Apparently not, as the Illinois no-budget crisis enters its 10th month, its burdens weigh most heavily on the disenfranchised.
Despite a record primary turnout of nearly 45 percent on March 15, voters produced a landslide for the Springfield status quo. Granted, Gov. Bruce Rauner wasn’t on the ballot, and legislative races offered only a handful of contests. Blame our Soviet-style system of gerrymandered districts and party oligarchs. The stalemate continues.
To recap:
Illinois has the worst credit rating and outlook of any state and the biggest drop in population in the year ended last June. As a consequence, when it sold $480 million in general obligation bonds in January, the interest rate was more than 50 percent above the benchmark for federally tax-exempt issues.
Unfunded pension liabilities have nearly tripled, to $110 billion, since 2007.
Unpaid bills are hovering around $7 billion, or about 20 percent of general revenue expenditures; they’re projected by the Civic Federation to grow to $10 billion by mid-year and to $15 billion by mid-2017.
Without a budget, the state is spending an annualized $5.1 billion more than it is taking in, compounding the financial squeeze outlined above.
 Meanwhile, social service agencies, higher education, and municipalities like Oak Park are exposed; Chicago and its school system teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. We’re living a version of the Greek debt crisis or the fiasco over Flint, Michigan’s water supply, where government incompetence and indifference creates irreversible harm.
According to recently released census figures for the year ended last June, not only did Illinois’ population shrink more than other states’, its net loss of 67,535 movers accounted for more than three-quarters of total migration losses in the 11-state Midwest region. The gap between the number of people moving out of Cook County and those moving in from other parts of the country was more than 55,000 — 75 percent higher than two years ago.
 Gov. Rauner seems content, whatever the mounting evidence of decay, to wait out Democratic opponents of his attempt to link budget passage to approval of a union-weakening “turnaround agenda,” which he says will make Illinois economically healthier in the long run. The Democrats, led by House Speaker Michael Madigan, are similarly intransigent, unwilling to raise taxes to fit their concept of spending needs without Republican support and cover.
The pols have shown they can agree to fund elementary and secondary education — and even lottery payments — when not to do so would invoke certain voter wrath. But these continuing expenditures, absent a genuinely balanced budget, have only delayed (and exacerbated) a reckoning.
The bipartisan recipe for disaster must end. The Business and Civic Council of Oak Park urges an ultimatum to our elected officials via calls, letters, emails or personal visits: If you don’t fix this mess now, forget about support for re-election. We have only ourselves to blame.
Enough already.
Frank Pellegrini, president
Marty Noll, treasurer
Willis Johnson, Cathy Yen, Mike Fox, Tom Gallagher, Greg Melnyk, Michael Williams, directorsÂ
Business and Civic Council of Oak Park
