The Daily Parker

The Census Bureau released new estimates today that show Illinois has slipped below Pennsylvania, and is now the 6th most populous state. Says Crains' Greg Hinz:

The bureau had no breakdown on what's responsible for the decrease. But recent political infighting likely didn't help, and the state's job growth has been half or less of the nation's in recent years. Also, the state is believed to be attracting far fewer immigrants than in the 1990s and 2000s, something that boosted the state's population then.

Illinois had surpassed Pennsylvania a couple of decades ago, but never was more than 200,000 or so ahead.

Some initial reaction from Democratic gubernatorial hopeful J.B. Pritzker, in a statement: "Just as Bruce Rauner finally admits that he purposefully created a crisis to ram through his special interest agenda, the U.S. Census Bureau confirmed that his damage is done. Rauner's damage drove Illinoisans out of this state, losing talent and wasting opportunities when we needed them most. This failed governor's only accomplishment is decimating our economy and forcing thousands to look for stability elsewhere."

Well, yes, Bruce Rauner may have contributed. But we're stuck with him for another year, so he may not be done hurting us.

Maybe, if enough Republicans show up to the Illinois House for this afternoon's veto override vote:

[S]tate government is two years into a record budget impasse that has universities on the brink of losing their accreditation, many social service nonprofits too broke to serve the needy and roadwork at a standstill. Without a budget deal by mid-August, many elementary and high schools will have to scrape the barrel of their reserves in order to be able to open their doors for the new school year.

The budget plan that [Republican Illinois Governor Bruce] Rauner vetoed would have the state spend more than $36 billion on primary and secondary education, colleges and universities, social services, medical care for the poor and other government functions, with nearly $5 billion in new taxes to help pay for it. The personal income tax rate would rise from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent. The corporate tax rate would go from 5.25 percent to 7 percent. The plan also would have the state pay down about half of the nearly $15 billion pile of unpaid bills through a combination of borrowing and using cash from other state accounts.

Now the ball is in the House's court. In recent days, low attendance at the statehouse has made it impossible for lawmakers to complete any business at all, much less a veto override. On Wednesday, just 59 of the chamber's 118 lawmakers showed up to work.

Meanwhile, Moody's Investors Service has stated that they might not raise Illinois' credit rating even if the House overrides Rauner's veto, owing to $15bn in bills the State will have to pay just to get current.

Awesome. Ideologue Rauner has pushed Illinois nearly to bankruptcy with his intransigence and rich-white-guy policy agenda. How long until we can vote him out?

The top story from this past weekend is that Governor Bruce Rauner vetoed the state budget the legislature proposed, and within an hour the Illinois Senate had voted to override. We haven't had a state budget in more than two years. The governor is an ideological Republican in a majority-Democratic state. Crain's Greg Hinz explains:

Statements from two of the main antagonists, Rauner and Senate President John Cullerton, underlined just how wide the political and philosophical gap remains.

"The package of legislation fails to address Illinois' fiscal and economic crisis—and in fact, makes it worse in the long run," Rauner said in vetoing the main appropriations bill, a second measure dealing with revenue, and a budget-implementation bill. "It does not balance the budget. It does not make nearly sufficient spending reductions, does not pay down our debt, and holds schools hostage to force a Chicago bailout."

"This is a step in the right direction," countered Cullerton. "There is obviously more work to do. There always is. . . .(But) with today's votes, the Senate approved a balanced budget that funds our schools, supports our universities, honors our commitments to social service agencies, keeps road crews employed and even ensures Lottery winners get paid."

As those statements suggest, a big winner in the apparent budget outcome is Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Assuming a House override, he won final approval of a plan to refinance Chicago pension funds covering laborers and white collar workers; the OK to raise the city's 911 tax another $1.10 to $5 per phone line per month to pay those costs; and roughly $300 million more next year for cash-strapped Chicago Public Schools. Chicago and other municipalities also will be protected from losing any money in income tax receipts, even though the state will cut back on the share that goes to them, the Chicago Transit Authority and Metra their normal tax subsidy

A big loser, at least so far, is much of the state's business community, which didn't get the cost-cutting steps it wanted, especially a reduction in workers compensation payments. But other business groups, notably the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, argued it was far more important to restore financial stability to reeling state government.

Well, duh. Almost everyone in the state who isn't a Republican ideologue wants this budget to pass. It's a good compromise and actually gives the Republicans a lot of what they want. But that's the thing: Republicans in general, and Bruce Rauner in specific, refuse to compromise. 

Meanwhile, in Chicago, 100 people were shot over the weekend, which had less to do with the budget but something to do with Republican religion about guns. Maybe someday we'll decide that the plain meaning of the Second Amendment really does allow states and cities to crack down on handguns and military-style rifles. Maybe.

I really need some sleep. And some time to read all of these:

• Mark Bowden, writing in the latest issue of The Atlantic, explains why North Korea is the "worst problem on Earth".
• Jeet Heer writes in defense of Nancy Pelosi.
• Josh Marshall says the President's actions around the Russia probe are prima facie evidence of criminal acts.
• The Crain's editorial board tells the Wall Street Journal to bugger off and quit making the stalemate in Springfield worse.
• CityLab's Feargus O'Sullivan bemoans London's summer of discontent.
• On this day in 1918, a freight train plowed into a circus train in Hammond, Ind., and killed 63 people.

And now, back to my job.

Crain's asks, Who wants to move to Chicago?

A major Chicago company, we hear, is having a harder time persuading recruits to move here. Full employment, especially among the well-compensated professionals it's hiring, might seem to blame. But the company isn't struggling to attract talent in markets where jobless rates are even lower than metro Chicago's most recent rate of 4.3 percent. What's the problem then? It's the candidates' fear that Chicago and Illinois generally have become risky places in which to buy a home and raise a family.

When the General Assembly reconvenes June 21, it could put some of those worries to rest and pass an actual state budget for the first time in two years. That would require compromise from Gov. Bruce Rauner as well as his Democratic adversaries, House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton. For far too long, they've put their own re-elections ahead of the commonweal. Meanwhile, the state stumbles along, spending far more than it's taking in. Meanwhile, too, the unthinkable becomes less improbable: Without state support, junk-rated governments in Illinois, including the city of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools and a half-dozen state universities, could essentially go under.

Unfortunately, the Crain's editorial board offers no solutions. Nor can they. Because they're in the same uncomfortable position Kansas Republicans are in: their guy is the one holding the state hostage. 

Yes, the legislature and the governor need to compromise. But only one of them is an ideological dead-ender.

Now in our first full week of the third straight year that Illinois has no budget, it's interesting watching people try to figure out who's to blame. In Crain's alone, we have three opinions.

Their editorial board blames Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan, because they blame him for everything. Also, their readership tend to be Republicans. Because it's Crain's.

Still, they haven't tried very hard to muzzle their opinion writers. Business columnist Joe Cahill, noticing that before we had Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and his naive belief that politics and business are the same thing (like most Republicans) we had a budget, blames the governor.

And Springfield columnist Rich Miller avoids blaming either one 100%, but does note that Rauner's ideological inflexibility and his inexperience as a politician led him to reject a workable compromise offered by Madigan.

But we still don't have a budget. And the gubernatorial election isn't for another 16 months.

Sigh.

Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg put the Rauner administration in context in a column a couple of weeks ago:

Not only did Rauner fail to make tangible progress, but he didn’t even tread water properly. The normal operation of the state, such as passing an annual budget, failed to occur, sacrificed on the altar of the governor’s hunger for term limits, union enfeeblement and other unrelated pet causes. He’s like an office manager getting himself hired by promising to expand a business who then promptly fails to pay the electric bill, as a point of principle against the electric company monopoly, so they turn the lights off. Now we’re sitting in the dark, listening to him explain.

But give credit where due: Rauner has accomplished something real, something that I would have thought impossible:

He makes Rod Blagojevich look good.

In 2014, Rauner won every county in Illinois except Cook, beating Pat Quinn by about 150,000 votes out of 3.6 million cast. That's not a huge mandate. But it has turned into a huge disaster. ("A yuge disaster?" Hm.)

Republican Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner believes in smaller government and lower taxes, so much so that he's blocked the state budget process since the last budget ended in June 2015. Since the state has no budget, we haven't paid our bills, so our IOUs just keep getting bigger:

Moody's Investors Service says the state's backlog of unpaid bills and other obligations now is rising roughly $450 million a month, hitting $6.6 billion as of Dec. 31.

Projections from Rauner's budget are that the total will hit $9 billion by the end of the fiscal year on June 30 and keep rising from there, assuming no budget deal is reached, Moody's says—almost what it was after [former Democratic governor Pat] Quinn took over and pushed through a 66 percent income tax hike that gradually reduced the list of IOUs.

State taxes dropped again on January 1st as earlier, "temporary" tax hikes declined; as a result, Illinois will have $3.6 billion less to spend even if we can pass a budget before June 30th.

So, as a Grover Norquist-inspired plutocrat, Rauner wins if the Democratic legislature passes his budget proposal, and he wins if the state's government remains hobbled. Meanwhile, we residents and taxpayers of Illinois would really like essential government services to resume.

Rauner gives the State of the State address in just a few minutes. It should be interesting.

Too many interesting things to read today. I've got some time between work and Bel Canto to get through them:

• An astronomer thinks he knows the origin of the Wow! signal.
• A Chicagoist writer has crunched the numbers on Restaurant Week.
• Crain's looks at the new Illinois Cloud Tax and its effects on tech startups.
• Krugman shows, one more time, how much better things are now than at the beginning of Obama's presidency.
• Hanselman describes WallabyJS, a new JavaScript test runner.
• Jetbrains has developed a new cross-platform C# IDE.
• Paleontologists have discovered fossils from the K-T extinction event itself.
• Parking causes traffic. Seriously.

I have not read Bel Canto, though I understand it's loosely based on an actual historical event. I also haven't ever heard anything from composer Jimmy López before, since it only permiered last month. Friends who work for the Lyric tell me it's pretty good. I'll find out in a few hours.

Apparently we have two. The old one:

And the new one:

And as a bonus, here's a squirrel: