Aug. 26--The lack of a state budget again spilled into a courtroom Wednesday as advocates for the developmentally disabled complained to a federal judge that Republican Comptroller Leslie Munger has withheld payments to providers that are required under a court order.
At a hearing in Chicago before U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, lawyers for care providers said their clients were still waiting for payments that the judge previously ordered to be paid by Friday.
Attorneys representing the state and comptroller's office said the money wasn't available Friday because the state is having a cash flow problem caused by the lack of a budget. They said $76 million in payments had been made as of Wednesday morning but that at least $40 million more was still outstanding.
Coleman, who noted that she was not pleased to have been called back from vacation to hear the case, said the state risked being held in contempt of court and ordered that it provide an accounting of which bills have and have not been paid.
The judge also said she understood the comptroller's predicament. Without a budget, state government has been spending at a rate billions of dollars beyond what it is set to take in, mostly because of a series of maneuvers by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Democrat-controlled legislature and a number of court orders requiring it to continue paying for services during the impasse.
William Choslovsky, a lawyer representing residents at Misericordia, was less forgiving. He suggested to Coleman that the Rauner administration and the comptroller's office were willfully withholding the money.
For checks to go out, the Rauner-run Department of Human Services must first authorize the payments by sending a voucher to the comptroller, who then decides when to cut the check. But lawyers representing both the state and the comptroller could not provide answers as to which bills have and have not been paid.
"At best, it's the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing," Choslovsky said.
"I think the right and the left hand are wringing each other," Coleman said. "I think they're wringing their hands."
The state's response to the court is due at noon Friday.
kgeiger@tribpub.com
