There is a very famous Japanese film called “Rashomon” that involves different characters giving different accounts of a murder. Some descriptions of the film describe these varying accounts as contradictory and self-serving.

For some time now, it feels like Illinois has been doing its own version of Rashomon with the closed-door talks going on. It doesn’t matter if it’s the talks between Gov. BRUCE RAUNER and the four legislative leaders or the working groups that are supposedly trying to hash out some agreement on things like workers’ compensation and government consolidation and school funding reform and pension reform and all of the other stuff.

It has been about a year and a half since Quincy Teen Reach received any state funding, and no one knows how much longer the Illinois budget impasse will continue.

Dennis Williams, who has directed the local Teen Reach for 11 years, said the state used to provide $116,000 of the program’s $158,000 annual budget. Funding stopped in July 2015, when Illinois started a new fiscal year without a budget. Now, in the closing days of 2016, lawmakers still haven’t got a true budget and a stopgap spending plan has run its course.

The sentiment “Peace on Earth, good will toward all” doesn’t seem to apply to Illinois politics, does it?

In March 1999, Hendricks was arrested in Edwardsville and charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance. He was found with cocaine on him. That arrest led to an eventual conviction as Hendricks pleaded guilty and wound up being sentenced to two years probation as part of a plea bargain on Dec. 13, 1999.

Nearly 17 years later, those dark days of Hendricks’ life were wiped out by one swipe of Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner’s pen. In late November, Rauner agreed to grant Hendricks clemency and expunged the felony charge from Hendricks’ permanent record. Rauner’s action ended a decade-long process that spanned three governors. Of the more than 2,000 clemency petitions Rauner has considered since taking office in January 2015, Hendricks’ case is one of only 80 that he has signed off on.

“I’m lucky and blessed,” Hendricks said. “He’s given me this opportunity, and I’m damn sure not going to squander it.”

The Illinois Fairgrounds Foundation expects to start work early next year toward raising public awareness and money for decades’ worth of repairs at state fairgrounds in Springfield and Du Quoin.

At last estimate, the bill was $180 million and growing.

Chicago’s busiest TV and film studio is getting another hand from the government: a property-tax cut that will shift an estimated $4 million burden onto other taxpayers over the next dozen years, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis.

That’s on top of more than $17 million in grants that Cinespace Chicago Film Studios — home to “Chicago Fire,” “Empire,” and other hit TV shows and movies — has gotten from the state of Illinois.

Things are changing on Illinois’ interstates.

Over the past five years, the number of Illinois State Police troopers on patrol and the number of speeding citations they’ve issued statewide have gone down significantly. Troopers issued 211,857 speeding tickets in 2010, and last year, 126,959 tickets were issued, a decline of 40 percent.