Despite the lack of a state budget, transportation officials say Illinois is ready for winter weather.

Steve Travia of Illinois Department of Transportation says it’s business as usual, with its ability to keep roads plowed and salted already tested by an early winter storm.

The budget impasse, now stretching into its sixth month, does have an effect in dealing with vendors who have to accept an IOU for the time being.

While a milder winter is expected, Travia says that doesn’t impact IDOT’s preparations, as plows and road salt will still be needed at times even if the state isn’t facing big blizzards or long periods of subzero temperatures.

And in other State news, the head of a Springfield hospital says there are plenty of ideas for how the commemoration of the 1908 race riots in Springfield where at least seven people died, can be incorporated into the building of a new hospital.  The clinic specializing in women’s and children’s healthcare is to be built near the site of where an archaeological dig in conjunction with a rail project turned up evidence of the race riots.  Saint John’s CEO Doctor Chuck Lucore says that’s not the only reason it makes sense for the clinic to have a memorial, referring to the nuns who ran the hospital and helped provide care to those injured.  He says public ideas about a memorial range from a sculpture to paintings and murals, and the Prayer of Saint Francis.

Construction on the clinic building should start in 2016.