15 Comments - Anonymous - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 2:53 pm: No consolidation of governments… No gambling expansion… Not even the bipartisan stuff got in there… - Norseman - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 2:54 pm: Succinct. The budget feels good like eating a cheese sandwich after a month of only eating bugs. You take what you can get. - VanillaMan - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 2:58 pm: I keep thinking how much better off we’d be now if the temporary tax increase was made permanent in 2015. Our bills paid. Our credit rating not in the sewer. Pension payments made. That would have still been a maintenance budget, but we wouldn’t have destroyed our state just to break even. It’s going to cost us a decade of maintenance budgets to address the billions Rauner wasted trying to destroy his political enemies. - Iron - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 3:01 pm: VanillaMan; Amen - Ducky LaMoore - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 3:06 pm: Well said. Still a lot of work to do. ===Not even the bipartisan stuff got in there…=== I’m not going to stop saying this, “The four year property tax freeze got zero Republican votes.” - wordslinger - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 3:09 pm: After piling on $10B in unpaid daily operation bills and vivisecting higher ed, what else could it be? - Dome Gnome - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 3:10 pm: Elaine will be missed; so much unnecessary collateral damage. - Juice - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 3:30 pm: “No consolidation of governments” Umm…SB 3 has been sent to the Governor, and I’m pretty sure it was the language he wanted. (If someone has information to the contrary, please share.) - Anonymous - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 3:40 pm: ===Umm…SB 3 has been sent to the Governor, and I’m pretty sure it was the language he wanted. (If someone has information to the contrary, please share.)== AFAIK, SB3 primarily is directed towards townships and road districts. There needs to be consolidation of park districts, libraries, fire districts, etc. Lot of other states have counties manage all of the above instead of individual taxing bodies. Some even have counties manage schools. I would be OK with the county managing all of the above except for the schools. - Jeff Trigg - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 3:41 pm: “new innovations” - Is that the new term being used for legislative earmarks which became member initiatives once regular people figured out they were mostly just wasteful pork projects adding to the state debt? - Juice - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 3:46 pm: Anonymous, I don’t disagree with any of what you said. I just don’t know if that is what the Governor was pushing for. He has talked a pretty big game on reducing the number of units of local government, but all the proposals that I have seen have been pretty timid. - Linus - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 3:57 pm: ==AFAIK, SB3 primarily is directed towards townships and road districts.== So, your earlier statement (== No consolidation of governments==) was not true or accurate. Correct? Totally understandable you might want to go further than townships and roads. But to make a blanket statement pretending that those existing provisions do not in fact exist is disingenuous, at best. As OW would say: With respect. - Ducky LaMoore - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 4:16 pm: ==AFAIK, SB3 primarily is directed towards townships and road districts.== That kind of stinks. In my county, the township roads are far superior to that of the county…. Maybe we should just dissolve the county government and have townships. LOL - walker - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 4:18 pm: VMan nailed it. - Anonymous - Friday, Jul 21, 17 @ 4:19 pm: ===So, your earlier statement (== No consolidation of governments==) was not true or accurate. Correct? Totally understandable you might want to go further than townships and roads. But to make a blanket statement pretending that those existing provisions do not in fact exist is disingenuous, at best. As OW would say: With respect.=== I’ll give you that, “some” consolidation. But still pretty weak IMO. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.