Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner is spending Wednesday and Thursday taking his budget message on the road. The legislature finished its spring session Tuesday evening without sending him a spending plan. He's crisscrossing downstate with stops in Alton, Mahomet, Pekin, Quincy, and Vienna.
Rauner is using the tour to build public support for a temporary budget that would spare him from presiding over potential debacles, like schools not opening in the fall, or a prison uprising.
Here’s how: by aiming to drive a wedge between downstate, and Chicago.
During a stop at the Vienna prison, Rauner said Democrats in the House and Senate were competing to see who could send more money to "bail out Chicago."
"With your tax dollars from southern Illinois and central Illinois …The taxes should go into our communities, not into the Chicago political machine," said Rauner
The General Assembly's top Democrats from the city. They do want the state to put millions more into Chicago Public Schools. But, they say it's only fair. The state picks up the pension tab for every other district, but not CPS.
