McHenry Times

One of the silent victims in the ongoing budget impasse in Illinois is the state's education system, Rep. Allen Skillicorn (R-East Dundee) said recently. 

“Illinois has been without a complete budget for nearly two years now, and gone even longer without a balanced budget that actually matches spending to projected revenues,” Skillicorn said. “Every day this continues, our schools face growing uncertainty as their backlog of unpaid state vouchers grow. This is unacceptable and ultimately leads to more pressure being placed on local taxpayers.”

While K-12 schools have fared better than some public institutions under the series of stopgap budget Illinois’ lawmakers have put in place in lieu of full-year budgets, they have not been left out of the state’s growing number of unpaid bills, Skillicorn said. Illinois has been able to provide schools only with categorical payments, which fund services like transportation and special education.

“K-12 education, higher education and social services need urgent, real solutions, not another stopgap that keeps growing Illinois’ backlog of unpaid bills,” Skillicorn said. “Continuing to spend more money than the state takes in will just grow the problem more in the long run. I urge the speaker to work with both Republicans and Democrats to pass a comprehensive balanced budget immediately.”