All projects in construction and engineering phases will start shutting down on June 30th due to the state budget stalemate.

Comment: Holy crap, our favorite pinko got one right! Nobody is buying Senate President John Cullerton’s blaming Rauner for everything. Author Fred Klonsky is a leading radical in the labor community who we’ve neglected to ridicule lately. (He blocked us on Twitter so we can’t, well, troll him anymore. Bummer.)

Dozens of Madison County Democrat precinct committee members whose party opposes a property tax reduction draw their income from government jobs, public pensions and elected offices. Horrible. Glad nothing like this happens in Chicago.

A council representing the eight Great Lakes states has voted to allow Waukesha, Wisconsin, unprecedented access to Lake Michigan as its drinking water source.

Comment: “Evil,” public unions like to tell us — except when it comes to investing their pensions for the best returns.

Three hundred thousand of those dollars that well-intentioned people have been donating over the years to Congressman Luis Gutierrez (IL-04) to fund his re-election campaigns apparently ended up feathering his own family’s nest.

The decision may well keep in place $177 million in federal funding that was awarded in 2010 for the connection, but that will be up to the Federal Railroad Administration, which had said the grant would expire June 30. Local officials have been lobbying Gov. Bruce Rauner to ask for an extension.

Health insurance premiums for the average Illinoisan have risen dramatically over the past several years. Copays have also spiked, and access to doctors is shrinking. On top of these rising costs, Illinois taxpayers also have to subsidize heavily the more than $2.7 billion spent annually on health care benefits for Illinois state workers. Comment: And the liability for future healthcare costs for pensioners, entirely unfunded, adds 50% to the pension debt and is constitutionally protected along with pension benefits. The press routinely ignores that liability.

Regardless of political affiliation, most elected officials agree Illinois is in crisis. One party’s leader recognizes the urgency of addressing it. The other party is on summer vacation.

Sadly, and perhaps alarmingly, these findings may point to a “too-big-to-fail” problem in state government finances, similar to a TBTF problem in banking. We may have a significant moral hazard problem operating, if larger states are assuming their failures may be cushioned by federal resources.

Undocumented immigrants living in Illinois pay an estimated $743 million in state and local taxes a year, according to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

“It’s good to see them calling attention to the fact that Illinois homeowners are being taxed out of their homes and in some cases out of our state altogether.”