Another week drew to an end without a state budget or any meaningful reforms to the budget process. A pension reform bill died last week that would have provided a one-time $215 million payment to the Chicago Public Schools pension fund. The effort never made it out of a committee and Secretary of Education Beth Purvis says she’s disappointed that the proposal didn’t make it to the Senate floor. 



Democrats on the other side say they did a better job of fixing CPS’s pension problems in a bill that’s tied to the grand bargain.