A closed-door meeting Saturday between Gov. Bruce Rauner and legislative leaders provided little if any headway on a budget deal to keep state government running into the new year, with Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan declaring “a lack of trust with the Rauner administration.”

Madigan’s comments followed a Friday request in which he asked for so-called “memorandums of understanding” for all future and past funding agreements made with Rauner. Madigan said House Democrats are concerned the administration is not spending funds as agreed to under the temporary budget that expires Jan. 1. It’s a “put-it-in-writing” tactic Madigan used under Democrat Rod Blagojevich.

Illinois legislative leaders differed on the outcome of their latest meeting with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

But there was no budget agreement Saturday in Chicago.

No agreement on an Illinois budget, as of Saturday night, after government leaders met earlier in the day in Chicago.

In fact, the two sides couldn’t even agree on the outcome of today’s, very preliminary meeting.

The bitter divorce between the once-powerful United Neighborhood Organization and the vast, government-funded charter-school network it created has been settled — at a cost to taxpayers of $4.5 million, according to records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

The sticking point in the long-running dispute between UNO and the UNO Charter School Network, known as UCSN, had been what would happen to four school buildings the Hispanic community organization built with $83 million in state funding pushed through Springfield by Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

The recent legal saga of a Peoria woman illustrates how muddled and, at times, arbitrary the state’s forfeiture laws can be.

Delores Goett admits she had a DUI conviction more than 25 years ago. And she admits she didn’t realize she needed a Breathalyzer device installed on her car for her recently obtained driving permit, but she had no idea it would lead to the seizure of her 2002 Buick Regal and the subsequent lawsuit to have it taken away from her permanently.

For months, we’ve been expecting a sad repeat of the 2011 lame-duck session of the Illinois General Assembly.

The toxicology lab at the Cook County medical examiner’s office — which gained worldwide attention in 1982 for confirming that seven people were killed with cyanide-laced Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules — will virtually shut down next year, when most of its testing will be outsourced.

County officials say they hope to save about $1 million over the next year and to speed up autopsy results by shipping most toxicology samples to a private company for testing.

That day of reckoning may be a lot closer than any of the partisans want to concede.

In one of the more significant but lesser reported developments since Donald Trump was elected president, interest rates have been ratcheting higher, pushed up by the widespread belief that his combination of tax cuts and $1 trillion in infrastructure programs will require more and more expensive borrowing.

We don’t like it when someone cuts in line, whether it’s at the grocery, a restaurant or the movies. We like it a lot less when lawmakers want to go to the front of the line so they can get paid before the elderly, the poor, at-risk youths and those with mental health challenges.

But that’s what six Democratic lawmakers want to do. They sued Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger on Friday because Munger has been holding their paychecks, making them wait in line and get paid the same way as others who do business with the state. That is, wait a long time. Some vendors have been waiting six months or more to get paid.

The General Assembly wrapped up its six-day session (actually, five, after one day was canceled) addressing vetoes and a massively complicated bill to bail out two financially troubled nuclear power plants operated by profitable energy giant Exelon. The bailout bill passed. None of Gov. BRUCE RAUNER’s vetoes were overridden.

At this point, lawmakers won’t be back in Springfield helping out the local economy until Jan. 9. That would be nine days after the current stopgap state budget expires and two days before new lawmakers are sworn in to start the 100th edition of the General Assembly. All the bills left over from the last two years die at that time.

Ugly.

That’s an apt way to sum up the second week of the fall veto session in the Illinois Capitol. The political bickering simmered Tuesday and Wednesday before boiling over into a hot mess Thursday, leaving a grimy residue of anger, potentially even more distrust between the political parties and, most importantly, the realized fear that Jan. 1 will most likely come with no spending plan in place for the last six months of the fiscal year.

Lawmakers hightailed it out of town Thursday night and aren’t due back until Jan. 9, so barring a Christmas miracle of an agreed-upon budget and the often insurmountable challenge of getting lawmakers back to Springfield during the holidays to approve it, social service agencies, universities and nonprofits already scrounging to survive could once again bear the brunt of the misery that comes when legislators and the governor abdicate their most important duty.

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner says legislation that provides billions of dollars in subsidies to power giant Exelon Corp. is imperfect but that he’s “proud” of the deal lawmakers reached.

The measure approved Thursday provides $235 million per year to Exelon to keep unprofitable nuclear plants running in Clinton and the Quad Cities. More than 4 million customers of power-distributing subsidiaries ComEd and Ameren will pay more to finance the plan.