SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Illinois government begins Friday with its first full-fledged budget plan in more than two years.
The House voted Thursday to undo Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s vetoes of a budget financed with a $5 billion tax increase. The $36 billion spending plan is retroactive to the July 1 start of the fiscal year.
The veto overrides end the nation’s longest state-budget stalemate since at least the Great Depression.
House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, praised bipartisan cooperation for ending an “unbelievable struggle” lasting two years with Rauner.
Rauner rejected the budget package because Democrat did not deliver the “structural” changes he demanded to boost business and freeze local property taxes.
The first-term governor and most of the Legislature are up for election in the fall of 2018.