The Senate is poised to cast a contentious vote in the coming week, while campaign season begins and the 2018 Senate elections inch closer. The following is a glance at those Senate campaign funds which filed A-1’s in the past week:

“Déjà vu,” said Governor Bruce Rauner at yesterday’s press conference when Senate President John Cullerton again declined to dispatch SB1 for the governor’s signature. We’re likely to hear the same joke today, as Senate Democrats–hardly present in the chamber yesterday, and missing Cullerton–confirmed an anticipated low-turnout through Friday and likely into Monday, when Cullerton has promised to send Rauner the bill.

As soon as he receives SB1 on his desk, Gov. Bruce Rauner’s actions are limited by the Illinois Constitution. Unless there is some sort of last minute negotiation, the likely outcome of the Cullerton-Rauner showdown will be a veto of SB1, bringing everyone back to the table to create a whole new education funding bill.

As Senate President John Cullerton and House Speaker Mike Madigan continued to urge Governor Bruce Rauner to meet for negotiations and sign SB1, Republican legislators reacted to the bill’s delay on the first day of special session.

Sen. Jason Barickman (R-Bloomington)

“(Cullerton) has made a political observation that by holding that bill, he can put on pressure to do one of two things: one is to change the governor’s mind into signing a bill which he has called a Chicago Bailout and promised to veto, or two, that the pressure will build in a manner that convinces enough Republicans to override the governor. I see both of those options as being unbelievably impossible… I do not believe that the votes exist to override a veto by the governor. ”

Rep. Sheri Jesiel (R-Antioch)

“It’s kind of ironic that this bill when it was drafted was drafted to help those school districts with a concentration of poverty and yet this crisis that’s being manufactured and created by Pres. Cullerton and Speaker Madigan by not sending the bill to Gov. Rauner? Those are the same school districts immediately affected because they do not have savings in order to open up school in the fall.”

Rep. Peter Breen (R-Lombard)

“(Democrats) are desperately trying to get the Governor’s amendatory veto language out so they can start attacking it. To say this is going to take two weeks to negotiate is silly. We were almost to an agreement when we left last special session. It wouldn’t take more than a few days. There are several versions of Republican proposals...The issue is: Are you going to take the back debt of the Chicago Public School pension system and put it on the back of state taxpayers? It’s not just next year. Putting in a new funding formula locks you in place for 10 years or more.”

Rep. Terri Bryant (R-Mount Vernon)

“I’m from the deep south where categorical payments are very important and are very late getting there... For a lot of the rural areas where you don’t have the opportunity to take a cab or get on the L, and whatever transportation you have is not really an option in my part of the state. You have to have money to pay for those buses. And even if you do have the money for them, there are still students who are on those buses an hour and a half, all one way, all driving. In the city, maybe you drive an hour and a half you go six or seven miles. Where I live, if you drive an hour and a half, you go 60 to 80 miles. So it’s really important to get (funding) moving.”  

Education advocates are not a unified for support of Democrats’ school funding bill, SB1, and one Democratic sponsor says he thinks there might be room for negotiation.

Contacted Wednesday, education advocacy organizations were not necessarily carrying the same message. Not surprisingly, Chicago Teachers Union representatives were pushing for Gov. Bruce Rauner to sign SB1, so were statewide advocacy groups like the Illinois Principals Association and the Illinois Federation of Teachers. But suburban advocates, such as the Legislative Education Network of DuPage County (LEND), were more agnostic.

Statehouse rhetoric on the enactment of school funding legislation has centered on an early August deadline, so that funds can be transferred to school districts before their school years start. But information from the State Board of Education as well as the Comptroller’s office suggest that the early August deadline is arbitrary, and that the vast majority of school districts will have plenty of wiggle room if an agreement is not forged in the Statehouse over the next two weeks.

Special Session started with a thunderclap but ended in dry lightning, as Governor Bruce Rauner demanded education reform bill SB1 be sent to his desk immediately by Senate President John Cullerton, who then spent part of the day explaining why he won’t do so. The delay is likely to last until Monday, when Cullerton says he’ll send Rauner the bill after giving him until Friday to consider a private meeting instead. In an afternoon press conference he offered the following reasons for withholding the bill and not following standard legislative procedure.

Continuing our budget breakdown series, the following are the fast facts about Medicaid provisions found in the state’s new budget for FY2018.

$9.507 billion has been allocated to Medicaid funding for FY2018, including federal matching funds and intergovernmental transfers, in the recently-passed SB6 budget. The Hospital Provider Fund and County Provider Trust provide $3.1 billion and $2.5 billion of that total, although the Drug Rebate Fund also brought in $2.4 billion this year. 

A press release from a pair of Chicago Democratic Representatives Tuesday afternoon set off a flurry of chatter that Chicago-area House Democrats may not attend the special session beginning at noon today to protest Republican attempts to eliminate Chicago Public Schools funding. But a spot check of Chicago-area Democrats found that most will be in Springfield this afternoon.

While the the FY2018 Illinois budget finally appropriated a significant sum to pension payments, over $6.6 billion to the state’s five employee pension funds, it still falls short on the $7.87 billion appropriation need projected by COGFA for this year, and does not address the $129.5 billion in unfunded pension liabilities.