Several Downstate Illinois legislators were furious last week that Governor Pat Quinn decided to go ahead and close some state facilities, including prisons, in their districts.

They weren’t just upset about the lost jobs, however. Some also claim that Quinn brazenly broke a deal on the closures. “If the governor proceeds with this, he has gone back on his word,” Representative Mike Bost (R-Murphysboro) told a crowd gathered to protest the planned closures last week. Bost and others indicated that the trade was made over revenue issues, but he didn’t get more specific.

Bost did not return a phone call, but he was almost surely referring to the cigarette-tax increase.

Only a handful of state House Democratic incumbents targeted for defeat by the Republicans were endorsed by the Illinois AFL-CIO last week, but the damage to the Democratic Party’s chances this fall will likely be minimal.

It went almost totally unnoticed at the Statehouse, but Senate President John Cullerton pulled a neat little trick at the end of the spring legislative session, and he may end up getting what he wants this fall.

We’re going to get into some “insider” terminology and a few numbers, but it’s really not all that difficult.

Cullerton refused to advance a measure known as a “budget implementation bill.” The “BIMP” transferred millions of dollars into special state funds. Those transfers are known as “trouts.”

For instance, the legislation transfers $4 million from the state’s General Revenue Fund (which is like the state’s checking account) into the Underground Resources Conservation Fund.

All told, Cullerton wants to fish out about $200 million from the “trouts” and use the cash to satisfy his members’ demand that schools be given more money.

At least for now, it doesn’t appear that rank-and-file legislators will have to spend much time in Springfield this summer, even though they failed to finish their work on public-pension reform last week.

Aides to Governor Pat Quinn claim that they’ve learned from the mistakes of their predecessor, Rod Blagojevich, and won’t drag legislators back to the Statehouse for a grueling overtime session to find a solution to the pension problem, which has already overwhelmed the state budget. Blagojevich convened numerous overtime sessions, and they were all divisive political circuses. Plus, forcing legislators back to Springfield to just sit around and wait for the leaders to come to an agreement means they’ll have plenty of time on their hands to bad-mouth the governor to reporters, who won’t have much to do, either.

As state legislative support for a cigarette-tax hike grew in late May, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and other conservatives stepped into the Illinois fray.

A top House Republican said more than a week ago that the roll call in favor of a dollar-a-pack cigarette-tax hike was in the double digits within his caucus. The tax would raise $700 million, including the federal match, to help close the Medicaid program’s gaping $2.7-billion budget hole.

In return, Republicans won concessions from the Democrats, particularly when it came to sparing doctors from Governor Pat Quinn’s proposed Medicaid-provider rate cuts.