State budget meeting rescheduled
<p class="p1">SPRINGFIELD – A meeting between Gov. Rauner and the four legislative leaders has been rescheduled to Dec. 1.</p><p class="p2">Rauner late Friday afternoon, No. 13, released his proposed format, but on Saturday, Nov. 14, his staff said he would push the meeting back to accommodate House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, who won’t be available Wednesday, Nov. 18, because he will be attending a family funeral out of state.</p><p class="p2">In a letter on Friday from the governor to Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton, Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno and House Republican leader Jim Durkin, the governor outlined the following format:</p><p class="p2">•The meeting begins at 8:30 a.m. in the governor’s Springfield office, with a pool camera streaming video to media outlets.</p><p class="p2">•The governor opens the meeting and explains the format.</p><p class="p2">•The governor and the leaders then take 10 minutes each “to make his or her case to the people of Illinois – uninterrupted and unfiltered.”</p><p class="p2">•The meeting next goes private (no camera) for negotiations.</p><p class="p2">•When the meeting has adjourned, any or all of the participants conduct their news conferences outside the governor’s office.</p><p class="p2">Rauner said the format strikes a balance of giving the public access yet keeping the negotiating time useful.</p><p class="p2">“It affords each of us the opportunity to address the people of Illinois without interruption or media filter, and it strikes a balance to ensure we maintain decorum and a constructive atmosphere for negotiations,” he wrote in his letter to the leaders.</p><p class="p2">A coalition of good-government groups in October called for the meeting and offered to facilitate it to get the governor and four leaders talking again.</p><p class="p2">Illinois is now in its fifth month of fiscal year 2016 with no budget as the first-term Republican governor and legislative Democrats, who have supermajority numbers in each chamber of the General Assembly, continue to disagree on the state’s finances and Rauner’s agenda.</p><p class="p2">All of the leaders had indicated they planned to attend a Nov. 18 meeting, although Madigan said he wanted to see an agenda before he’d commit after Rauner wrote to the civic groups saying the governor’s office would organize and host the meeting.</p>