How is this for a punchline: Some Illinois legislators are suing the state because their pay checks are late.

Illinois government has been lurching along without a formal state budget for more than 20 months now. It's the result of a long, seemingly intractable war of wills between the Democrat-controlled Legislature and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Each side, of course, is blaming the other for the impasse. In any case, it has caused a drop in the state's credit rating, layoffs and furloughs at state universities, cutbacks in state services, and an almost $13 billion backlog of unpaid state bills to vendors and others—the equivalent of about $1,000 of red ink for every man, woman and child in the state.

Among those whose state checks have been stalled by the mess are state legislators, who earn more than $67,000 annually for their half-year duties, making them among the highest-paid legislators in America.

When then-Comptroller Leslie Munger, a Republican, announced last year that she was making legislators get in line with everyone else awaiting late pay checks, a group of Democratic lawmakers sued. They alleged Munger was acting at the behest of Rauner to put pressure on them in the budget negotiations and that it was a breach of the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.