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Coming in just under the wire, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed budget bills Thursday to fund state operations until the end of the year and to ensure schools open on time this fall — just hours after the spending package passed the Legislature.
The stopgap budget compromise reached between the General Assembly and Gov. Bruce Rauner will fund government operations for the next six months and ensure that schools open on time in the fall. Comment: It will take at least several days of analysis to get a genuine read on what’s really in this bill.
Not an option, but a sad necessity. I repeat my challenge that I’ve made repeatedly here: Show us the alternative.
Illinois’ ongoing budget battle may have no clear end in sight, but that didn’t stop “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” from taking on the crisis in the latest installment of “Jordan Klepper’s Happy Endings.”
Chicago Public Schools made a $657.5 million payment Thursday to the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund, the fund has confirmed, but the cash-strapped district of slightly less than 400,000 students won’t yet say how much money it has left. Comment: Not nearly enough to keep this pension from sinking further into its bottomless hole.
Comment: Madigan was gloating on the House floor that this was passed “with no reforms.”
Preckwinkle noted that the bulk of last year’s penny-on-the-dollar sales tax increase is going to shore up the county’s underfunded pension system, with smaller portions covering debt, ending the diversion of gas taxes from transportation projects and paying for technology upgrades. The county now must deal with increases in its day-to-day operating costs, she said.
Illinois bonds rallied to a three-week high as the state’s leaders moved toward temporarily halting a record yearlong budget impasse and avoiding a massive shutdown of government services.
A measure of Chicago-area economic activity surged in June on a big advance in the number of purchasing managers indicating improving production and new orders.
Chicago government lacks a centralized program to try to hold down the hundreds of millions of dollars it pays out each year for things like police misconduct cases and workers’ compensation claims, the city’s watchdog said in a report released Thursday.
Comment: A rather interesting interview acknowledging that fixes now under discussion won’t solve CPS problem. As always, however, she’s completely out of touch about Chicago’s tolerance for the tax increases she wants.
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