Rauner's excuse crumbles; Chris Kennedy video response

[TexasTowelie]

Gov. Rauner said several times last week that he expected the Illinois State Board of Education to finish running the district numbers on his school funding reform plan by today. He explained to reporters today that the process is “very complicated,” and said he hoped they would be out very soon.

The governor then repeated his claim he made again and again last week that ISBE won’t run numbers unless there’s a specific piece of legislation in front of them, so he couldn’t get ISBE that language until the Senate sent him SB1 and he was able to formally issue his amendatory veto. And, of course, he’s upset that the Senate waited so long to send him the bill because that caused an unnecessary delay in getting the numbers out of ISBE.

The Tribune’s Rick Pearson followed up…

PEARSON: Why didn’t you have Sen. Brady just introduce a bill that had the language of your amendatory veto since much of the debate that’s been going on was about what you were going to be proposing in your amendatory veto? It could’ve been scored already, we would’ve already had the numbers and then you could have a back and forth discussion where everybody knows where they stand instead of trying to cherry pick numbers?

RAUNER: Well, Rick if your argument is trying to defend what the General Assembly did…

PEARSON: I’m not trying to defend anybody… You say you couldn’t score the numbers and you accuse the Democrats of holding the bill so that they couldn’t score the numbers. You said if it was in legislative form it could be scored. You could’ve asked Sen. Barickman, you could’ve asked any of the Republicans to put your AV… in legislative form and it could’ve gotten scored. That’s all I’m saying. It’s a process question, it’s not a political question.

RAUNER: [Takes deep breath, maybe says “Fair,” moves along to next question.]

PEARSON: I’m sorry! Couldn’t you have done that?

RAUNER: [Takes next question.]

Read more and watch the response from Chris Kennedy: https://capitolfax.com/2017/08/07/another-excuse-crumbles/