No Soup for You!

The city of Chicago isn’t getting any relief from the state on the big payment the state is requiring it to pay into its pension fund, at least not yet:

It still isn’t final and things could change really quickly, but it looks as though the cardinals in Springfield are getting ready to send up black smoke on a bill to help Chicago Public Schools with a huge pension payment that’s due by the end of the day.

If you’ll recall, today is the day that House Speaker Michael Madigan promised a second vote on a bill to delay the $634 million payment from today to Aug. 10, buying 40 days to continue negotiations on a wider state budget deal. The bill last time got just 53 of the 71 votes needed, with many insiders suggesting that Madigan tubed the measure to send a message to Mayor Rahm Emanuel to deal directly with him in the future.

Gov. Bruce Rauner then offered a variation on a plan advanced by Senate President John Cullerton to give CPS an additional $200 million a year each of the next two years while the state’s overall school-aid formula is revamped. But that’s complicated and tied to other things that Madigan opposes.

So, Rauner yesterday offered to advance $450 million in state aid that CPS normally wouldn’t get until next month. But Emanuel rejected that, perhaps hoping for approval of his original Aug. 10 bill.

For those of you out there who think that Illinois’s problem is Gov. Rauner that should clear things up. What do the state’s budget and Chicago’s pension payment woes have in common? It isn’t the governor.

Mike Madigan and John Cullerton don’t need the governor for either of those deals. It’s completely up to them. I think that what they want is for the governor and mayor to absorb all of the pain while they keep business as usual.

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  • Guarneri Link

    No, it ain’t Rauner. I do believe I observed a while back that Rauner would negotiate differently. This isn’t his first one, and he doesn’t need the job.

    He may in fact end up as a one termer and not achieve his goals. But I bet he takes the type of positions the state needs. History will treat him far better than Madigan. It’s too bad history books don’t deal so much with the electorate, for they are right there in their culpability with Madigan.

    The era of “progressive” government economic largesse, er, policy, is coming to a close everywhere. And it’s for only one reason – it cannot be afforded any longer. Skip all the usual arguments. If you can’t afford a first class seat to Hawaii and a stay at The Four Seasons then you can’t. Sorry. That’s financial reality. It bites.

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