Lawmakers face a midnight Tuesday deadline to pass a fiscal 2017 budget and adopt a 2016 spending plan that has remained elusive for the past 11 months, leaving IL as the only state without a complete budget for the fiscal year ending June 30.
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With hours before lawmakers adjourn, Rauner was already delivering a verdict on the past five months.
He also confirmed previous statements from his staff that he would veto the House-passed budget if it was approved by the Senate. The measure now awaits the signature of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Rauner has said he’d veto this measure, which would make the temporary budget the next hope for compromise.
Despite a bad budget meeting on Friday, tempers appear to have cooled as Illinois’s top lawmakers say negotiations are moving forward again. Rauner has vowed to veto that spending plan, calling it more than $7 billion short on revenue.
While Democrats said they’d consider the idea, they made it clear that a vote was not imminent, instead dispatching the matter to a so-called “working group” of lawmakers first formed by Rauner in an earlier attempt to go around Democratic leaders in brokering a larger budget deal. Last week, House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-22) led a caucus of fellow Democrats in passing a proposed budget that calls for $40 billion in spending and only an estimated $33 billion in revenues.
Rauner’s proposal suggests funding public schools so they can open in the fall, though the memo did not provide a funding figure for schools.
The Senate education bill would appropriate almost $16 billion for public schools next year. Democratic Sen. Heather Steans (STAYNZ’) of Chicago says it would cost $330 million – half federal money.
Madigan says Democrats worked throughout the weekend and says they’ll continue to negotiate through Tuesday. It does, however, permit undocumented students to receive in-state tuition provided the students attend an IL high school for three years, graduate from an IL high school and apply for USA citizenship as soon as they are able to.
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“If the Democrats leave here today without having done that, every single rank-and-file Democrat who sides with their leader against keeping the state operating wears the collar”, she said.
