Illinois senator worries about pain after gangrene sets in to body politic
From the mouths of babes: “Why are we so bad with money?”
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner then responded Monday to the New Baden Elementary School student: “We need to get balanced budgets, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Trying. Lawmakers are back in Springfield. Trying?
State Sens. Kyle McCarter and Dan McConchie are pushing the “Taxpayer Bargain” rather than the “Grand Bargain,” which may or may not be dead and almost certainly would have hiked taxes. The Taxpayer Bargain calls for a balanced budget with lawmakers losing their salaries for a year if they again overspend, 10 percent across the board cuts, prioritized spending from savings and borrowing $7 billion to pay a chunk of our $12.7 billion bill backlog and stop spending $500 million on the penalties and fees from letting those bills sit.
After they explained their plan to readers, state Sen. Bill Haine did what most in Springfield do — dumped all over the idea and painted it as too painful. Edwardsville would lose $108,000. Collinsville would lose $103,000. Recoil. Ouch. Too painful.
Sorry, Sen. Haine, but what’s your plan? All the deadbeat elected leaders in Springfield already are costing the cities, and schools, and counties, and social service agencies. They aren’t in pain; they are in trauma and already passing the pain along to local taxpayers from the state failing to honor its obligations.
Belleville high schools start their own bus service because the state owes them $3 million. Belleville bumps up its property taxes $45 on a $100,000 home to pay the shortfall in its state-mandated defined benefit pensions — systems not available to 85 percent of private employees. St. Clair County takes an extra $5.8 million from property taxpayers — $40 more on that $100K home — because the state hasn’t paid them $5 million for probation services.
Seems a safe guess that local government would give up a $103,000 share of state income taxes if it led to the state keeping its million-dollar promises. Even that $103,000 promise is tainted, with the state returning 6 percent of the higher income tax rate to cities instead of the 10 percent promised.
A little whining and pain today or death tomorrow — and we really don’t think that’s an overstatement. Lawmakers need to get to work and pass a balanced budget, as the Illinois Constitution requires, for the first time in 16 years and any budget for the first time in two years.
Do that without any more job-killing income tax hikes that further make us uglier than all our neighboring states, and maybe the outflow of residents will slow and the recovery will finally begin.
This story was originally published April 26, 2017 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Illinois senator worries about pain after gangrene sets in to body politic."