Illinois governor stands by stalled agenda as state budget languishes

Cullerton said he wants to come up with a system that helps schools serving students who live poverty and those who face other challenges.

Cullerton, the Senate president, had pushed the school funding idea on Monday.

Bruce Rauner takes pride in not being like any of Illinois’ previous governors, either on matters of style or substance.

Cullerton had warned that a pension reform measure previously passed by the Legislature was unconstitutional because it reduced retirement benefits.

Rauner also promised big changes to the way IL funds K-12 education and how the state will work to target the underlying cause behind criminals repeatedly finding themselves in the state’s correctional system.

The agency says in less than three weeks it will have to shut down its crisis intervention program for teen runaways.

IL has the worst-funded pension system of any US state and is roughly $111 billion in debt.

Sen. John Sullivan, D-Rushville, welcomed Rauner’s support for financial help to downstate and rural school districts. He called me. He said he was going to have a press conference and he was supporting the concept [of consideration].

“Finding a pension funding solution is a key component to solving the long-term finances of our state”, Sullivan said.

“As early as 2012, Bruce Rauner made it clear that imperiling critical services would help create leverage to his agenda”, said the memo. They ignore the fact that the 2011 rewrite of the workers’ compensation system – those changes sought by the business community, and which were largely to the detriment of men and women injured on the job – is producing the desired result: “lower costs for insurance companies and employers”.

Rauner devoted a considerable portion of his speech to his efforts to “take on the compensation costs of our state government”, in particular its unionized work force.

According to the local watchdog group Reboot Illinois, in Rauner’s first year in office, the higher education budget was slashed by nearly a half-billion dollars, money that has sat unused since last July due to the budget impasse.

CORLEY: But from the beginning the relationship between the legislature and Rauner, one of a handful of GOP governors leading a Democratic state, was bitter. Democrats have refused, saying those changes will hurt working families and drive down wages. “This platform of bold reforms is how we can finally overcome a decade of mismanagement that ran our state into the ground”.

In this November 10, 2015 file photo, protesters rally in support of lawmakers ending the state budget impasse at the IL state Capitol in Springfield. Last week, the same day the Governor’s office its hire of a chief of staff for Diana Rauner at $100,000 a year, Lutheran Social Services announced it would have to eliminate 750 jobs and cut services provided to almost 5,000 people. The programs affected include services for the homeless, mentally ill and seniors who need home care.

“Here at Chicago State, operations may shut down within a month”, said Duckworth. He is now college bound and says he has at least four universities on his list of potential options after high school. Depending on when that labor board ruling comes, all of this also could become campaign fodder for both Rauner and the unions this fall as they battle for control of legislative majorities. “When we do, corporations overseas will be more likely to come here”.

The state is going into its eighth month without one, and it’s something Miriam Link-Mullison, director for the Jackson County Health Department, says once there is an agreement to one, it’ll still be a long road to recovery for many services and programs throughout the state.