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Rauner now supporting stopgap spending plan as State budget deadline looms.

By John Dempsey, WLS-AM 890 News

(SPRINGFIELD) Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner has reversed himself, and now supports a temporary Illinois budget that would keep the state running through the summer.

The Chicago Tribune reports that Rauner’s Budget Chief Tim Nuding  has written a memo calling on the state legislature to pass stopgap budget, an idea Nuding and Rauner rejected just last week.

The temporary budget would get the state through the summer and provide education funding to allow schools all over Illinois to open on time in the fall.

The state has been operating without a budget for the past year because of Rauner’s disagreement with Democrats over his so called business reforms.  Rauner says the reforms would help the Illinois economy, while Democrats say they would weaken unions and hurt the middle class.

On Monday the legislature handed Rauner a major defeat by overriding his veto of a bill that would have given the City of Chicago more time to fully fund it’s pensions for firefighters and police officers.

Three House Republicans voted with Democrats to override the Republican Governor, including State Rep. David McSweeney of Barrington Hills, who told “The Big John Howell Show” on WLS that he cast his vote to prevent a massive property tax increase in Chicago.

“The last thing we need to do in this state is raise taxes again.   The Mayor has already raised property taxes by $540 million dollars and yesterday, by voting to override the veto, I voted against another $225 million dollar property tax increase in Chicago.”

However Rauner has said while the bill may save Chicago taxpayers money in the short term, it will results in billions more to be paid in property taxes over the next 40 years.

 

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