* The Daily Southtown urges a mushroom revolt…

Don’t sit back and let these three men’s childish antics hamstring this great state any further. Let them and your representatives and senators know how you feel. And those representatives and senators need to let the leaders know how they feel, too. We know there is discontent within the rank-and-file, but until the members rise up in unison and tell the leaders to get their acts together, those leaders will continue to treat those members like peons. The leaders need to be sent a message that if problems within the state are not addressed, their days of being leaders are numbered. But based on what’s happened in the past, we know the fearful rank-and-file members will barely utter a peep.

What an embarrassment the state government has become.

Illinois needs a fair, fiscally responsible budget passed now. Problems need to be dealt with through reasoned discussions and compromise — not locker-room antics or crybaby talk or another layer of makeup.

* And Phil Kadner is dubious of Senate President Emil Jones’ renewed emphasis on school funding reform and the whole issue in general…

Down in Springfield, some of the most useless elected officials in the country are holding hearings into education funding. […]

After 15 years of doing basically nothing to help education, after three blue-ribbon panels shouted, “You folks are destroying the public school system in this state,” the Illinois Senate (meeting in special session) is going to spend the entire week listening to education advocates explain it all again. […]

t’s truly amazing how much political juice the folks in Springfield have squeezed out of the education turnip.

Jones knows one thing for certain. If he passes a bill out of the Senate now, it will be dead on arrival in the House, where Madigan and Republicans can kill it. And even if it passes out of the House, the governor has vowed to veto the bill.

Calling these people “useless” may be too kind. They’ve done real harm to the children and taxpayers of this state.

* The Pantagraph notes that we’re heading for a new overtime record…

On July 24, which is less than a week away, the General Assembly and Gov. Rod Blagojevich will surpass their 2004 record for the amount of time the state has gone into a new fiscal year without an overall spending plan.

With little progress to report Tuesday, observers said the record is almost sure to be broken.

* …And checks the latest floor census…

Attendance by lawmakers picked up Tuesday after several days where dozens failed to show up to work. In the Senate, 36 of 59 members were on the floor when the session got under way. The roll call in the 118-member House roll topped 100 for the first time in a week.

* The Pennsylvania overtime session received a lot of national media, mainly because the state shut down government services. That hasn’t happened here yet, but as Mike Skarr notes…

Maybe since our budget crisis has lasted about nine times as long as the Pennsylvania budget woes, we, the taxpayers will get a result that is nine times as good, but probably not.

* Bethany Carson gives us a quick rundown…

The governor has been in town since Monday, but no official leaders’ meetings have convened. The legislature has broken up into small group meetings so far to discuss gaming, a capital plan, education, revenue, agency spending and the Illinois Department of Corrections. They’re closed to the public.

The governor also sent a letter to House Speaker Michael Madigan, House Minority Leader Tom Cross and Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson criticizing them for halting progress on a proposal to expand gaming, which would pay for the debt service on a capital plan and for education. “Negotiations broke down over your refusal to dedicate some portion of new gaming revenue to education,” the governor wrote. He also said, “A budget that invests in infrastructure without providing resources for education and health care is not an option. We must find a way to meet all of our obligations.”

* To which Madigan’s spokesman replied…

“We had $400 million in new education spending in the budget the House passed on May 30. We’ll remind him of that.”

* And state Sen. Terry Link says that gaming ain’t dead yet…

“This is not ‘The Sopranos’, this is more like a soap opera, and nothing is dead down here,” state Sen. Terry Link, D-Waukegan, asserted Tuesday. “It might have looked like it is dead, but it is very much alive.

Link conceded that consensus on the extent of expanded gaming and what the revenue will be used for is “elusive,” but he said there are plenty of incentives for legislators to keep hammering away at a compromise.

“I think you will see some negotiation and compromise before this winds down,” Link said, adding that letting the gaming issue die would amount to “the loss of a lot of revenue” without a tax increase “on any individual.”

* And Sen. Bill Peterson offers this observation…

[Peterson] said there appears to be progress in working out a compromise on electric rates, and added that school aid formula payments are due in August. If the aid formula payments are not made, a lot of districts would be negatively impacted and would have to borrow money, which would not reflect well on the Legislature. “There’s an Aug. 10 drop-dead date to get something done,” he said.