Our sorry state
Wednesday, Mar 8, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* We talked about this report yesterday, but Reuters has a good piece on it today…
The hole in Illinois’ general funds budget deepened to $9.6 billion in fiscal 2016, an increase of $2.7 billion from the previous year and the biggest deficit in at least 10 years, according to the state’s annual audit released on Tuesday.
As a 20-month impasse over the budget continues between Illinois’ Republican governor and Democrats who control the legislature, the state’s finances are in a freefall.
While the fiscal year that ended on June 30 marked the 15th straight year the state budget ended in the red, the deficit has grown 43 percent just since fiscal 2014. The fiscal 2016 gap surpassed a $9.1 billion deficit reached in fiscal 2012.
Illinois, the only state to lack a complete budget for two consecutive fiscal years, is operating on court-ordered spending for healthcare, social services and payroll, as well as ongoing appropriations covering pensions and debt service on bonds. A massive bill package to end the stalemate is on hold in the state Senate.
A few things about those highlighted passages above.
* First, as noted elsewhere today, Gov. Rauner vetoed the Democrats’ Fiscal Year 2016 budget. From his veto message…
Today I veto House Bill 4146 from the 99th General Assembly in order to protect Illinois taxpayers from an unbalanced and therefore unconstitutional budget.
The Speaker of the House and President of the Senate have admitted that the General Assembly’s budget is unbalanced. The Governor’s Office of Management and Budget concurs, calculating that this budget is nearly $4 billion out of balance.
Instead, the state ended up in a $9.6 billion hole. GOMB later revised its estimate of how much the Democrats’ budget was unbalanced, but, man, what a disaster this is.
* Second, when Gov. Rauner says he can’t find a balanced budget in recent history, he’s not stretching the truth. Fifteen years of spending not matching revenues. Whew. What a mess.
* Third, that previous record deficit peak forced a state income tax hike. And then it expired. And now here we are.
- Anonymous - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 2:17 pm:
News like this is what causes people to leave the state. It portrays of feeling of hopelessness!
- Arsenal - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 2:18 pm:
==the deficit has grown 43 percent just since fiscal 2014==
That’s a pretty sobering statistic.
- wordslinger - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 2:19 pm:
So you veto a budget because it’s “nearly $4 billion” in the red, and the result is annual spending that’s $9.6 billion in the red.
That’s some conservative cipherin’.
Was the governor’s veto decades in the making and not his fault. — the cultists chant for every malignant action he’s taken since January 2015?
- Anonymous - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 2:22 pm:
There’s been one common denominator the last 15 years, and it’s not Rauner.
- Arsenal - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 2:33 pm:
==There’s been one common denominator the last 15 years, and it’s not Rauner.==
And yet:
==the deficit has grown 43 percent just since fiscal 2014==
So, sure, Rauner didn’t create Illinois’ problems. He just made them worse.
- Anonymous - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 2:44 pm:
Arsenal, FY 14 began in the Summer of 2013. Who was Governor then?
- Juice - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 2:52 pm:
Anonymous, since 2014 is not the same as beginning in 2014. Read the report. Deficit went down from 2013 to 2014. Then up since Governor Rauner has been in office.
- East Central Illinois - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 2:55 pm:
@Anonymous
Seriously?
- Saluki - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 2:57 pm:
== There’s been one common denominator the last 15 years, and it’s not Rauner. ==
I love obvious statements…that literally have no value. See example above. /snark
- Arsenal - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 2:58 pm:
==Arsenal, FY 14 began in the Summer of 2013. Who was Governor then?==
Pat Quinn, which is exactly my point; things have gotten worse since then.
- Last Bull Moose - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 3:10 pm:
I am not sure the 15 years of no balanced budget is accurate. Quinn was making required pension payments and reducing the bill backlog. That sounds balanced to me.
I doubt it was actuarially balanced, but cash flow was positive.
- allknowingmasterofracoondom - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 3:10 pm:
Hey we are the only State without a budget for 2 consecutive years. See, we can lead in SOMETHING.
- Jake - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 3:11 pm:
I think too many people forget that the choice for Governor Rauner at the time was not either:
A) pass a $4 billion out of balance budget, or
B) veto a $4 billion out of balance budget AND end up with a $9.6 billion hole
Hindsight is 20/20, my friends. I think we shouldn’t forget the fact that the governor’s choice at the time was to either pass or veto an unbalanced budget. What was unknown to him - and the rest of IL, for that matter - was that the budget impasse would last as long as it has and come with so many unfortunate consequences.
- Rich Miller - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 3:15 pm:
===Quinn was making required pension payments and reducing the bill backlog===
True. But he was shorting state employee group health insurance.
- Anonymous - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 3:36 pm:
== Wondering ==
Is this about the 307th ‘Our Sorry State’ that you’ve had to post? Probably no /s.
What should have been bolded and wasn’t is:
…the deficit has grown 43 percent just since fiscal 2014.
Wow.
- Juice - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 3:48 pm:
Rich, the shorting of Group Health was mostly in FY 10 and FY 11 with the lump sum budgets, and prior to the passage of the tax increase.
- Last Bull Moose - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 3:50 pm:
Thanks Rich, I thought that was a possibility.
- RNUG - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 3:52 pm:
== While the fiscal year that ended on June 30 marked the 15th straight year the state budget ended in the red, … ==
The major take-away for me from is the State has also had multiple amateur Governors for the same period. (It’s my contention Quinn as an outsider didn’t really know to run the political process either.) It was 15 years ago we actually had a professional administrator / politican in charge.
- IllinoisBoi - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 3:55 pm:
“Today I veto House Bill 4146 from the 99th General Assembly in order to distract from my failure to perform my constitutional duty of preparing a balanced budget.”
There, fixed it.
- City Zen - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 4:22 pm:
So the last time spending didn’t exceed revenues, Jackie Aprile Jr on The Sopranos was still alive. On a series that ended 10 years ago.
- Anonymous - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 4:43 pm:
==It was 15 years ago we actually had a professional administrator / politican in charge.==
Who bloated the budget and ended up in prison
- Lucky Pierre - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 4:55 pm:
“Second, when Gov. Rauner says he can’t find a balanced budget in recent history, he’s not stretching the truth. Fifteen years of spending not matching revenues. Whew. What a mess”
Truest statement I have read about Illinois state government in a long time.
I guess rating taxes alone does not solve our problems.
Almost all of the commentary here implies the mess started when Rauner was elected, and that he alone is responsible for the impasse.
The Speaker and too many legislators just want to continue on that same path, changing nothing.
- thechampaignlife - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 5:04 pm:
We need a constitutional amendment which has the auditor set income and sales tax rates, proportionally as set by law, to match the prior year’s actual expenses.
Let us debate how much to spend, not how much to collect.
- Lucky Pierre - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 5:13 pm:
What good is a constitutional amendment when the constitutional requirement that Illinois have a balanced budget has been ignored for 15 years.
It seems the Supreme Court is only concerned about unconstitutional violations of pension contracts not violations of the actual constitution.
- PublicServant - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 5:14 pm:
The rate at which our deficit under Rauner’s mismanagement has increased is unprecedented. All for an ideological agenda with an economic impact of 500 million, unfunded social services, and severe damage to our institutions of higher education.
By nearly every measure, Illinois is worse off under Rauner’s obstinance and obstruction.
- Lucky Pierre - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 6:06 pm:
Quinn was an amateur who did not know how to run the political process.
It seems very obvious that no Governor can run the political process effectively with the most powerful state legislator in any state controlling the legislative agenda with absolute control.
The sainted Jim Edgar needed to run unbalanced budgets too even in flush economic times hence the Edgar ramp we are dealing with today.
How anyone can thinks we can have labor peace now is beyond me.
- Sue - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 6:08 pm:
Does anyone really think raising the income tax rate up to 5 and not adjusting expenditures or tackling other reforms will solve this fiscal mess?
- PublicServant - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 6:21 pm:
Sue, so you agree with madigan that a combination of new revenue and spending cuts is necessary to balance the budget?
- wordslinger - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 6:49 pm:
–It seems very obvious that no Governor can run the political process effectively with the most powerful state legislator in any state controlling the legislative agenda with absolute control.–
As LP collapses into fetal whining victim mode….
… because Rauner had nothing to do with killing that Senate deal and Madigan can override a Rauner veto any time he likes.
Illinois governors are impotent. Small hands.
Geez, all it took was for Chance to state the obvious and the house of cards collapses.
Just imagine if there had been an organized, active Democratic Party in this state who could have been calling out this nonsense from Jump Street.
- Lucky Pierre - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 6:52 pm:
Saying something for the cameras and doing the exact opposite in legislation is not called leadership.
See last year’s house budget he dropped on everyone’s desk late afternoon last day of session passed without any input from Republicans or any cuts.
More of the same nonsense that has been going on for the past 15 years. Who needs term limits?
- PublicServant - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 7:00 pm:
===Just imagine if there had been an organized, active Democratic Party in this state who could have been calling out this nonsense from Jump Street.===
As much as madigan is an unrivaled expert in the legislative arena, he is a total noob when it comes to social media and control of message. As much as he helps his party on the legislative side, that help is more than counteracted by how much the Dems suffer due to a lack of the ability to counter Rauner’s misinformation, and the lack of their own succinct point of view.
- Anonymous - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 8:10 pm:
== What good is a constitutional amendment when the constitutional requirement that Illinois have a balanced budget has been ignored for 15 years. ==
On paper, at the start of the fiscal year, the budget was declared “balanced”. Unfortunately, the state Constitution just says balanced, it doesn’t say audited or certified by a CPA and balanced. The courts will defer to the GA on the presumption of “balance”, just like they defer with the presumption that any law passed by the GA is legal and constitutional until challenged in court.
- RNUG - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 8:12 pm:
Oops. 8:10 pm was I.
- peon - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 8:25 pm:
Can’t run on this record. Not enough time to fix it before 2018. What’s the plan ?
- Ducky LaMoore - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 8:27 pm:
===It was 15 years ago we actually had a professional administrator / politican in charge.===
Sorry RNUG, but George Ryan was probably the most pompous, ignorant blow-hard I’ve ever met. He was a lousy, unbelievably corrupt person who had no business anywhere near money, people, or things of value.
- Lucky Pierre - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 9:13 pm:
Just imagine if there had been an organized, active Democratic Party in this state who could have been calling out this nonsense from Jump Street.
The organized, active Democratic party in this state has had total control of state government for 13 of the past 15 years and by definition is responsible for over 80% of the nonsense on Jump Street
- Lucky Pierre - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 9:42 pm:
RNUG what would it take to challenge the lack of a balanced budget in court?
- RNUG - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 10:10 pm:
== RNUG what would it take to challenge the lack of a balanced budget in court? ==
Standing … /S
Seriously, never looked into what would be required.
- RNUG - Wednesday, Mar 8, 17 @ 10:13 pm:
== Sorry RNUG, but George Ryan was probably the most pompous, ignorant blow-hard I’ve ever met. He was a lousy, unbelievably corrupt person who had no business anywhere near money, people, or things of value. ==
But he knew how to get bills through the legislature and get things done.
The same could be said of any number of politicans. LBJ comes to mind as one example.
- Arsenal - Thursday, Mar 9, 17 @ 9:11 am:
==The organized, active Democratic party in this state has had total control of state government for 13 of the past 15 years and by definition is responsible for over 80% of the nonsense on Jump Street==
Except not, because-
==the deficit has grown 43 percent just since fiscal 2014==
I know why you want to pretend that it’s forever 2014. I know that your argument falls apart without that assumption. But it’s 2017, so your argument just falls apart.