* My weekly syndicated newspaper column is essentially a rewrite of a subscribers-only story from Friday morning. Over the weekend, just about every Statehouse journalist who also has a column or who published anything about Gov. Pat Quinn’s shutdown and layoff threats wrote that the governor has a troubled history of making threats and not following up.

To be clear, I’m not taking any credit for this. What I am saying is that if all of us are essentially on the same page, then it’s high time that the Chicago journalists (who are the only ones given access to the governor these days) start pressing this issue as well.

First up, my piece…

I began to reminisce during Gov. Pat Quinn’s Chicago news conference last week. Quinn had called the media together to announce he was closing seven state facilities and laying off almost 2,000 state employees because the General Assembly had passed an inadequate budget.

Wait, I thought, haven’t I already seen this movie?

Back in May 2009, Quinn warned that if the General Assembly didn’t pass his proposed income tax increase within two weeks he’d have to implement a “doomsday budget” and lay off more than 14,000 teachers, cancel preschool for 100,000 children, cut 400,000 students off of college aid, kick 650,000 people off of health care rolls, eliminate all funding for public transit, slash a billion dollars to local governments, lay off 1,000 state troopers and release 6,000 inmates from prison early.

Two months later, Quinn threatened to lay off 2,600 state workers because the Legislature’s budget was inadequate.

Two weeks after that, Quinn had pared down the total threatened cuts to a billion dollars, including $225 million for college student aid, and said there was no way the government could operate through the end of the fiscal year without a tax hike.

Almost none of that happened, even though Quinn didn’t get his tax hike until almost two years later.

But, come the following spring, Quinn was back with the same playbook. Quinn said he’d have to cut education by $1.3 billion if a tax hike wasn’t approved.

That didn’t happen, either.

This year, Quinn repeatedly threatened huge cuts to human service providers, then somehow found the money to prevent the tragedy. He also warned in late spring that the bipartisan budget being prepared in the Illinois House was full of “radical” cuts and repeatedly vowed to stop it, then signed the bill into law.

And then last week he once again blamed the General Assembly for forcing him to close those facilities and lay off those state employees — all in order to save a paltry $55 million.

Quinn’s playbook is, by now, pretty darned clear: Blame the General Assembly for causing Armageddon, announce horrifically draconian countermeasures, then eventually find a way to somehow prevent the pending disaster.

He’s like an arsonist firefighter. And, frankly, this is really starting to get old, and it’s more than a little disturbing.

Can the governor comprehend what even the threat of a facility closure does to a small downstate town? Fear spreads like wildfire. People immediately stop spending money. The local economy instantly shuts down.

Yet just about everything Quinn has done since the end of the spring session has been aimed directly at downstate.

His reduction veto of the Medicaid budget spared inner-city hospitals. His vetoes of $100 million in school transportation funding and regional superintendents operations left Cook County virtually untouched. Last week’s layoff and closure announcement included just one Chicago-area facility. Every other state facility on his list was in a downstate Senate Republican district.

“Let me know when ‘Good Pat’ rides in on his white horse, wouldya?” cracked an otherwise quite worried state Sen. Tim Bivins (R-Dixon) last week. The Mabley Developmental Center is in Bivins’ district and it’s on Quinn’s closure list. Bivins’ wisecrack referred to a recent Chicago Sun-Times column of mine about how “Bad Pat” will deliberately create a crisis so that “Good Pat” can swoop in and solve it.

Yes, there is a budget problem. I get it. I’ve written about it many times. Anyone who doesn’t get it is a fool. But if the governor had done the hard work of governing, rather than just hold a splashy Chicago news conference announcing the end of the world, all of this could have been prevented.

Quinn’s budget staff met with legislative staff a few times over the past several days to lay out the situation. Trouble is, the Quinnsters had a different explanation for how much money they needed to free up at every meeting. A memo handed out to staff late last month, for instance, had the budget hole at $180 million, which is a far cry from last week’s claim of a $313 million hole. It’s no wonder that the House Democrats have said they aren’t willing to adjust their revenue estimates to help Quinn out.

People’s lives are not fun little Chicago news conference games, governor. And you’ve been messing with those lives almost from the moment since you were elevated to your position. Grow the heck up, man.

* And here’s Doug Finke…

The problem is that since he became governor, Quinn has issued a series of dire warnings about budget cuts and closures and whatever if lawmakers didn’t do his bidding. Lawmakers didn’t, and the dire consequences didn’t materialize.

The danger now is lawmakers will call Quinn’s bluff, thinking he will once again back down. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t.

Of course, that doesn’t help those 2,000 people who don’t know if they will or won’t have jobs in a couple of months. Nor does it help residents of the mental health facilities or their families who don’t know if they are going to be uprooted because the facilities are closing.

They’re just the pawns in this exercise.

* Kurt Erickson…

Those potential roadblocks and Quinn’s penchant for backing down from his own threats left many lawmakers figuring the governor’s announcement was just a big bluff.

* Ray Long and Monique Garcia…

In the last two-plus years, the Democratic governor repeatedly has issued drastic threats, including cuts in social services, only to back away. […]

Just weeks after taking office in early 2009, Quinn said then-U.S. Sen. Roland Burris should give up his appointed seat within two weeks or risk facing a special election to remove him. But Quinn abandoned that effort within days, saying it was time to “move on.”

When Quinn faced his first budget showdown in summer 2009, agencies under his control sent letters to thousands of social service agencies warning their subsidies would be cut or eliminated because of budget choices by state lawmakers. It didn’t get that bad as the state borrowed to stay afloat.

Later that summer, Quinn said he would fire two University of Illinois trustees who refused his demands to resign amid an admissions scandal. He later relented on the grounds that he did not want to risk a legal fight.

* Chris Wetterich…

Sen. John Sullivan, D-Rushville, said a long process remains before any of the cuts or closures happen, including a review and non-binding recommendation by the legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.

“He can lay it out … but it’s going to be a process to make that happen,” Sullivan said. “It seems to me like this is an overreaction, a knee-jerk reaction rather than sitting down and thinking this thing through.”

Asked if Quinn’s plan will actually be the reality come March 31, 2012, when the administration says the last of the facility closures would take place, Sullivan said, “I think that would be hard to do.”

Quinn budget spokesman Kelly Kraft said Friday the governor is serious – but that he also remains open to discussing options with lawmakers.

…Adding… Scott Reeder…

Just consider:

– When he ran for office, he said he wouldn’t support an income tax hike greater than 33 percent. A few weeks after taking office, he signed a tax hike for double that.

– He ran supporting the death penalty but quickly abandoned that position, after getting elected. With one sweep of his pen, capital punishment was abolished in Illinois.

His campaign stances on these issues almost certainly resulted in his razor-thin electoral victory over Republican Bill Brady. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when politicians shed their campaign positions. But how can a voter cast an informed vote if a candidate refuses to keep his word?