Sometimes a bad deal is just a bad deal. And it’s not Springfield’s job to try to make it right. In fact, it would be a mistake to even try.

That’s a lesson to keep in mind when contemplating the future of the Prairie State Energy Campus.

Prairie State, and what to do about it, stood in the way of major utility re-regulation late last month as the spring legislative session wound down.

Lawmakers will be headed to Springfield next week to finish their work. This means the pressure to prolong the life of Prairie State, or to bail out the dozens of towns and cities that are owner-customers of a coal-fired power plant that is one of the nation’s biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, could rise again.

Read more at the 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.