For Ill. government, it’s time to play another episode of, “Who’s to Blame?”

I almost feel like I’m a kid again watching daytime TV and one of those tacky old game shows. Maybe “Let’s Make a Deal” with Monty Hall – the only thing is that we, the people of Illinois, are the ones getting “zonked.”

RAUNER TO LEGE: Back to Springfield?!?

Remember the “zonk,” the booby prizes that were hidden away amidst the real gifts, and if one wasn’t careful they’d give up that all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii and get stuck with something like a rotted, old Model T Ford.

THAT’S WHAT I feel like we’re about to get hit with in Illinois, what with the way the ongoing battle over a state budget has managed to find a way of continuing on – a sequel, so to speak.

When the General Assembly approved a budget that Gov. Bruce Rauner tried to veto – only to have the legislators override him – there was one piece of the puzzle that was put aside.

It was the measure that outlines the portion of state funding provided for public education. Known this year as Senate Bill 1 (nice symbolism), it has been approved by the General Assembly, but hasn’t been formally sent to Rauner for his consideration.

With the budget approved, the money for the schools for state Fiscal Year 2018 exists. But without the separate bill’s approval, it hasn’t been settled how it will be allocated.

SO UNTIL THAT happens, the schools remain unsettled. Having talked with a few school administrators in recent weeks, I know they are wary of what could happen. They know there is a possibility the state funding that local school districts rely upon for their operating expenses could get caught up in a partisan political squabble.

Now the reason why the General Assembly’s leadership (ie., Democrats, as in Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago) are holding off on sending the bill along to Rauner is that the governor has already made clear his intentions.

MADIGAN: How little could Lege do?

Veto!!!!!

The governor objects to provisions included in the bill to have the state try to make sense of the mess that is the pension program for retired Chicago Public School teachers. Dems representing Chicago interests don’t want to give Rauner a chance to issue such a veto.

INSTEAD, THEY WANT to hold off on giving him a chance to act until later this summer, when the beginning of the new school year (about mid-August for most districts) will be so imminent that the governor would feel the pressure to back off his veto threat.

Rauner, of course, is on what he’s calling his “downstate tour” of rural municipalities where he’s going about claiming the bill is nothing but a “Chicago bailout” and that all he’s trying to do is provide a little extra funding for the school districts in those rural communities.

The usual urban vs. rural, or Chicago vs. the rest of Illinois brawl that all too often is what issues devolve down to in this state.

To Rauner, it’s greedy Chicago trying to stall things, while I know from my talks with those local school officials they’re going to be more than willing to “Blame Bruce!” if something occurs that causes state aid payments to schools to be delayed so long that the public schools won’t be able to open on time.

ONE INTERESTING MOVE is that the governor is now saying he’s giving the General Assembly until Monday at Noon to send him that bill so he can veto it – or else he’s prepared to issue the order for a special session.

Is this what Ill. in for in coming days?

Meaning back to Springfield for the legislators, as though he thinks a dose of “Capital punishment” (ie., having to spend time in Springfield during the otherwise lazy days of summer) will force the rank-and-file of the General Assembly to hand him the bill.

Of course, we saw during the final weeks of the budget debacle that just because the Legislature is in session doesn’t mean they’re doing anything meaningful. It’s only when the two sides come together that things get done, and Rauner is making it clear he’s not coming together with anybody.

So if the General Assembly winds up back at the Statehouse next week, why do I suspect we’ll get a lot more action on measures such as the one approved earlier this month that renamed a portion of Interstate 55 for former President Barack Obama? At a time when we have serious issues to address, that would be our “zonk!”

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Back to Square One, which wasn’t a pleasant place for us to be to begin with

I was kind of hoping that the Supreme Court of Illinois would somehow figure out a way to uphold the measure approved by the General Assembly and then-Gov. Pat Quinn back in 2013 to resolve the problems the state faced in funding its pension programs.

As it was, it took the Legislature several years past what was supposed to be the breaking point for the political people to come up with the solution they enacted two years ago.

BUT THE SUPREME Court on Friday went along with the hints it had been giving out – it overturned the previous legislative action on the grounds that it violated provisions of the state constitution that protect the retirement benefits that state workers receive.

No retroactive changes of any kind; not even if you want to try to claim you don’t have the money to afford the retirement rates that had previously been arranged.

So now we can resurrect the $105 billion shortfall in funding needed to balance out the retirement funds for state workers and educators at both public schools and state colleges. As if Illinois didn’t have enough financial problems to deal with, this issue is back!

Let’s be honest; there’s no way our Legislature is about to concoct a solution to this problem by the end of this legislative session – which is barely more than three weeks off.

AND THE LONGER the issue lingers, the greater the size of the problem grows.

If anything, it is made worse by the fact that the little bit of guidance the political people received from the Supreme Court’s ruling was to swipe at the Legislature for not going along with Quinn’s desires to extend the state income tax hike that withered away at the end of 2014.

Of course, current Gov. Bruce Rauner always made it clear he wanted that allegedly temporary tax hike to go away and the General Assembly’s membership never had the political backbone to address the issue.

Which is why there is going to be a serious shortfall, particularly since so much of Rauner’s own political agenda is to cut at programs and services whose existence serves to benefit the agendas of people not sympathetic to his views.

I CAN’T SEE Rauner coming to his senses on this issue and accepting the reality that he’s going to have to put some attention on the idea of raising new revenue sources in order for the state to meet its financial and moral obligations.

Because the longer the pension system remains a mess, the more and more its demands will sap up the entirety of what revenues the state of Illinois has.

But there are also many legislators of both major political persuasions who also don’t want to have to address this issue; it’s really not fair to say that Rauner is all to blame for the way this mess will linger.

I do find it humorous the way some political people are suggesting now that perhaps the solution to this issue is to amend the Illinois Constitution – so as to take out the provisions that require retirement benefits to remain the same.

CHANGING THE STATE Constitution is something that takes many years to do – time the state simply no longer has. This is a problem that was created by the inaction of many governors throughout the decades (you can’t blame it on just one political party).

We need serious, painful solutions to this problem that are going to wind up hurting the political interests of many people.

And we definitely need to quit thinking of this issue as one of a problem caused by those ‘damned retirees’ and the benefits they earned with their labor throughout the years.

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Are “public” pensions the bane of all evil? Or are we being asked to back partisan rhetoric to amend constitution?

Not the current document

I find it amusing to learn that groups opposed to a proposed amendment to the Illinois Constitution are waiting until the final days before Election Day to try to stir up voter opposition.

Because it comes at a time when the campaigns, particularly those that would look favorably on a Barack Obama re-election, are all so eager to get high turnout at early voter centers.

BUILD UP SUCH a big lead that Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney is too far behind to possibly catch up with those votes actually cast at polling places!

Could a lot of people wind up finding out about what this state Constitution amendment actually means, AFTER they already have cast their ballots?

I know in my case, that is the case. I hadn’t heard much about the amendment that was the very first item on the ballot I cast when I went to an early voting center. In fact, it was the one item that I had to think about and be sure I read it correctly before I “made my mark” on the touch-screen.

And for the record, I voted “no.” The amendment would have said that any government trying to approve a measure related to employee retirement plans would have to get at least a 60 percent vote in order to pass.

RATHER THAN THE standard simple majority of officials that causes most measures to be passed into law.

This particular measure struck me as some sort of partisan measure by the ideologues to try to force their ways of thinking on the rest of us. The ones of us who want the rest of us to believe that the “problem” with regards to pension funding isn’t the irresponsible way in which our governments have funded them.

They want us to think the problem is the fact that anyone would get a pension at all.

Take the congressional campaign of Jason Plummer (Bill Brady’s youthful running mate in the 2010 election cycle; who's running down near St. Louis and in Southern Illinois), who is going after Democratic challenger Bill Enyart for pensions his wife (a retired judge) is receiving. “We’re calling the ethics of these things into question,” said Plummer, to reporter-types.

WHICH IS NONSENSE! I’d like to think a majority of people who cast ballots for the Nov. 6 election cycle (whether on that date or in the couple of weeks in advance at early voting centers) will be able to see through this.

Yet let’s be honest. The ballot question is written in legalese. And if one is so preoccupied with putting their little green check mark next to the names of Obama or Romney, they may not want to be bothered with reading (and thinking) about this issue.

Besides, when the issue of pension funding reform has come up before the General Assembly in recent years, we always hear the rhetoric about how this is a drastic problem that must be dealt with NOW in order to prevent permanent financial catastrophe from occurring.

Yet the legislators always manage to find ways of pushing the issue off into the future (just as they have always managed to ignore providing proper funding levels in the past) because it is a complex issue that many in the public don’t really get.

HOW MANY PEOPLE are going to cast their vote on this issue with less thought than they put in working their way through the lists of all those judges (most of whom on my ballot at least were running unopposed)?

How many people will see the spots put together by the We Are One coalition (which has raised about $500,000 in recent weeks to pay for broadcast spots and other ads asking for a “no” vote) and remember that they voted “yes” on the issue.

Then, they will smack their foreheads about their vote, wishing they could “take it back?”

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