* From Comptroller Mendoza’s statement last night…

We still have a long road ahead to a comprehensive budget plan to pay down our $15 billion backlog of unpaid bills that has tripled in the two years since Governor Rauner took office.

It’s actually worse than that. Except for K-12, last year’s stopgap budget only contained appropriations for half the year. Universities, social service groups, business vendors, etc., etc., etc. never got an appropriation for the second half of Fiscal Year 2017, which ended Friday.

The second half of FY 16 ended the same way and the state’s leaders just sent that down the memory hole.

So, they not only need to deal with most of that backlog (they don’t have to deal with all of it at once, just as long as they can get it down to a 30-day payment cycle), they also have to figure out what to do about the billions they never got around to appropriating in the first place.

* Aside from passing a temporary tax and then not preparing for its partial rollback, the other giant failure of the Democrats in 2011 was not dealing with the overdue bills. That debt was like a massive ball and chain being dragged around by the government’s neck, and it didn’t get resolved for four years, helping to convince folks that the tax hike “didn’t work” and that Pat Quinn was a failed governor. Borrowing to pay off that debt would’ve done wonders for Quinn, and so I’m curious whether the Democrats will “help” Rauner out this time.

I really don’t want to go through this again.

*** UPDATE ***  Reuters…

The Illinois House of Representatives on Monday passed a bill for the final piece of the state’s fiscal 2018 budget that includes authorization for $6 billion of bonds to pay down a $15 billion bill pile.

The budget implementation bill was sent to the Senate on a 72-36 vote. The House on Sunday passed appropriation and revenue bills that require concurrence votes in the Senate.

In passing the budget implementation bill, a dozen House Republicans joined majority Democrats to reach a 73-vote threshold that could withstand a possible veto by the governor if the measure passes the Senate. Republican Governor Bruce Rauner has already said he will veto the revenue bill that includes a big income tax rate hike. […]

State Representative Greg Harris, the House Democrats’ budget point person, said enough money has been identified only to cover debt service on $3 billion of bonds and that the rest of the debt could be issued once additional revenue is available.

Sigh.

$3 billion is almost a point on the income tax.

There’s also some dispute over the language in the BIMP about when the bonds are supposed to be paid back.