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* Speaker Madigan literally counted the minutes that the four leaders and the governor spent talking about the budget today: 14.

“Today we talked about the budget for 14 minutes,” Madigan said, and then actually provided the tick-tock. “From 10:16 to 10:20 and from 11:15 to 11:25 we talked about the budget.” The meeting ended at about 11:38 or so.

So, apparently, he was checking his watch a lot.

“The remainder of the meeting was concerned with local government consolidation and mandates on local governments,” Madigan said.

What did those budget talks consist of? “Obviously, not too much,” Madigan cracked.

The good news as far as Madigan is concerned: “There’s an agreement we’re going to talk about the budget on Tuesday,” the Speaker told reporters. The meeting will be held at 2 o’clock. The Republicans leaders, however, didn’t confirm that particular topic.

On workers’ comp and other reforms, Madigan said, “I’m available for those discussions,” but then went back to his repeated rhetoric on how the leaders have worked out a budget “7 times” in the last two years and they should stick to that format.

* Raw audio, including Rep. Greg Harris’ comments about the budget process and how they need to wait and see how things like Donald Trump’s proposals play out before they could formulate a new budget plan…

Click to listen

* House GOP Leader Jim Durkin emerged from the meeting to say he remains “alarmed” by the lack of urgency to get a budget. “We have a divided government,” he said, and Republicans are willing to work with Democrats on their priorities, but want the Democrats to work with them on GOP priorities.

“We did a pretty deep dive today” into local government consolidation, said Senate GOP Leader Christine Radogno. But, she said, there was a “lack of engagement” on the topic from the Democrats.

Leader Radogno said the leaders were meeting based totally on Speaker Madigan’s availability.

Radogno said the Republicans asked Madigan what his budget plans were. He didn’t have a plan, she said, partly because the Democrats said they needed to wait and see the impacts of Donald Trump’s agenda. “If we are waiting on that, we are certainly not going to see it by December 31st,” Radogno said, referencing the end of the current stopgap budget.

Leader Durkin said it was clear to him that this was all about the 2018 governor’s race. The idea, he said, was to stall in order to not give Gov. Rauner any victories at all and then defeat him in two years.

“There was a new level of stalling today,” Radogno claimed, particularly since the Democrats weren’t prepared to discuss their actual budget plans.

* Raw audio…

Click to listen