Why Lottery Winners Are Getting Stiffed in Illinois

In July, Danny Chasteen scratched off an Illinois Lottery ticket to reveal a $250,000 prize. The factory supervisor from Oglesby, about halfway between Chicago and Peoria, was delighted—until he tried to turn in the ticket and learned that lottery payouts are suspended until Democratic legislators and the state’s Republican governor, former private equity investor Bruce Rauner, can agree on a budget for the current fiscal year. Chasteen, who’s suing the state, joins a growing number of creditors, including state employees whose health premiums aren’t being covered and private vendors who haven’t seen checks since the last budget ran out on July 1. “People are spending thousands of dollars a day on lottery tickets, and they don’t get paid?” says Chasteen’s girlfriend, Susan Rick. “That’s illegal, and that’s fraud.”

The pile of IOUs is worth $6 billion and growing. State Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger estimates the total could reach $8.5 billion by yearend. The state was sued on Sept. 18 by a coalition of public employee unions, led by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which wants to force Illinois to resume health-care payments for 149,000 workers, retirees, and dependents. “This can’t continue,” says Anders Lindall, a spokesman for AFSCME Council 31.