While other agencies are bracing for budget cuts, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum could get everything it's asking for in next year's budget.
The Lincoln Museum could receive a boost of $2 million more than it's expected to spend in the current budget year, according to Governor Bruce Rauner's spending proposal.
The director of the library and museum, Eileen Mackevich, says that money will help the agency increase paid visitors by 10%. It's also meant to help the museum establish itself as a new state agency, divorced from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.
"We can, as a stand-alone agency, be not only more efficient, more lithe, more quick to move, but able to build the kinds of collaborations that will create this great research library."
The chair of the Historic Preservation Agency thinks the museum will do better without a separation, and without merging IHPA's functions into the state's economic development agency, as Rauner is proposing.