DeKALB | A local state representative called the debate on Illinois’ budget a “high-stakes poker game” Monday as the General Assembly remained deadlocked on a budget that remains six weeks overdue.

Without a state budget, public school officials in Illinois don’t know how much their schools will be allotted, and are having to resort to guess work until the final budget is laid out.

“There are people who are calling saying, ‘What do we do?’ and we don’t know,” said Bob Pritchard, DeKalb and Sycamore’s state representative from the 70th district. “The situation is serious for Illinois. We’re really in uncharted water. Our state has never gone this long without a budget.”

Pritchard said he had hoped that Wednesday would be the “drop-dead” date for a state budget, but that the General Assembly would not be able to meet that deadline.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich rejected similar warnings from Pritchard and others Monday, telling The Associated Press that Wednesday was merely an arbitrary date.

However, in a statement last week, state Comptroller Dan Hynes said that if a budget isn’t in place by Wednesday, his office would not be able to process checks for state employees and that the state would “face a potential crisis each and every day.”

“The fact that we’ve reached this point is bad enough,” said Hynes, a Chicago Democrat. “But we can’t allow daily fear of a shut down to hold this state captive.”

Blagojevich directed the Illinois Finance Authority to make $175 million available to school districts at no interest to help alleviate payroll and planning problems that could result from the lack of a budget.

State lawmakers were supposed to come up with a budget by May 31, but have been deadlocked for months on the issue. The legislature passed an emergency one-month extension when the new fiscal year began July 1 just to keep state operations – including NIU – running, but that extension expired last week.

Blagojevich has drawn criticism from both democrats and republicans in the General Assembly for threatening to reject a budget unless it meets his standards on education, health care and construction spending.

Pritchard said that continually passing month-to-month budgets places a serious strain on state agencies, particularly schools.

“There’s no way to do it while planning hiring and continuing services” the Sycamore republican said. “[Schools] can’t do that on a month-to-month basis. We saw when we passed a temporary extension in July – there were no more discussions.”

As a solution to this year’s budget stalemate, Pritchard suggested that lawmakers switch to five-year budgets to allow state agencies to better plan for the future.

Pritchard said that, although scattered cries for Blagojevich’s impeachment aren’t a serious threat just yet, the governor’s credibility among lawmakers may be.

“Nobody believes that when he says something he will actually do it,” Pritchard said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.