Illinois was just ranked last in the nation for financial transparency. The state’s chronic delays, audit failures and last-minute budgeting have put taxpayers in the dark and long-term stability at risk.
Illinois ranked dead last in financial transparency, according to the latest scores from Truth in Accounting.
The state performed poorly across key areas, including failing to get a clean review from an independent auditor, giving a distorted picture of its true financial health and missing the deadline to publish its annual report within 100 days of the fiscal year ending.
By late August 2024, Illinois still hadn’t released its 2023 financial report. Its 2022 report received a disclaimer of opinion, the equivalent of an incomplete grade, because auditors couldn’t gather enough information to determine if the numbers were accurate. Only three other states received that disclaimer.
Illinois received a score of 47 out of 100, the lowest score in the nation.
“Illinois is chronically late on issuing its financial report,” Truth in Accounting founder and CEO Sheila Weinberg told The Center Square. “They make budget decisions without considering important information from audited reports. … There’s something dysfunctional going on.”
Weinberg dubbed Illinois the “poster child for bad budgeting and accounting.”
Illinois lawmakers recently demonstrated their bad budgeting and accounting tactics with a last-minute push to pass a record, $55.2 billion state budget. They allowed just over 24 hours for anyone to make a review.
Illinois’ low score is a testament to the state’s habit of patching budget problems using short-sighted fixes with long-term consequences. To break this cycle, Illinois must implement structural solutions, such as adopting a spending cap and constitutional pension reform.
Illinois has relied on reactive budgeting at the taxpayers’ expense. Others have noticed.
