummeting credit rating.
"The result will be a downgrade to junk bonds," Glennon said. "A severe step down in perceptions and everything else about Illinois and progress of any kind being made. Which, again, is what Madigan wants. And what we'll hear then is 'Gov. Junk Bond' -- blame Rauner for everything. That's the strategy; that's the reality of what's going to happen."
However, the pressure remains high to get something -- anything -- done about the state's budget, Glennon said.
"There is so much pressure to try to do something," he said. "There is value in getting a budget passed, but if it's a bad budget, that's not going to help much."
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