The General Assembly, in turn, must pass a balanced budget and send it to the Governor's desk to sign before the beginning of the new fiscal year on June 30.
[1] Historically, Illinois governors have presented budget proposals in mid-February, allowing around four and a half months of negotiations before the deadline.
At the beginning of July 2007, disagreements between then-governor Rod Blagojevich and the General Assembly delayed the FY08 budget by six weeks.
During the 2014 Illinois gubernatorial election, Rauner ran against incumbent governor Pat Quinn on a platform of a series of reforms dubbed "The Turnaround Agenda."
Governor Rauner insisted that the objectives listed in his Turnaround Agenda, rather than raising taxes, were essential for revitalizing Illinois' economy.
[10] While this prevented a government shutdown, it also meant that state agencies were required to continue purchasing services with no way to pay the vendors.
[11] In response, in May 2016, the General Assembly attempted to pass its own budget for the Governor to sign, but it failed in the Senate.
Former City Clerk of Chicago Susana Mendoza defeated incumbent Comptroller Leslie Munger, while incumbent senator Mark Kirk lost in a landslide to congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, yet Republicans gained seats in both chambers of the General Assembly.
[17] In March 2017, negotiations came to a standstill as the General Assembly failed to vote on the series of bills that included appropriations, tax hikes and freezes, and school funding.
[18] In late June, Governor Rauner announced he would order a special session of the General Assembly to convene until a budget had been passed.
However, the veto override did not fully end the budget impasse, as there was still risk that the state's public school districts would not receive much of their funding for FY18.
As of late August 2017, school districts had already missed two regular installments of state aid due to the impasse.
In his veto message, he articulated his disagreements with the bill's mechanisms holding districts harmless and appropriating money for the Chicago Teacher's Pension Fund (CTPF).
In June 2017, S&P threatened to downgrade Illinois' credit rating to junk if an FY18 budget were not passed before the end of the fiscal year.
Speaker Madigan wrote a letter to S&P asking them to delay any judgment until after the weekend, promising that the General Assembly would convene on Saturday, July 1 to finish negotiations.
The main factor influencing this decision, according to Fitch, was the reduction of a bill backlog from a high of $17 billion to just under $500 million.