Governor Quinn said Wednesday that he plans to reopen several state historic sites that former governor Rod Blagojevich closed late last year. At the time, Blagojevich said that cutting nearly $3 million from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency was necessary to plug a hole in the state budget. Quinn has already reopened several state parks that Blagojevich closed along with the historic sites. Although the state is facing an unprecedented budget crisis this year, the governor says that merging state agencies will offset the cost of the reopenings. more ›

As state lawmakers began to contemplate the hard decisions they faced with the governor's new budget proposal, Illinois Senate President John Cullerton indicated he was willing to entertain an approach that has been used during previous economic downturns: a temporary state income tax hike. Twice in the 1980s Governor Jim Thompson signed temporary tax increases into law, although the second increase, passed in 1989, became permanent under Governor Jim Edgar. "So that's something which could be suggested, if people were actually willing to vote for it, if that's the condition that helps get the 30 votes we need to pass it too," Cullerton told the Tribune, referring to the number of votes needed to pass the state senate. more ›

Pat Quinn gave his first State of the State address Wednesday, addressing directly the gaping budget hole Illinois faces, and making his case for raising taxes and cutting the budget in what is quite possibly the biggest economic crisis the state has faced in generations. “Our state is staggering to pay an $11.5 billion deficit, and we have a mountain of unpaid bills. The Illinois economy is also in crisis. Unemployment is rising. Our people are hurting,” Quinn said Wednesday. As Quinn talked about a mix of tax increases, budget cuts and changed in the benefits that state employees enjoy, legislative leaders acknowledged that tax hikes were likely. "It's very likely that we'll have to have an income-tax [increase], but the form that it takes, the amount the exemptions would be, are all negotiable—and only after we've done the cutting the governor's talked about," Senate President John Cullerton said. But those increases won't happen until the general assembly sees both the budget cuts and government reforms that Quinn has promised. more ›

On the heels of yesterday's revelation that Gov. Quinn plans to propose an income tax hike of upwards of 50 percent comes news that the state budget gap is much larger than had been previously reported: $11.5 billion. According to Crain's Greg Hinz, Quinn's chief of staff Jerry Stermer referred to the deficit as "an unprecedented tsunami of red ink." Hinz continues: more ›