State escapes contempt over disability payments; judge calls actions 'disturbing' - Chicago Sun-Times
A federal judge on Tuesday declined to hold the state comptroller’s office in contempt of court for failing to pay court-ordered disability payments but said it was “disturbing” that the state remained silent while failing to comply. In a court hearing, U. S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman said she believed the office of Comptroller Leslie Munger had made every effort to catch up on back payments, following an accounting by the office submitted to the court last week. Coleman left the door open to entertaining contempt orders in the future should the state again fail to make timely payments. While there are ongoing budget issues facing the state, Coleman said she wasn’t getting in the middle of it. “This court is not going to allow political wrangling,” she said. The Senate’s Human Services Committee has asked her office to answer questions before the committee on Sept. Biss also happens to be interested in running for Munger’s post in 2016. “Committee members, and all Illinois taxpayers, deserve complete transparency on what payments are being made and who is making these decisions and why. Vulnerable people are at risk, and we need to know about it,” Biss wrote in a letter sent to Munger’s office. In court, Coleman took issue with the state for failing to notify her that it couldn’t comply with her order to pay services for the severely developmentally disabled by Aug. Last week, lawyers for the Illinois Attorney General’s office told Coleman they passed along information to plaintiffs’ attorneys as quickly as they received it from the comptroller’s office. Source: chicago.suntimes.com
