By Dave Dahl/Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – The “Good Friday” budget cuts are being restored, we learn a day before “May Day.”
Gov. Bruce Rauner’s office, responding to a new forecast of $300-500 million dollars – previously unexpected – arriving in the last two months of the fiscal year, is reversing $26 million of social service cuts made known April 3.
“We thought we had protected, specifically, these programs,” such as autism services, in a budget patch lawmakers passed in March, before beginning a two-week break from Springfield, said House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago). “We were amazed, shocked, and, certainly, appalled, that the governor decided to make those cuts.”
She calls Thursday’s announcement “the right thing.”
One of Rauner’s fellow Republicans, State Rep. Patti Bellock (R-Hinsdale), is not as quick to criticize the governor but did say “the timing of those cuts came out wrong.
