Democratic legislative leaders and Republican Governor Bruce Rauner have not reached a budget deal. If they can’t approve a plan before the state’s fiscal year begins next month, they could agree to prevent a government shutdown.
If a budget isn’t in place by the end of this month, government will not grind to a halt. But if no deal is reached by mid-July, state workers could stop getting paychecks.
There is another option. Rauner and lawmakers could approve short-term funding, say for a month or two, while they continue to work toward a deal. U of I retired political science professor Kent Redfield explains:
“The money is sitting there and so you can authorize payments to be made. We normally do it for 12 months because that’s the way the fiscal year is set up, but there certainly is an option to do stopgap kinds of measures.”
For now, negotiations and the legislative session continue.
