To be honest, I really don't feel I am knowledgeable enough yet to have an opinion of him one way or another. I'm trying to keep an open mind and not let my political tendencies sway my judgement as I research. Part of the problem is that I'm sure a good portion what I've read in the past few days is either skewed or plain wrong. It's really difficult to discern fact from fiction when it comes to politics and issues like this.

After conduction some searching, I did find the DNR's appropriations for the past three years. They were as follows:

2011 - $288,991,800
2012 - $251,153,300 (Reduced by 13.1% from '11 to '12)
2013 - $217,180,800 (Reduced by 13.5% from '12 to '13; 24.8% from 11' to '13)
http://www2.illinois.gov/gov/budget/...et%20FINAL.pdf

This is a very significant decrease but not all that surprising with the state of the economy in Illinois. What I found even more concerning is that I have not been able to locate a breakdown of how the DNR's budget is spent. This should be public record. Maybe I just haven't looked in the right place yet, but if it hasn't been published, we should demand that it be!