Illinois’ opaque budget process drives mismanagement, harms taxpayers

Despite Illinois law setting clear budget rules, lawmakers routinely fast-track last-minute, backroom deals, keeping voters and other legislators in the dark.

Illinois’ budget process encourages secrecy, shortcuts and irresponsible spending, forcing taxpayers to carry the cost with little say.

In 2015, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ranked Illinois’ budget process among the nation’s worst. A decade later, not much has changed. Illinois’ process lags because of:

• A lack of transparency
• Unreliable revenue estimates
• Missed opportunities to use existing tools for accountability and planning

These shortcomings facilitate and conceal the extent of Illinois’ fiscal issues: overspending, escalating pension debt and nation-leading tax burdens.

Illinois’ tendency to treat tax hikes – with at least 70 in 15 years costing $110 billion – as a cure-all for budget problems erodes voter trust in Springfield. It also has driven many Illinoisans to leave the state.

To end the spend-and-tax cycle, Illinois must fix its budget process. Reforms, such as requiring more accurate revenue forecasting and adequate review time, would support balanced budgets that taxpayers can reasonably afford.

Here’s a closer look at how Illinois’ budget process works and where it goes awry.

Lack of transparency

Illinois’ budget process begins on the third Wednesday in February, when the governor delivers his budget address and submits a proposal to the General Assembly, outlining revenue projections and planned spending.

For many lawmakers, it’s their first clear look at the numbers, despite state agency funding requests landing on the governor’s desk months earlier.

From there, the budget proposal becomes one or more appropriations bills meant to go through committee hearings, multiple readings and debates on the state House and Senate floors. The General Assembly passes a finalized budget by May 31, which the governor signs into law, effective July 1.

In principle, Illinois’ process should allow for transparent and thoughtful stewardship of public funds. But in practice, it often happens behind closed doors.

While the Illinois Constitution requires bills be read by title on three separate days, lawmakers bypass this rule using shell bills and “gut-and-replace” amendments. Shell bills are placeholder legislation used to meet early bill-filing deadlines. Unlike typical amendments that only make partial changes, “gut-and-replace” amendments overhaul the shells with numerous pages of new language – often at the last minute – opening the door to special-interest carve-outs and costly mistakes.

In 2021, lawmakers passed a 4,000-page budget, full of errors, in the middle of the night, forcing Gov. J.B. Pritzker to issue an amendatory veto to avoid disruptions to public services and wasted tax dollars.

Why are lawmakers able to break a constitutional rule with seeming impunity? Because of the Illinois Supreme Court’s enrolled-bill doctrine, which says once a bill is signed and recorded, courts should assume it followed the proper steps to become law. This loophole degrades legislative oversight and invites partisan misuse.

Adding to these issues, Illinois is one of only 11 states that doesn’t conduct year-end budget reconciliation, or confirming actual spending matches what was planned. This omission weakens the state’s balanced budget requirement and helps conceal deficits, errors, waste and abuse.

Other transparency gaps in Illinois’ budget process include the lack of assessments on the cost of intergovernmental mandates and the absence of program-by-program spending justifications in executive budget documents.

Unreliable estimates

Although the Illinois Constitution requires a balanced budget, the state’s use of unreliable revenue estimates undermines this mandate. Unlike 28 other states, Illinois does not use consensus forecasting, a proven method for bridging differences in revenue figures by averaging estimates from the executive and legislative agencies.

Instead, Illinois law demands separate estimates from the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget and the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability. These estimates often diverge from each other and from actual revenue collections because of methodological differences and, at times, political influence. This creates uncertainty and conflicting narratives about how much the state can afford to spend.

Illinois is also among the minority of states that does not require revenue estimates to be binding on the enacted budget. This enables politicians to potentially cherry-pick projections supporting their desired political agenda and approve budgets built on questionable assumptions.

For example, in his 2013 budget proposal, former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn pushed to extend the 2011 income tax. His office presented divergent budget scenarios – one with the tax and one with deep cuts if it expired – understating revenue estimates by about $2 billion for 2013 and $1 billion for 2014. The misleading figures sparked criticism Quinn had used them to justify keeping the tax and avoid addressing spending.

Timing is another issue. While research shows the most reliable forecasts happen once a year, closer to budget deadlines, Illinois shares its revenue estimates in February, six months ahead of the finalized budget. This leaves ample room for error, because revenues, spending needs and legislation can all change before July.

Missed opportunities

Rather than control spending and rethink its budget process, Springfield defaults to more tax increases. To help achieve balance without turning to hikes, Illinois already has tools in place but refuses to use them.

One is Illinois’ Budgeting for Results Commission, established in 2010, as a tool for transparent, metrics-driven budgeting. The goal of the commission: fund what works and cut what doesn’t. But today, the commission’s findings remain largely unused, unfocused and toothless.

For example, the commission’s April 2025 meeting focused on “State Parks and Historic Sites Policy Domain” rather than urgent fiscal issues, though the state faces a projected $1.2 billion shortfall for 2026.

Pritzker also quietly asked agencies to prepare internal cost-cutting plans, but those have never been made public or implemented.

Instead of disregarding these tools as an afterthought, Illinois should proactively use them to provide lawmakers the data they need to make disciplined spending decisions and reduce pressure to raise taxes.

Conclusion

When a budget is rushed and built on an unreliable foundation without proper oversight, taxpayers inevitably carry the cost and lose faith in elected leaders.

To restore voter confidence, put its finances on firmer ground and protect businesses and residents from further tax hikes, Illinois should:

• Require at least 72 hours to review the budget in its final form or follow the three-day reading requirement in the constitution.
• Require automatic averaging of executive and legislative revenue estimates.
• Make revenue estimates binding on both the proposed and the enacted budget.
• Adopt a spending cap within projected revenue and linked to the state’s 10-year average gross domestic product growth rates.
• Require year-end budget reconciliation, ensuring balance in practice and not just on paper.
• Leverage input from the Budgeting for Results Commission to help manage spending and identify waste.

Illinois lawmakers must stop budgeting for short-term politics and start planning for long-term stability.