The Springfield City Council next week will consider formally asking the state of Illinois to start paying the millions of dollars' worth of utility bills it has racked up as the state budget impasse drags on.

Aldermen will vote on a resolution requesting that Gov. Bruce Rauner and the General Assembly designate utilities as an “essential service” and authorize paying the more than $9 million that's owed to City Water, Light and Power, which includes overdue bills of more than $6 million.

The resolution notes that having millions of dollars in overdue bills “is causing a hardship to the operation of the city of Springfield.”

In a Monday memo to Mayor Jim Langfelder, CWLP chief utilities engineer Doug Brown wrote that the city-owned utility has sent out late notices to all of its state accounts, and that a disconnection would be possible in the future if the state continues to be in arrears.

But that doesn’t mean shutting off power to the Capitol and other state facilities is imminent. Langfelder has said that would be a last resort.

“We’re still at the point where we’re working with the state to find out what they can do,” Brown said this week, noting that the state’s nonpayment of its utility bills “is starting to be more of a struggle” for CWLP.

Some funds have had to be moved around at the utility to make up for the millions in unpaid bills, Brown said.

Normally, the state doesn’t pay CWLP bills until they’re more than 30 days past due, so the amount that’s owed beyond that time frame, which is what Langfelder considers overdue, is more than $6 million, he said.

The state’s total balance owed to CWLP as of this week – including the charges that have been accrued but that the state normally wouldn’t have yet paid – is more than $9 million. That includes electric, water, sewer and sanitary services.

The utility has been willing to work with various state agencies, and typically, accounts are disconnected within 60 to 90 days of being overdue, Brown wrote in the memo.

The state is now in its seventh month without a budget for the fiscal year that began July 1. Even without a spending plan for more than half a year, the state has been spending billions of dollars due to court orders and consent decrees, and is paying employee salaries and aid to school districts.

The Secretary of State’s Office paid CWLP $1.3 million last month, a portion of what that office owes the utility. That funding came from a supplemental appropriation that state lawmakers approved roughly a month ago, secretary of state spokesman Dave Druker said.

The office received about $10 million from that appropriation, and the utility payment was one of the larger bills paid out of that amount, Druker said.

State government has 90 different accounts for utility services with CWLP.

This isn’t the first time the state has been unable to pay its utility bills in a timely manner, and CWLP has been able to manage for a few months without that revenue in the past. But eventually, having a major customer in arrears for months begins to affect the utility’s finances, Brown said. And CWLP’s financial position isn’t as strong as it was the last time the state was behind on its payments, he noted.

The CWLP electric fund’s finances have been rocky over the past few years, and in 2015, the utility narrowly met its required debt-coverage ratio with a bailout from the city’s corporate fund. Without that last-minute cash influx, CWLP would have been at risk for its second technical default in four years, which likely would have triggered a credit rating downgrade.

Langfelder said his reasoning for “sounding the alarm” now is so something can be done before the situation gets to a point where the state’s nonpayment poses a greater threat to the utility’s finances and its ability to meet its debt-coverage ratio.

The mayor said he met Tuesday with several state lawmakers who represent the Springfield area, as well as representatives of the state Department of Central Management Services and the governor’s office.

The lawmakers voiced support for the city, “but they want more time to work with the administration on addressing the outstanding utility bills owed,” Langfelder said.

“We’re at the point where we’d like to get some assurances for more periodic payments,” he said. “That’s what they’re working on – seeing what they’d be able to do.”

The city council resolution, sponsored by Langfelder, is on next Tuesday's committee of the whole meeting agenda.

— Contact Jamie Munks: jamie.munks@sj-r.com, 788-1528, twitter.com/JamieMunksSJR.