* AP…

Illinois’ 11 Democratic congressmen have signed a letter to Gov. Bruce Rauner demanding that he restore funding to domestic violence shelters.

Rep. Cheri Bustos initiated the letter sent Friday.

It sprung from an Associated Press report that domestic-violence program funding was omitted from a temporary budget last summer. The Department of Human Services waited nearly six months to alert providers. Sojourn Shelter and Services in Springfield is among the programs that lost funding.

* But check out this passage from the letter…

As was recently revealed in an Associated Press article, Secretary James Dimas failed to inform domestic violence programs across the state that they would, once again, be running out of state funding. To add insult to injury, Secretary Dimas waited until just two weeks before temporary funding expired to inform domestic violence programs about this failure. Asked why they would wait until the 11th hour, Secretary Dimas claimed it was just “some confusion.”

Um, that wasn’t the issue. The problem, as outlined in the AP story, was that the funding wasn’t included in the stopgap budget at all, which covered the first half of this fiscal year. Providers who thought the state was once again behind in its payments found out from DHS in December that they were in line for no money whatsoever.

If you’re gonna go to the trouble of getting a letter signed by every Democratic member of the delegation, get it right.

* Anyway, here’s the administration’s response…

Human Services spokeswoman Meredith Krantz called the letter “hyper-partisan” and unhelpful. She says the authors should urge Democrats and Republicans in Springfield to agree on a budget solution. The state has been without a budget for nearly two years.