Having failed to drive the state into bankruptcy in one fell swoop, Illinois governor Bruce Rauner came up with a new strategy: bleed it to death with a thousand nicks.
On May 31, the Democrats passed a school funding bill called SB1, which would distribute the state aid schools need to open this year. Rauner opposed the bill on the grounds that it’s a Chicago bailout, even though it’s not. In fact, it would send hundreds of millions of dollars to school districts from Cairo to Zion. Chicago would use much of the money it gets from the bill to help pay its teacher pensions. The governor wants downstaters to think that paying pensions to teachers in Chicago is more diabolical than paying teachers’ pensions elsewhere.
When his statewide tour didn’t cause Madigan or Cullerton to blink, Rauner tried a new public relations stunt: taking a page from President Donald Trump, he issued an executive order, declaring that “I, Governor Bruce Rauner, hereby call and convene the 100th General Assembly in a Special Session to commence at 12:00 Noon on July 26, 2017.”
Day two went much the same as day one—prayer, pledge, etc. But no Republicans spoke. (Perhaps they were exhausted from having stayed up late, binging on Netflix.) “The whole thing was over in about eight minutes,” Martwick says.
