The highest court in Illinois rejected litigation seeking to block the state from making further payments on $14.3 billion in municipal debt, saying a free-market advocate waited too long after the bonds were sold to challenge their legality, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. John Tillman, chief executive of the right-leaning Illinois Policy Institute, had “no excuse” for his delay in filing litigation claiming that Illinois breached its constitutional limits on debt issuance with bond sales in 2003 and 2017, the Illinois Supreme Court said in a unanimous ruling yesterday. Tillman challenged the bonds in 2019, when he sought a court order declaring their issuance unconstitutional and prohibiting the state from making further payments. Tillman said yesterday that he was disappointed in the court ruling and is “evaluating options as to how to proceed from here.” “In the interim, I continue to be profoundly concerned about Illinois’s reckless debt accumulation,” he said.
