* My Sun-Times column today is basically my answer to Thursday’s Question of the Day…
Our state’s reigning drama queen has struck yet again.
As you know by now, Gov. Pat Quinn held a news conference Thursday to blame the General Assembly for forcing him to close seven state facilities and lay off almost 2,000 employees.
The Legislature, Quinn said, had passed a budget that didn’t provide enough funding for operations. So, he said, he had no choice but to close down three mental health centers, two centers for people with developmental disabilities, a prison and a youth correctional camp.
The governor is right about the budget. The Legislature did, indeed, not provide enough money to run those agencies.
But Quinn took himself out of the budget process early this year by irresponsibly proposing to spend $2 billion more than the state had.
Legislators decided that he could no longer be taken seriously, so he was essentially cut out of the process. He could’ve easily made himself relevant again by facing reality, but he wouldn’t do it.
Instead, he blasted the proposed budget as “radical” and “extreme” and vowed in a series of drama-filled public appearances to stand strong against it. But in the end, he signed that “radical” budget into law while cutting an additional $376 million from an already underfunded bill during yet another drama-packed news conference.
Quinn’s latest pronouncement will free up less than $55 million this fiscal year.
To give you an idea of how small these cuts are in the big picture, his new plan is less than 0.2 percent of the entire state budget.
That’s what is known in the parlance as a budgetary “rounding error.”
Actually, it’s more like a rounding error on a rounding error.
But instead of treating this small change for what it is, he proposed things such as slashing 350 workers from the Department of Corrections by closing Downstate Lincoln’s prison. That will save just $9.2 million this year and, as a result, cram even more inmates into the state’s remaining and terribly overcrowded prisons.
For crying out loud, he could’ve almost found $9.2 million in couch cushions.
OK, that’s an exaggeration. But the governor could’ve proposed canceling cable TV for inmates, streamlining management and eliminating education and job programs for inmates sentenced to life or near-life terms.
But sensible, reasonable, moderate reductions like those wouldn’t have gotten his face on Chicago TV and on the front page of every newspaper in the state. He also could have sat down and talked with legislative leaders about the changes he needed in the budget.
He could’ve asked individual legislators whose facilities were targeted to help him find the votes to patch the budget’s holes. Instead, he decided to hold a news conference and his office directed angry phone calls to those same legislators’ office.
“Quinn is just like Rod Blagojevich without the criminality,” is a phrase I’ve heard for a while.
That’s not fair. Blagojevich’s battles with the General Assembly were long, exhausting wars that wound up putting the state deep into a gaping fiscal hole. As bad as things are in Illinois, we’re now in infinitely better fiscal shape. Also, Quinn has a real heart, not Blagojevich’s cynical proclamations of universal love.
Even so, Quinn’s behavior is scarily reminiscent. Never admit fault and always blame the Legislature when something goes wrong. Hold big, splashy Chicago news conferences rather than do the actual hard work of quiet governance.
And, no matter what, try to get yourself on Chicago TV as much as humanly possible.
We are so screwed.
* Meanwhile, the SJ-R is taking the governor way too literally…
Quinn doesn’t want these cuts any more than do the (mostly Republican) lawmakers in whose districts the targeted facilities are located. He said as much during the spring, when he advocated for a budget more than $3 billion larger than the one ultimately sent to him.
Lawmakers, intent on ensuring that the income tax increase passed in January remains a temporary tax, opted to spend less. Are there less painful ways to find the $54.8 million in savings Quinn announced Thursday?
Is the state, which has had an uptick of $1 billion in tax revenues this year, still too broke to appropriate more funds to prevent these closures and layoffs in vital areas? Are lawmakers prepared to weather another, far larger, round of cuts, when Quinn addresses the remaining $182.8 million gap in “Phase III” of his budget implementation?
There are no easy answers for these questions, but Quinn has set the stage for them to be answered when the General Assembly returns on Oct. 25.
* Madigan’s mouthpiece didn’t seem all that sympathetic…
“Lawmakers approved a spending plan based on the revenues that were realistically coming in,” said Steve Brown, a spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago. “This is recognition by the governor of the very difficult national economic situation that we’re in. The Legislature recognized that several months ago, and the governor is recognizing it now.”
Quinn suggests there’s a way to avoid much of this: Lawmakers should agree with $376 million in cuts he made to the budget this summer and shift that money around to “mitigate the damage.”
The governor could find an ally in Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, who released a statement saying he intends to “revisit the shortcomings of the budget that was passed this spring.”
But Quinn could face a tougher go in the House, where Democrat Madigan has aligned with Republican Leader Tom Cross, of Oswego, to keep spending levels lower and use any extra cash coming in to pay down the state’s multibillion-dollar backlog of bills.
* And this is an accurate depiction of what these threats will do to small town Illinois…
Lincoln Mayor Keith Snyder said Quinn’s announcement will have a psychological and financial effect on the community. People who are worried about being laid off will purchase less gas and groceries and go out for fewer meals.
“You start to watch your expenses,” Snyder said. “That’s a huge deal for Lincoln.”
* Expect more of this…
Parents at the Jack Mabley Development Center in Dixon already are planning to hire an attorney to fight the proposed closure, said Barbara Cozzone-Achino, the mother of two developmentally disabled men who live there.
“It’s going to be devastating, because my sons don’t take change very well,” Cozzone-Achino said.
…And this…
State Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, said even though many of the to-be-closed sites fall in GOP areas, Democratic and Republican lawmakers will fight the governor’s plans.
“When you’re talking about the closure of five (mental health and developmental) centers, there is a local impact regardless of where you’re from,” said Mautino.
* And the governor may still want this, but the plan is dead, so the Tribune can stop squawking about red herrings now…
Of course, it wouldn’t have been a vintage Quinn news conference without an allusion to how swell it would be if lawmakers let him drive taxpayers deeper in debt by borrowing still more billions to pay those old bills.
No way, Governor. Your borrowing, and your predecessors’ borrowing, have made a terrible mess of this state’s finances. Enough with living today off of tomorrow. You got your fat tax increase. Make do.
Or keep eliminating services and employees until all that’s left is you and the pension system you don’t want to reform.
* Related…
* Quinn’s fact sheet on layoffs, closures
* Facilities and savings in Quinn closures
* What’s next for people in facilities being closed?
* Truth behind Quinn’s budget claims
* Quinn threatens to lay off 1,900 state employees, close 7 facilities
* Quinn Announces Plan to Cut More than 500 Jobs in Southern Illinois
* Quinn Proposes Closing Seven State Facilities; Two in the Stateline
* Chester Mental Health facility to close
* Local Lawmakers oppose Quinn’s budget cuts, Singer and Mabley on chopping block
* Are more cuts really the answer?
* Will County may give school chief $1,000 a month till state pays her
- wordslinger - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 5:23 am:
I’m guessing Quinn thinks there’s some deal he can make with the GA to avoid these closures. It probably involves him “riding to the rescue” and being “forced” to sign the gambling bill.
- Cindy Lou - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 6:23 am:
I feel for the state workers caught up in all this. It was just three years ago it was my family wrapped up in the ‘drama’. It was stressful and an emotional roller coaster. It was layoff meetings (then redid meetings as not performed correctly) massive amounts of printed out packages of paper sent to all of us and lots of time lost on the job (not counting all the lost for the duration vehicles and cost of gasoline going back and forth to meetings)going through the process…only to have ’somebody’ ride in and ’save’ us at the 11th and 1/2 hour.
It kinda gets to the point of ‘do it or get off the pot’. We’re not toys to play with on someone’s political whim.
- Nice kid - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 6:33 am:
No one thinks our finances are in order, no one wants to pay more, and no one wants to cut anything. We are so screwed.
- Cassiopeia - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 7:18 am:
If Quinn had announced layoffs to headquarters based staff in the effected agencies the GA would have no say in either approving or disapproving the layoffs, but since he did it combined with facility closures he has given the GA a way to disapprove.
If or when they stop him what does Quinn plan to do then?
I wonder if the Governor’s Budget director or chief of staff have thought about this?
- Pelon - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 7:19 am:
Do changes to appropriations require a super majority? If so, that makes it much harder to work out a deal with the GA.
- vole - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 7:44 am:
cartel hostage taking
do not mistake for democratic governance
- Dooley Dudright - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 7:47 am:
@ Rich — “We are so screwed.”
To embellish Adlai Stevenson:
“In Illinois, anyone can become governor. That’s one of the risks you take.”
- out of the game - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 8:05 am:
I moved on to the private sector a few years back, rarely comment and have had only a handful of interactions with Quinn and his top staff in recent years, but this article has me thinking back to Rich’s article from a few weeks ago regarding Quinn’s “governing strategy” which was spot on in describing how Quinn’s governing approach is to basically delay action on significant legislation, create divisions even among his own base and then act as some sort of savior of the people once some sort of half-ass temporary decision is reached. My point is this, I am sure people on his staff are good people, but when does someone have the cojones to say “enough is enough with this guy,” resign and call attention to the fact that the status quo at the top is unsustainable and a true embarrassment, not only to the state, but to themselves. I say this as a Dem, but if Quinn or his top people were in the private sector and brought these management techniques into the board room, they would get laughed out of the room and be out of a job. Why aren’t more elected Dem’s throwing this guy under the bus? When will Rahm pull a Daley and call this guy “Cuckoo?”
- Michelle Flaherty - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 8:08 am:
Keep in mind we’re barely past the halfway mark of the FIRST year of his FOUR year term. It’s a little early to be declaring war, but it appears the troops are in fact massing on the borders.
- TimB - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 8:18 am:
Haven’t we learned to recognize the pattern here?? Blago did the same thing, and probably those before him. Need to find a reason to increase taxes and/or fees collected from the public? Just threaten seniors, or kids, or threaten to close prisons or take away care for the sick or mentally challenged. That’s so distasteful to everyone that the public outcry will be “whatever it takes to keep these things from happening”.
Rich’s suggestions are right on. Why should our prisons resemble country clubs or spas?? Time in prison is supposed to make the inmate NOT want to come back, not give him/her better conditions than they have at home. A manager @ Vandalia many years ago told me that many of their inmates knew exactly what crimes to commit to get sent BACK to prison. Why should we worry about training someone for a job that is in the pokey for the rest of his/her life?
Get rid of the dead wood in our state government. Are all the Blago appointees that Quinn was going to fire really gone?? Do we still have appointees to boards that are paid $K,000’s and yet may have never met??
This state is so screwed. And I was bred, born, lived my entire life, and will probably die here. Makes me sick.
- Aldyth - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 8:23 am:
Closing even one state facility or prison usually takes years of hearings, planning, and changing strategies a dozen times. Suddenly, Quinn is going to do this in a matter of months? How much work, panic, and filed lawsuits will happen before Quinn changes his mind?
I have a headache.
- Carl - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 8:27 am:
Rich,
I agree with what you say about Quinn, but the “drama queen” has been permitted to escalate to this point.
Critics should have been criticizing Quinn a long time ago for failing to resolve the prison over-crowding issue he single-handedly turned into a serious fiscal and safety issue when he ended Corrections issuing of Meritorious Good Time (MGT)conduct credits to inmates and failed to replace it with some other measure to reduce the prison population. Now, 70% of inmates are low-level offenders staying in prison longer than they otherwise would because they receive no MGT. Quinn over-reacted to Brady’s political criticisms when he suspended MGT in 12/09, but no way he should have been allowed to do nothing and keep silent all this time without putting another program in place.
The additional cost to taxpayers to hold on to these inmates longer than necessary is indefensible in this budget crunch. If critics had ridden Quinn’s back about his procrastination on prison overcrowding, he would not feel so morally superior in attacking the legislature for “creating a fiscal crisis”. Now, he even feels emboldened to cut Corrections. I would like him to explain why on a staffing ratio of 10,041 corrections staff to approx 50,000 inmates (or a one-to-five ratio) he has found it impossible to rearrange staff placement so that more CO’s are front-line people?
I think he is susceptible to criticism that given his solicitation of public imput and ideas, he has failed to adequately reduce the costs of many state agencies. Too bad critics have given him a free ride.
- Generation X - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 8:45 am:
It seems odd that there is not more furor coming from organized labor on this. Collective Bargaining has effectively been ended in Illinois. There is literally no reason to bargain in this state any longer if agreements mean nothing. The end of collective bargaining in Wisconsin created a national uproar. The end of it in Illinois has created very little response. So what are those union dues being paid for anyway?
- AC - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 8:47 am:
These may be the actions of a drama queen and even a mad man, but what if his insane strategy actually works? Sure, he will lose style points, but at the same time he will have overcame Madigan more effectively than any sane man could have.
- mokenavince - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 9:05 am:
Quinn AKA MR Cellopane is at it again . Ready fire
aim. It’s so sad that took so long for him to realize he didn’t have 2 billion dollars. His inept leadership is killing our state.If the Republicans went back to slating canidates we could have won the election.Quinn lied to the people who elected him,and it looks like he just dosen’t get it.He has no plan. In a contest between him an Madigan it’s no contest. To pick on the mentaly ill is a crime.
- Disgusted Democrat - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 9:15 am:
Pat Quinn has become an embarrassment to the citizens of Illinois. He had a great opportunity to follow up the Blagojevich Governorship with something better. The bar was set very low, but Pat Quinn has managed to squeeze under it.
He has proven himself to be a bungling, incompetent chief executive for this state.
The leaders of the Democratic Party need to decide very quickly if they just need to remove him by recall before next year’s elections and then replace him permanently in a special election. They have the mechanism in the new recall law to accomplish this and I’m certain that they could get enough Republican co-sponsors to signoff on the recall petition.
It is in the interest of the democratic legislators running in new districts next year and take the lead on this and kick the idiot out of the Governor’s mansion. Otherwise he will be a continuing albatross around their neck.
The Democrats and their allies have little to lose in the long run by taking the lead.
- the Patriot - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 9:19 am:
The last 3 posts sort of tie up why we are in the mess, and not likely to get out. AFSCME should be going nuts, but they chose all of the people responsible for this mess. They can’t file a lawsuit against theunconstitutional budget because they will not go no holds barred against the democrats they fully intend to support in the next election.
Insane, inept, and chosen by the unions. Until the unions change their behavior and spend millions to elect republican they need to be quiet and soak up the mess they helped create.
How does a 10% accross the board cut look now? Day one, every department would be on notice to find 10% in operational cuts or lose staff.
Democrats are right, making haphazard cuts with not forthought halfway into the year is much better.
- Cincinnatus - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 9:27 am:
My real question is whether Quinn has so crippled himself through his flip-flops, bumbling, dissembling and general inept performance, that the Democrats will primary him in 2013.
- Stones - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 9:32 am:
PQ is paying for years of being the outsider who took cheap shots at the guys making the calls in Illinois government. Now that he is in the big chair he is incapable of cutting a deal even with those in his own party much less the Republicans. A textbook lesson that it is easier to campaign than govern for some folks.
- Pete Mitchell - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 9:44 am:
FYI
Inmates pay for cable tv not the state.
- Anonymous - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 9:47 am:
==Hold big, splashy Chicago news conferences rather than do the actual hard work of quiet governance.==
Reminds me of a school district that was trying to get funding once, so someone put a four-inch wide hole in the ground near one of the playgrounds and called the press to come see the condition all of our schools were in. Hollywood for ugly people and drama queens is alive and well in the midwest–on both sides of the aisle.
- Lil Enchilada - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 9:53 am:
They can pay for cable TV in prison because some get work release and make thousands of dollars while they are doing time. Some people sentenced to years in prison get weekend passes and jobs. How can this be?
- Six Degrees of Separation - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 9:56 am:
The end of collective bargaining in Wisconsin created a national uproar. The end of it in Illinois has created very little response.
That’s because it feels better when a champion of the “little people” does it.
- Generation X - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 10:00 am:
The inmates use their state pay to finance cable tv. That $$$$$ still comes from the State.
- Soccertease - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 10:05 am:
‘out of the games’ comments are spot on. Rich’s column a while back talked about the ‘doomsday then savior’ strategy that Quinn uses time and again. One leadership characteristic is to instill confidence and hope in your subordinates. Gov Quinn always looks like he’s ready to cry.
- Anonymous - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 10:25 am:
I forgot to mention that one of the school district people (who was rumored to have dug the hole the night before since none of the kids–nor the custodian–saw it before that day) actually grabbed one of the reporters during the “press conference” when she came “too close” to the four-inch hole–so that she wouldn’t fall in (I guess). Said he was worried she’d get hurt and file a suit against the school.
The referendum failed miserably and he resigned not too long after. Probably went to work as a crisis communications consultant or staffer for a pol. (Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, I guess…cause it ain’t gonna be pretty.)
- dupage dan - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 10:42 am:
Rich,
Please don’t hold back. How do you really feel about Quinn?
- About this - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 11:25 am:
I feel for the DD people in the Centers but one thing I agree with Quinn on is that those Centers are outdated. Using state $ to help families hire help or use a group home setting costs a lot less; however that would take time.
- Scottish - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 11:36 am:
I remember cutbacks and program changes to be more strategic, with actual planning and impact analysis. Working at the Bureau of the Budget under Mandeville, Walters, Schnorf, they make these guys look like amateurs.
- Rich Miller - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 11:52 am:
===I remember cutbacks and program changes to be more strategic, with actual planning and impact analysis.===
Yeah, and without splashy Chicago pressers every week.
- Rich Miller - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 12:09 pm:
===Hey Rich why were my comments deleted??
You know I’m right about Quinn and his cozy relationship with the illeagals, ===
You post a moronic comment like that and wonder why you’ve been deleted? Goodbye.
- 47th Ward - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 12:23 pm:
Ill eagles? I read something about geese getting sick around Chicagoland but hadn’t realized it spread to eagles. Wasn’t Joe Walsh in the Eagles?
And why is Quinn getting cozy with sick birds?
I have so many questions.
- wishbone - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 2:25 pm:
“You start to watch your expenses,” Snyder said. “That’s a huge deal for Lincoln.”
Well Mayor, some of us have had to watch our expenses for a long time. Welcome to the club.
- Regular Reader - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 2:36 pm:
I was thinking about the impact of these closures on local economies.
Chester is a city of 8,500 people. The closure of its health facility means 464 layoffs. That’s a pretty staggering impact.
I believe there needs to be cuts, but there had to be a better way of spreading the pain.
- Skirmisher - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 2:58 pm:
Quinn’s hypocracy knows no bounds. On the same day he announced the closing of these facilities, the local paper carried an article two of his political cronies being appointed to ratehr well paying jobs at IHPA to fill positions that had been effectively vacant for years, and could have just as well remained vacant at a time when State historic sites are falling into ruins due to a lack of adequate operating funds. At least Blago had entertainment value. You say, Rick, that Quinn has a heart. Perhaps so. But he has no honor or integrity.
- Rich Miller - Friday, Sep 9, 11 @ 3:06 pm:
===You say, Rick===
Rick is that other, much thinner guy.