Illinois is ringing in the fiscal new year with 6-point-1 billion dollars in unpaid bills. As IPR'S Brian Mackey reports, it's only expected to get worse.
Illinois' budget year ended Sunday, but Comptroller Judy BaarTopinka says she still has thousands of bills to pay, in fact, 73,184 bills to pay, and that doesn't even include figures from other state agencies.
Topinka, a Republican, says today's $6.1 billion debt is expected to grow quickly, reaching $7.5 billion next month, and climbing to nearly $9 billion in November.
"And we asked the legislature: please keep everything flat, don't add anything to the budget, we have to play catch-up. And doggone if they didn't go ahead and do it."
At the end of the spring legislative session, the General Assembly added spending to last year's budget -- which expired Sunday, and increased spending in the new state budget.
Majority Democrats directed much of that extra money to education, staving off what many expected would have to be another year of cuts.