That ain’t Monopoly money those Springfield characters are playing with

If this were a board game, you would have quit long ago because there was no way to win at “Illinopoly.”

“At a meeting I attended just this morning, a comment was made that, ‘as soon as deals in Illinois are close to done, someone always tries to blow it up,’” said state Rep. Avery Bourne, a Republican from the Litchfield area.

The Illinois Senate seems on the verge of hammering out a budget deal with some of the reforms insisted on by a governor who refuses to continue monkey business as usual. Here comes Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, daughter of the game master, who wakes up after 18 months to decide, “Hey. We shouldn’t be paying state workers without a budget. I’ll sue.”

How will this play out?

Well, it’s pretty safe guessing this is part of the blame game to oust Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2018 — he’s the thing that changed in Springfield, he’s responsible for no budget. The Democrats responded to his State of the State call for bipartisan work by repeating “middle class” and “blame Rauner” so often that it sounded like the script for a porno.

Never mind that $130 billion in pension deficits, $10.7 billion in overdue bills and the nation’s worst credit rating were decades in the making. Let’s blame the guy voters just picked because he agreed to a job too dirty for even Mike Rowe.

Lost in the Springfield bubble is the fact that they are playing this game with our public institutions, our children’s educations, our home’s future and treating our money as if it were from that “Illinopoly” game set.

Too bad our rich Uncle Pennybags is a sour-faced career politician from the shadow of Midway Airport. After 32 years as Illinois House speaker, Michael Madigan appears to holds all the Community Chest and Chance cards.

This story was originally published January 29, 2017 at 7:00 PM with the headline "That ain’t Monopoly money those Springfield characters are playing with."