Talk about mixed messages.

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Not long after the Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, told a national television audience that Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was thinking of possibly resigning here on Monday, the governor’s spokesman broke some news of his own.

Not only was Mr. Blagojevich not resigning, the spokesman, Lucio Guerrero, said, but he was planning to go to work on Monday and study a few bills that might at some point require either his signature or veto — including one that will be hammered out in a special legislative session in Springfield that would strip him of his coveted appointment power over President-elect Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat.

“He has no plans of resigning today or tomorrow,” Mr. Guerrero said on Sunday. “He still signs bills as governor, and he wants to see details.”

The empty Senate seat is at the heart of a sprawling criminal case against Mr. Blagojevich, a 52-year-old Democrat who was arrested Tuesday on charges that he schemed to trade Mr. Obama’s old seat for money and favors.

Ms. Madigan is a longtime rival of Mr. Blagojevich who has expressed interest in the past of one day being governor herself, and she has requested that the State Supreme Court declare the governor unfit for office. Ms. Madigan acknowledged on CBS’s morning news show, “Face the Nation,” that her assertion was based on “rumors in the media.” But not before they set off a firestorm of speculation.

Her spokeswoman, Robyn Ziegler, said of her remarks after the television appearance: “She has no inside information about anything.”

The rumor began swirling here over the weekend after The Chicago Sun-Times published an article saying that someone close to the governor said he might make a decision about resignation as early as Monday.

Mr. Guerrero denied it then and now.

The back-and-forth over such a serious case has become more like comedy. The governor’s every move is scrutinized — Where is his car parked? Why is he making strange faces on his porch? — in an effort to predict the future of state government. In the absence of any official statements or appearances by Mr. Blagojevich, the public and journalists are making do with what little they have.

“It’s like tail-chasing,” said Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. “Part of it is that there are so many unprecedenteds at the same time. So everybody’s playing with a rule book they’ve never seen before, and at the center of all this is a governor who is not known for rational behavior. So any story just suddenly becomes like sky-writing. ‘Oh, he’s leaving! Oh, he’s staying!’

“Really, nobody knows what the next step is,” she said, adding that it may well be resignation on Monday.

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