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Last year, Illinois went nearly two months without a budget as the Democrat-controlled General Assembly and the Democrat governor argued about money.  This year, in a move that even his lieutenant governor called petty and vindictive, Gov. Rod Blagojevich decided that slashing human services, education and pretty much everything else willy-nilly was the best answer.

He even threatened to cut funding for Amtrak, the major means for students to travel to various in state colleges, including the local Southern Illinois University. He hasn’t done that yet, but don’t be surprised if he tries it later.

The big confrontation in Springfield comes from three overgrown Chicago idiots who can’t seem to reach a consensus about the state’s needs. They all agree that the state is in dire financial straits, but the governor and the senate preisdent absolutely refuse to work with the speaker of the house.

There was a three-way war last year, but this year the governor has bought off the Senate President, giving his wife a high paying state job and a substantial raise, so that leaves Speaker Mike Madigan looking like the bad guy. Madigan’s daughter, Lisa, is the state’s attorney general, so to say that the in-breeding of Illinois politics is causing a problem is a huge understatement.

Speaker Madigan is the most politically savvy of the three top officials, but still managed to get himself in some lukewarm water with the press by circulating a secret plan to have the governor recalled or impeached. The nature of the memo and the secretiveness of it might have cause more problems if half the state didn’t already agree with Madigan.

Blagojevich was elected to a second term at a time when national sentiment opposed Republicans and Illinois had just sent his Republican predecessor to federal prison. Sadly for the very qualified Judy Baar Topinka, she had been state treasurer under the corrupt governor and in the name of party unity had appeared with him several times before his indictment. That was used effectively against her.

Furthermore, Topinka inherited a scattered and weak Republican Party. In the previous U.S. Senate campaign, the party had to resort to moving Alan Keyes into the state to run for Senate after its first candidate resigned because fo a high-profile sex scandal involving his ex-wife and television star Jeri Ryan.

The disarray carried over into Topinka’s gubernatorial campaign and many who opposed Blagojevich weren’t ready to trust the Republicans either. Green Party candidate Rich Whitney garnered an unprecedented number of votes and Gov. Rod was re-elected with a pluarlity of the vote.

Since then, the state has been through utter hell. School districts are not receiving funding that they have been promised and that they are entitled to under the state constitution. State prisons are underfunded and under-staffed. For awhile this spring, the state highway department stopped mowing grass and picking up dead animals along state roads in order to save money.

The Illinois budget is unbalanced and depending on who you listen to, the state is as much as $5 billion in debt.

I can only hope that in November the voters will remember this mess — except that the primary architect of the disaster is not up for re-election yet.  We are sentenced to at least two more years of this.

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