As of today, Illinois has officially gone 364 days without a state budget. An impasse of this length is highly irregular, as shown by the recent state budget data below. We compared overdue state budget lengths from fiscal years 2014-2016 to see exactly how far the Illinois impasse stands out.
In 2015 (Fiscal Year 2016), six states reached July 1 without a budget agreement. Wisconsin and Massachusetts passed their budgets within two and three weeks respectively. Meanwhile, New Hampshire and North Carolina both took over two months to pass final drafts of their budgets. Pennsylvania and Illinois shared the dubious honor of continuing their budget struggles into the new calendar year, with Pennsylvania reaching an agreement 272 days after the start of the fiscal year, and Illinois drifting along without a peer.
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State Budget Days Overdue, Fiscal Years 2014-2016
Budgets Must Pass by 6/30 of the Previous Year to be Considered "On-Time"
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| Compiled by the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform |
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Of 891 combined overdue budget days from U.S. States since the start of Fiscal Year 2014, Illinois accounts for 40%, and Pennsylvania 31%. The next highest state on the list is North Carolina with 12%.
Nearly all states that were overdue in the past three years passed a stopgap budget within the first month. Pennsylvania was the only other outlier last year, waiting until the end of 2015 to pass a stopgap measure. In preparation for Fiscal Year 2016, Massachusetts funded its operations for the month of July before passing their full budget on July 17, 2015. New Hampshire passed a six month stopgap that helped the state survive into mid September of 2015. North Carolina even passed a series of three stopgap spending bills before agreeing to a full budget in September.
For Fiscal Year 2017, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Illinois are currently three days away from being late once again. With
biennial budgets, which only need to be passed once every two years, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin are out of the woods for the time being.
ICPR Data and Research Analysts Aaron Feldman and Jack Lockhart contributed to this report. Data was sourced from the National Conference of State Legislatures and various news outlets.
Contact: Sarah Brune at 312-436-1274 or sarah@ilcampaign.org
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