Rauner Gets An 'Epic F' Grade From Tribune Columnist

By Mae Rice in News on Apr 13, 2016 6:30PM

Illinois governor Bruce Rauner last February in Chicago. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

"Bruce Rauner is a failed governor," begins Eric Zorn's op-ed on Rauner's first 15 months in office. Published Tuesday in the Tribune, the piece is especially noteworthy because back in October of 2014, the Tribune's editorial board endorsed Rauner—writing approvingly that Rauner "wants government to be of a size taxpayers can afford."

Haha. He sure does! He wants it too much, and that's why Illinois still doesn't have a budget for the fiscal year that started last July. As Zorn points out, we may never pass a budget for this fiscal year, because Rauner refuses to compromise on his agenda. And that's just one part of why Rauner is, in Zorn's estimation, a failure (a word Rauner used liberally to describe his predecessor, Pat Quinn). Zorn's piece truly gets going when he starts listing Rauner's failures, one after another.

A sample passage:

[Rauner] failed when he tried to go city-by-city throughout the state shortly after his inauguration to build local support for his agenda. He failed last year when he paid "superstar" budget consultant Donna Arduin $165,000 for eight months of work in which she did little but help him craft a spending plan for this fiscal year that relied on $2 billion in phantom savings. He failed in February when he put forth a budget for next year with a $3.5 billion hole in it. He failed last month in the primary elections when he tried to unseat a Republican state senator who'd cast pro-union votes and tried to retain a Democratic state representative who'd supported him at key moments.

And he's failing every day that he doubles down on the idea that if the state's economic woes just get bad enough, if unfortunate people just suffer enough, Democratic lawmakers will break down and vote as Republicans.

Overall, some form of the word "fail" appears 20 times in the story and its headline. It's always more fun to read a piece about hatred than love (no offense, wedding vows), and this piece is no exception. It won't get a budget passed any more than Rauner will, but it's a rollicking read.