21 Comments - Anon - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 10:26 am: Anyone notice that the GA website says the next time the House is in session is 11/16/10? - erstwhilesteve - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 10:35 am: Rich, The Quinn link seems to be bad. - anon - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 10:50 am: Rich, will the story you’re working on be something we see today on the blog, in tomorrow’s fax, or neither? - John Galt - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 10:51 am: Interesting Zorn column. However, I did notice at least one miscalculation. Zorn states: “Look at your own numbers: If spending truly were up 36 percent and revenue were up 51 percent, we’d be running a surplus…” That isn’t necessarily so. Just as a back of the envelope calculation, let’s say spending was $200 per year and revenue was $150 per year. Spending up 36% would translate to $272 while revenue up 51% would translate to $226.50. That’s still a deficit of $45.50 per year as opposed to a deficit of $50 per year. We’d still be digging ourselves into a hole but at a slower rate. Don’t know how that would translate using the actual numbers, but it caught my attention. - Small Town Liberal - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 10:54 am: - According to the non-partisan Civic Federation, total Illinois revenues (inflation adjusted) have increased to $54.7 billion in fiscal year 2010, from $35.3 billion in fiscal 2001. That’s an astonishing 51 percent increase. As healthy an increase as that’s been, state spending has sucked up every penny of that increase, and then some. During the same period, total appropriations have increased 36 percent, to $54.6 billion from $40.2 billion. - Is it just me, or does Dennis Byrne never really explain that his own numbers add up to a $1 million surplus? - Fan of the Game - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 10:58 am: If they actually get a budget done by May 31, it would almost certainly have to be a 6-month budget that doesn’t really change anything–just enough to get through the election before making real cuts and trying to increase the tax rate. - Rich Miller - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 11:10 am: JG, and STL, the problem is that they’re looking at totally different numbers. One can’t draw a conclusion from any of it. - John Galt - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 11:12 am: Just a guess, but might “total appropriations” not include non-discretionary expenditures such as interest payments on debt? - Rich Miller - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 11:13 am: JG, if you look at General Funds spending since FY 2001, adjusted for inflation it’s about $2 billion below FY 2010’s projected spending. That’s the number which should be looked at most closely, not the other ones. - Vote Quimby! - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 11:30 am: Nice to see the universities being treated as any other state vendor–having to pay interest while waiting for the state to pay its bills. Has Hynes been eerily absent during the past few weeks? - Irish - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 11:30 am: Extra sessions could prove to be quite interesting. The GA, when figuring what one of their days was worth to calculate their share of furlough money to be paid, figured that they worked 365 days a year. So they should not have a problem with working all summer. They should also not ask for extra money for overtime sessions. How can you get overtime when you work 365 days a year? This might seem like a petty issue but I am hoping people monitor this and are ready to call them on it if they change their tune. And lest they claim they weren’t part of the furlough agreement, it passed unanimously. - wordslinger - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 12:01 pm: - According to the non-partisan Civic Federation, total Illinois revenues (inflation adjusted) have increased to $54.7 billion in fiscal year 2010, from $35.3 billion in fiscal 2001. That’s an astonishing 51 percent increase– That’s some revenue growth. I must have missed the big tax cut our supply sider friends tell us is necessary for growth. Or could it be Illinois’ economy was growing during this time? No, can’t be. It’s fundamentally broken and in decline, according to those same folks. - Confused - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 12:05 pm: Anon, that 11/16/10 date on the GA website is not significant. That’s just the next date that is known “for sure”. They will certainly be meeting before that, and once the date is known they will update the website. - Way Way Down Here - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 12:11 pm: I’ve been thinking the same thing about Hynes. - Ghost - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 12:31 pm: Word business growth is tied to taxes, not supply and demand or the market. Take Sam Walton, he recognized the need for retail stores only in tax free locations, and built an empire putting tores on every block of States which are tax free, but staying out of the pesky high tax small towns which didnit have any retailers. - Vote Quimby! - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 1:32 pm: ==pesky high tax small towns== Then Wal-Mart realized they can entice those towns with TIFs and sales tax biz districts…now Wal-Mart is the largest private recipient of sales tax dollars! - jake - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 2:51 pm: The thing that has been squeezing everything else in the budget for the last decade is the increase in Medicaid spending, simply due to the great inflation in health care costs in general. Then the recession turned a chronic problem into a critical problem. President Obama was (is) right in his priorities. If we do not at some point solve the problem of health care cost inflation, the entire economy will be crippled. We won’t solve that this year. We will have a rotten budget because there is not enough money to cover even basic services at the level to which people are accustomed, even if the legislature finally gets its priorities perfect. Rich does a real service in steering the conversation into a problem-solving rather than a scapegoating mode. - Ronbo - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 3:02 pm: A big proponent of the Star Bonds Bill,sent an e-mail to each Senator indicating that Marion’s umemployment rate is “Approaching 20%”. According to the IDES website, Willamson County’s unemployment rate for March was 11.2%. That same website indicates that 70 other counties in Illinois had rates equal to or exceeding Williamson County’s rate. Let’s give this new “Innovative, expreimental” program to all who need it. - Ghost - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 3:16 pm: VQ that is cart before horse. Wal-mart built up its name and empire without those tif’s and sales tax districts by building retail stores where Sears and Montgomery Wards were running only catalog stores (ie a shop front with a catalog and a phone). After they became huge, developers sought to entice them to expand even more by offering those incetives to the retail gian it had become. But the core of the buisness was built without tax incetives or reverse auctions with chinese manufacturing; it was built by a guy in a pickup who said there is a demand in these markets, and if you build it they will come. - Ghost - Tuesday, May 18, 10 @ 3:21 pm: jake, where is this “inflation” in health care costs? Take out the costs of new technology that was never build in the past… What about the inflation in pay rates for athletes, actors, public spekaing like palin etc? halth care debtae: Doctors make too much money and should be regualted into smaller pay checks (But not say an actor mor athelete making 40 mil for one year, or Palin makiing severla mil speaking). Do you really want your brain surgeon to be the guy who endded up in a low paying career because all the smart guys went into other fields? - Conservative Veteran - Wednesday, May 19, 10 @ 11:19 am: A state legislator’s salary is about $78,000, per year. I would be more likely to vote for a legislative candidate who promises that, if elected, he or she would vote to decrease legislators’ salaries to $55,000. The state government should cut the gas tax rate and the cigeratte tax rate. Those tax rates are too high, causing many people to buy gas and cigerattes in neighboring states. If the Illinois legislature decreased those tax rates, more Illinois residents will buy those products in Illinois, and state tax revenue will increase. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.