They Said It

From the Northwest Herald:

It may not be until after the March primary election that state lawmakers approve a 2016 budget, McHenry County lawmakers warned. 

They find the idea even more abhorrent than the fact the state has gone almost seven months without a budget, and they pledged to help push for getting a deal done as soon as possible once lawmakers reconvene Jan. 13 for the spring legislative session.

To Democratic Rep. Jack Franks and Republican Rep. Mike Tryon, it’s election-year politics over people, and who can blame whom. The state fiscal year started July 1.
“The governor will be giving his budget address for the next fiscal year, and we don’t even have a budget for this fiscal year. That’s how messed up this is. We are the ultimate freak show,” said Franks, D-Marengo.

From the Chicago Tribune:

When the fall semester began in the early months of the stalemate, many colleges and universities decided to credit students' tuition bills as if the subsidies had already been paid, with the expectation that they'd be reimbursed once the state had a budget. At the time, some schools said they couldn't guarantee they'd have enough reserves to cover spring tuition as well.

"If the university ultimately does not receive MAP funding from the state, we may be required to remove these funds from your university account and you might have to repay the university," Urbana-Champaign interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson wrote last month in an email to grant recipients.

Wilson said the university thinks that is "highly unlikely," but the message left students frustrated.

"If we had known this even back in May or before financial aid letters came out, I could have increased the loan amount I took out from the federal government," said Mitch Dickey, a U. of I. senior and MAP grant recipient. "I think a lot of people probably haven't realized that by the state continuing to drag this out, it's making financial planning very difficult for students."

From a letter to the editor in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Illinois is known as a great exporter of corn and soybeans, but apparently Illinois is now also in the business of exporting lawsuit abuse,

The American Tort Reform Foundation has recently named Missouri the nation’s fourth-worst “Judicial Hellhole” and Madison County, Ill., the nation’s fifth-worst “Judicial Hellhole.” It seems Illinois is indeed exporting lawsuit abuse across the river.