It’s difficult to find reasons to be optimistic about the state of Illinois. No budget, huge debt, terrible credit rating and then, just when you think the state has hit bottom, things get worse.

Here are some recent developments that make us wonder where the heck the state is going.

Budget impasse continues. House Democrats have been working on a stopgap budget. Apparently they thought the last one worked so well they’d propose another. (We're being sarcastic, folks.) Gov. Bruce Rauner has said no before even seeing what the plan is. We don’t blame him. Illinois needs more than a temporary budget. It needs not just a full-year budget, but a multiyear plan. That’s wishful thinking at this point.

Schools sue. Illinois does not finance education properly. The overreliance on property taxes means that the quality of education is decided by ZIP code. That’s nothing new, but 17 downstate school districts, mostly in central and southern Illinois, have had enough. They filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Rauner and his administration, contending the state has failed to provide enough money to deliver a "high quality" education for students. Efforts to reform the school funding formula have been greeted with excitement — and then dismissed. We doubt the lawsuit will produce any sense of urgency for changing the system.

Illinois Gaming Board sued. Illinois Cafe & Services Co. and Laredo Hospitality Ventures, which operate gambling cafes in Cook County, are challenging provisions in the 2009 gaming law requiring bars, restaurants and gambling parlors to share 50 percent of after-tax profits with terminal operators, preventing local businesses from purchasing and operating their own terminals. Video gaming, which was legalized in 2012, is one of the few things that has been growing in Illinois, which has more than 25,000 terminals at 5,800 locations statewide. Springfield has the most — 578 terminals operated at 128 locations — and Rockford is second, with 443 terminals at 91 locations. Hey, we’re the second city in something again. The lawsuit could change the video gaming landscape and is worth keeping track of.

Dead woman elected: A Joliet woman who died in March was elected Tuesday to a two-year term on the Joliet Junior College board of trustees. Susan Klen was 53 when she died March 7. She died too late for ballots to be changed. Unofficial ballot totals showed she had 26,003 votes, the second most votes in a race for a two-year term. Voters cast ballots for Klen as a way to honor her memory and because they thought she deserved to win. The Joliet Junior College board will appoint someone to take her spot. It’s unusual for dead people to get elected, but it does happen. There’s nothing wrong with honoring the memory of a beloved person.

Going down again? In a report dated March 30, Moody’s says the state of Illinois’ already low (Baa2 negative) credit rating “is vulnerable to further downgrades as ‘grand bargain’ talks have broken down, and intensifying liquidity pressures have tripled the state’s chronic backlog of unpaid bills to a record $13 billion." Remember what we wrote above about things getting worse? Illinois is in a race to the bottom.

Our license plates are ugly. Scott Reeder was too kind in his column that appeared Thursday critiquing the design of Illinois' new license plates. "Yuck" could be replaced by more descriptive words not suitable for publication here. The design is cluttered, to say the least. Sending Abe Lincoln to a corner where he looks more like a smudge spot than a president is a disgrace. You get what you pay for. The Secretary of State's Office had the plates designed in-house rather than seeking professional help from elsewhere. Those of us who have the new plates wish we could exchange them. Of course that could be said about many things in Illinois.