Illinois

Back in September, we noted that Chicago’s schools are in trouble. Deep trouble.

Amid Illinois’ intractable budget crisis, the city’s public school system opened with a budget shortfall of nearly a half billion dollars.

Borrowing and trimming the proverbial fat helped close some of the $1.1 billion hole but once the board reached the point where “further cuts would reach deep into the classroom” (to quote system chief Forrest Claypool), the schools asked Springfield to make up the difference which amounts to $480 million.

We’ve written quite a bit this year about the fiscal crises unfolding among America’s state and local governments. Illinois became something of a poster child for the problem when, in May, the state Supreme Court struck down a pension reform bid, triggering a Moody’s downgrade for Chicago.

After that, the situation in Springfield worsened materially and before you knew it, the state was paying out lottery winnings in IOUs and missing hundreds of millions in pension payments.