Governor Bruce Rauner during a campaign stop in Livingston County last summer/WJEZ photo by Todd Wineburner

By Jim Anderson–Illinois Radio News

Gov. Bruce Rauner says next year’s state budget is one thing, but this year’s budget is an immediate concern.

The state is on the way to running out of money, with five months left in the fiscal year. Rauner blames this on the past administration, and the current budget.

“It was nowhere near balanced. They just assumed that they were gonna win and hike taxes after the election, and so they not only didn’t appropriate enough money for many of the departments, but then they told some of the people in the departments , go ahead and ignore what we appropriated, go ahead and spend what you wanna spend, ‘cuz we’ll deal with it later, so they have not been honest about it and that’s a problem that I’ve gotta fix, and I will fix it, but it’s gonna be hard to do,” he said.

Rauner says long-term, he’ll propose an “overhaul” of the state’s tax code. He also says he’s “looking forward” to contract negotiations with AFSCME, after saying last week that state workers are overpaid.

His state of the state is next week, and the budget address is Feb. 18.