What can go wrong will go wrong. We’ve known that forever. Nobody ever told us it would all go wrong at the same time.

Floods, plague and fire are coming at us all at once. With all that, the sudden appearance of “murder wasps” hardly seemed a surprise.

The COVID-19 pandemic has a multiplier effect, making the mayhem of Miserable 2020 almost unbearable — and challenging our government leaders to handle these troubles all at once.

Here in Illinois, we have compounding factors. Financial weakness, corruption and even the overabundance of government districts are all maladies with powerful impacts on the state. In “these difficult times” — a cliche borne of this moment — the breakdowns in good government makes the dire situation even more difficult.

Read more at chicagotribune.com.

David Greising is the president and chief executive of the Better Government Association, joining the BGA in 2018. For nearly a century, the BGA has fought for honest and effective government through investigative journalism and policy advocacy.

Greising’s career started at the City News Bureau of Chicago, with stops at the Chicago Sun-Times, Business Week magazine, the Chicago Tribune and Reuters. He was a co-founder of the Chicago News Cooperative and worked briefly as a consultant to World Business Chicago. Today, Greising writes on government issues in regular columns for the Tribune and Crain’s Chicago Business.

Under Greising’s leadership, the BGA has played a key role in uncovering public corruption amidst the wide-ranging federal probe, starting with an in-depth report about Ald. Ed Burke’s conflicts of interest before the federal charges against Burke. The BGA also has exposed waste and fraud at O’Hare and the proliferation of corruption and poverty into Dolton, Lyons and other Chicago suburbs. The BGA’s policy team has led calls for ethics reform in Chicago’s City Council and in state government.