Five and a half months into Illinois' budget impasse, and a pair of potential budget frameworks have been made public.
Both suggest an income tax hike, scaling back corporate tax credits, and expanding the sales tax to include services, as well as pension changes, some limits on collective bargaining, and making workers compensation less expensive for businesses.
A bipartisan group of rank-and-file legislators worked for months before coming up with its list. Members stress: it wasn't meant as a package, and that the talks weren't done on behalf of party leaders.
But Republicans walked away from the talks ago. Now, Politico has published a summary of what was on the table.
Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago) was part of the talks.
"It was really something so everyone gets a win and there's probably something that everybody hates. So the nature of actually give and take. And again we don't see this as something: take it or leave it. We see it as a starting point for a conversation."
The other framework has been described as a "mega deal." It comes from the new political group Illinois-GO, which says it will let the document speak for itself.
The group's founder, operative Greg Goldner, told Crain's he's offered the plan to get Democrats and Republicans talking again. However it doesn't appear the plan was actually presented to all of the legislative leaders.
The governor's office declined to comment. It's unclear whether either plan will go any further.
