By Monique Garcia, includes “… And the Rauner administration continued to sign contracts, whether or not the money was there to pay for it. The state’s nearly $16 billion backlog of bills is triple the amount when Rauner took office in January 2015. Under state law, unpaid bills can accrue as much as 12 percent in interest a year. The bipartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability has estimated that could mean as much as $2 million a day. The state can more than cut that interest rate in half by borrowing at a lower rate on the bond market.”