It seems everyone is mad at the state of Illinois.
And one of the hottest is Danny Chasteen, who in July won $250,000 in the Illinois Lottery but, so far, has had to settle for an IOU.
The factory foreman from Oglesby is none too happy.
“When you buy a winning lottery ticket, you ought to get paid,” Chasteen told me. “I paid $5 for that ticket and had to look at it four times before I convinced myself that I had just won $250,000. And then I got a call from the lottery department and was told they can’t pay me until the state passes a budget.”
So Chasteen and other lottery winners who haven’t received their winnings have made a federal case out of it. They’re suing the lottery to try to force it to pay off, budget or no budget.
A judge will decide whether the state should start forking over the dough. And that’s an unfortunate part of the continuing budget impasse in the legislature — it’s judges rather than lawmakers who are deciding how tax dollars are being spent.
That’s not the way things are supposed to work.
In June, Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed most of the budget passed by the legislature because it was roughly $4 billion in the red. Since then, we have had a constant tug-of-war between the governor and the Democratic leaders who control the House and Senate.
And nearly three months into the 2015-16 fiscal year, the state remains without a budget.
A judge has stepped in and ordered that state employees must get paid. Other judges are enforcing a dozen other agreements regarding funding for state programs. And more lawsuits are being filed, asking judges to order more spending.
State Comptroller Leslie Munger said last week that among the court orders, judicial agreements and some statutory requirements, the state is fulfilling 90 percent of its financial obligations.
And we are also going broke one court order at a time.
The General Assembly is supposed to be a deliberative body that sets priorities and develops policy. But in Illinois it’s become mostly a platform for political posturing, accusations and threats without much responsible action.
Legislators are allowing other branches of government to do the heavy lifting.
When the General Assembly passed a budget billions of dollars out of whack, Democrats whined that the governor vetoed it rather than try to make cuts on his own.
And increasingly lawmakers have sat back and watched the judicial branch step in out of necessity and do their job for them by authorizing spending.
And what have legislators been doing? Playing politics, trying to look busy but accomplishing little.
Look no further than the measure passed by the Senate last week that would increase state spending on welfare by about $2 billion. I don’t claim to be a math wizard, but anyone who has ever balanced a checkbook knows you can’t withdraw more than you have deposited.
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In the case of the Senate, its latest measure along with the original budget would arguably put the state roughly $6 billion into overdraft territory.
It’s the politics of gridlock. Instead of making tough choices to achieve a balanced budget, legislators are performing a charade and waiting for Rauner or the Democratic legislative leaders to tell them what to do.
We deserve a legislature that will work with the governor in making those tough choices. Instead, we have a legislative majority that wants others to make the tough calls.
We deserve better, and they know better.
Scott Reeder is a veteran statehouse reporter and a journalist with the Illinois News Network, a project of the Illinois Policy Institute. He can be reached at [email protected]