Governor Bruce Rauner has been touring Illinois to talk about his new “messaging.” He’s quite excited about his “messaging” plans, telling one reporter that if he could do anything differently about his tenure so far, it would be to improve the way he gets his message out to voters.

One of the things that the governor was apparently counting on during his Downstate tour was few if any follow-up questions from reporters. For instance, after he completely dodged a question from a Peoria TV reporter about whether he deserves any blame for a year without a budget, the subject was changed and the governor was let off the hook.

Despite this, Rauner actually complained in Champaign last week about how “there’s no substance in the reporting,” before saying he was in the process of creating his own communication platforms to push his messaging directly to Illinoisans.

He’s not wrong about the lack of substance in the media’s coverage. A recent survey of social-service providers by the highly respected United Way of Illinois was almost completely ignored by media outlets, despite an eye-grabbing finding that about a million Illinoisans had lost services during the impasse.

And the governor’s contention that he himself had cut $800 million in “wasteful spending” from the budget made it into print and on the air without a single question being asked about what those cuts were.

As it turns out, there are multiple problems with the governor’s list of cuts, which I asked to see. Some of the saved money is due to action by his predecessor; a chunk of the cash is from special state funds with their own dedicated revenue sources; a bunch of the spending was put into the six-month stopgap budget that Rauner signed into law on June 30; and Rauner himself requested some of the “cut” items be appropriated in his own budget proposal last spring.

Let’s start at the very top of the governor’s list: “Medicaid Eligibility Redeterminations,” which he claims saved $53 million. Okay, but that was initiated in 2012 with Medicaid reforms signed into law by Governor Pat Quinn. Rauner’s budget office says Quinn may have signed it, but he fully implemented it.

Rauner’s touted savings from cutting $21 million in subsidies for disabled mass-transit users is illusory because that money comes from the state’s Road Fund, which is funded with motor-fuel taxes, license fees, etc. The same goes for his $4-million cut to Amtrak.

Several other programs on the governor’s list also get their money from other state funds (OSF), including tourism ($13 million claimed cut), recycling ($6 million), renewable-energy and energy-efficiency programs ($8 million), ICC vacancies and transfers ($6 million), and coal programs ($15 million).

The governor’s budget office claims that saving OSF money can help patch holes in the rest of the budget. But these funds (like the Road Fund, which was swept last year for a fortune) are set up and funded for particular purposes.

The governor claims in his list that he cut “Assorted DHS Programs not covered by Court Orders or Consent Decrees” for a total of $91 million. But several of those programs are funded in the stopgap budget, including The Autism Program, ARC of Illinois, Teen Reach, homeless prevention, addiction prevention, the Emergency Food Program, funeral and burial expenses, immigrant integration services, welcoming centers, epilepsy services, etc.

Rauner also claims reductions to Criminal Justice Information Authority programs including Cease Fire, but that’s in the stopgap as well.

And despite claiming credit for making cuts, the governor actually requested spending for the programs in his own budget proposal from earlier this year, including paratransit and Amtrak. His budget also increased funding for tourism programs.

The governor also claimed $100 million in savings for not constructing the Illiana Expressway, which was in doubt anyway. And his touted $145 million cut to child-care programs was reversed when Rauner cut a deal with the Democrats.

And then there’s the claimed savings of $4 million due to a delay in the opening of a veterans home in Chicago. But that delay actually ended up increasing the cost of the project, and no money was appropriated by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly last fiscal year anyway, so it’s not really a Rauner savings.

Also, is a home for veterans really “wasteful” spending? I doubt many politicians would make that claim. Much the same could be said of several other programs on the list.

How’s that for “substance,” governor?

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax (a daily political newsletter) and CapitolFax.com.

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