By: Mark Glennon*
The State of Illinois’ 2023 fiscal year ended June 30, 2023 — 633 days ago — but it has yet to deliver its financial statements for that year. No state has ever been this tardy. Illinois lawmakers are now preparing the state’s 2026 budget, to be finalized in May. They are doing so blind to essential information they should be considering.
Audited financial statements appear in the Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports (ACFRs, formerly called CAFRs) that all states and most every governmental unit deliver. Timely ACFRs including audited financial statements are essential for getting a fair presentation of the financial condition and performance of the state. Among the reasons that is so is that, unlike nearly meaningless budgets, audited financial show increases in debt, which has been the core problem for Illinois.
The Government Finance Officers Association standard for timeliness is 180 days after the fiscal year-end. Truth in Accounting believes governments should release their financial reports within 100 days of the fiscal year-end. The previous all-time high for state government delinquency, which California set with its fiscal 2021 audit, was 631 days, according to a report last month from The Bond Buyer. States have averaged just 200 days to publish their ACFRs, according to a study on them. Compared to that national average, Illinois would be late even on its ACFR for the 2024 fiscal year that ended 265 days ago.
Many other states are indeed over a year ahead of us, having already published 2024 ACFRs, including New York, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Indiana. Illinois’ tardiness with its ACFR is part of why Truth in Accounting graded it an ‘F’ in its most recent Financial State of States.
For big, publicly traded companies, the deadline is even stricter. The Securities Exchange Commission requires them to file 10K financial statements 60 to 90 days after year end.
No answers are available for Illinois’ delay.
I earlier asked Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, whose office publishes the ACFRs, for an answer. She responded that it’s because the needed audited financial statements are not complete, and that’s in the hands of the Illinois Auditor General, Frank Mautino. Mendoza then posted the following on the Comptroller site, in red: “The Comptroller cannot issue the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report until the Auditor General has completed their audit. The audit for Fiscal Year 2023 has not been completed yet by the Auditor General. For the sake of transparency, the Comptroller has issued an Interim Report while awaiting the completed audit.” Mendoza did issue an “interim report” for 2023 earlier, but it’s abbreviated and not based on audited financial statements, so it’s of little value.
Mautino, however, has a legitimate reason for not publicly explaining the delay, which is that auditors do not discuss audits until they are completed.
It’s reasonable to speculate that the delay is because the records are a mess. Mautino was unable to deliver a clean opinion for the last audit he did, which was for FY 2022. That means he was unable to attest to the accuracy of the financial statements. That’s highly unusual for a major governmental unit or a public company. The problem area was the state’s unemployment trust fund, which was riddled with fraud during the Covid pandemic. From Mautino’s report, which is part of the 2022 ACFR:
Disclaimer of Opinion on the Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund Statements of Revenues, Expenses, and Changes in Net Position and Cash Flows
Because of the significance of the matter described in the Basis for Disclaimer of Opinion on Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund Statements of Revenues, Expenses, and Changes in Net Position and Cash Flows paragraph, we have not been able to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence to provide a basis for an audit opinion on the statements of revenues, expenses, and changes in net position and cash flows of the Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund. Accordingly, we do not express an opinion on these statements.
Without timely ACFRs, citizens and elected officials lack information essential not just for preparing budgets but for any number of spending and tax matters.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
If DOGE has revealed anything, it’s that Democrat government is nothing but a grift to loot the treasury on behalf of their voters and favored interest groups. Illinois is no different
If Trumplican politics has revealed anything, it’s that job expertise is far, far less important to keeping it than keeping mum and approving nonsense when a nut-job President wants total loyalty. Long live brain-dead loyalty!
As a Liberal, you celebrated brain-dead loyalty for four years.
Who was calling the shots during the Biden administration, James?
who knows? But, it’s clear enough that Trump is calling the shots now, and we are going to be victimized as a nation by his Godless soul and seriously stained sense of personal ethics.
What are they hiding?
And an even scarier question: are records in such disarray that THEY don’t even know what they’re hiding?
Incompetence from top to bottom!
Not good, not good at all.
Increase in core debt is only the top of the iceberg. It’s all the corruption that lies just below the surface that could be exposed by audits.
Dems to citizens: Give us our money, now shut up!
The delay is a vary strong indicator of fraud and abuse in the state government. When their is active fraud, this is how you want it. It’s like DOGE finding out the Treasury just issued payments with no tracking ID.
Jack – curious at the down vote. You can bet bond investors are thinking just what you are
And WTF can we do about it?
And yet JB can claim a “balanced budget” to dopey taxpayer/voters, that’s what’s important for dem machine..astoundingly nobody in bond market or press seems to care. More astoundingly Illinois Republican are silent as well….has Illinois broken any laws? can feds (Trump admin) step in and demand answers or cut off fed aid until ACFR is produced?
If the problem with completing ACFR is that state has lost track of COVID unemployment claims & fraud over at IDES, then:
What is status of Kwame’s unemployment fraud task-force? Or, is Kwame to busy signing on to national dem state AG suites against Trump to bother?Are are highest paid in nation, remote worker, 37hrs work week, etc AFSCME heroes over at IDES even on the job?
It’s absolutely ludicrous. I have worked with a small non-profit for the past 30 years. Everybody in the org is volunteer. No accountants. Lots of small transactions. Each of our divisions and subdivisions undergoes an internal audit every year. Our treasurer submits his books every year before we go to the IRS. If we had a penny out of place, you can bet dollars to donuts, they’d be giving us a financial colonoscopy. It’s reasonable to speculate that the delay is because the records are a mess. – Ugh. It’s so sad. I can get teenagers, housewives, carpenters, and retirees to… Read more »
Mautino owes the public an explanation as to why Illinois now holds the national record for the most delinquent annual financial statements. Also, I thought Mendoza was more responsible than most state officials. However, if that were true, she would have her team lend Mautino a hand. But she is just pointing fingers, like every other clown politician from the City. Between these delays, and Pritzker’s $1 billion overrun in healthcare for illegals, it is obvious that the State’s internal controls over spending are completely ineffective. Time to shut off the spigot to Illinois government, and have the feds (… Read more »
Illinois needs to revert to the Illinois Territory with a territorial governor appointed by President Trump.