•November 23, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

I promise readers this is the last column, at least for a while, about my near-obsession, understandable as I think it is, over the failure of the governor and Illinois House speaker to come together somehow to forge a responsible state budget.

In the recent election, GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner reduced the speaker’s House Democratic majority from 71-47 to 67-51, and in the state Senate he gained two GOP seats, which brings the Dems’ majority in that chamber down to just under two-thirds.

The governor was unable, however, to hang onto the office of Illinois Comptroller, which had been rather securely in GOP hands under the late Judy Baar Topinka until 2014, when Rauner appointed Leslie Munger, a businesswoman, to the post on Judy’s passing.

At that time, the Democrats enacted a bill that limited Munger’s appointed tenure to two years, rather than the four years it would have been otherwise.

This is a ministerial, rather than policy, office. The comptroller writes the checks to pay the state’s bills. Yet the office has been critical to Rauner.

Because of the lack of a balanced budget, the state has been racking up billions of dollars in bills each recent year, which it lacks the revenue to pay.      Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.