Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner on Wednesday proposed a reelection-year budget that takes aim at two of his favorite targets — Chicago Public Schools and unionized state workers — while attempting to put Democrats in a political trick bag.
The $37.6 billion spending plan seeks to cut $228 million in pension help CPS won in last year’s budget battle and also to cut state health care insurance by $470 million. […]
But Rauner’s fourth budget proposal also is at odds with his campaign rhetoric. The governor has been campaigning for years on the idea of cutting property taxes, but his budget would result in school districts raising property taxes to pay for the teacher pension costs he wants to offload on them.
The governor also has slammed Democrats and Republicans who voted to hike income taxes last year, but his budget plan relies on spending nearly all the money the tax increase brings in.
While Rauner lays out a “path” to eventually lowering the income tax rate by a quarter of a percentage point, the cost savings needed to put money back in Illinois paychecks relies on cutting teacher and state worker pensions in a way that could be tied up in the courts for years or deemed unconstitutional and tossed out entirely.
The cost-shift is being slammed by Democrats and Republicans alike. I doubt it’s going anywhere, but it’s an easy way of finding a half billion dollars to make the budget look more balanced. This excerpt from a Chris Kennedy press release pretty well sums up most of the opposition…
He says he wants to cut taxes, but the truth is, he wants to further burden local property taxpayers.
Under his new plan, local governments would be required to take on the responsibility of paying the costs of teacher pensions. That will increase taxes on local property taxpayers who are already overburdened. This is fundamentally what’s wrong with our broken system.
We are over-reliant on property taxes to fund our public schools, and now Governor Rauner is putting more burden on local property taxpayers with no reforms to our broken system. Governor Rauner and political insiders in Springfield have bred cynicism across our state.
* Cullerton explained later that the governor’s proposal is out of balance by $1.5 billion because most of the statutory changes Rauner will need cannot pass…
Earlier Wednesday, Rauner met with the four legislative leaders for the first time in more than a year to review his budget proposal. Cullerton left the meeting saying he believes the budget is $1.5 billion out of balance. Senate Republican Leader Bill Brady of Bloomington said he thinks the plan is balanced even though some of the measures Rauner is calling for will prove controversial.
The budget, he said, “is running a huge deficit that proves the point.”
“Unfortunately I was right in that veto,” the governor said.
Instead, he said his budget approach this year is “decidedly different.”
“We see the budget as an opportunity to set priorities without spending beyond our means,” Rauner said. “It is a framework designed to spark a constructive dialogue on the steps we need to take to resolve the state’s financial issues.”
Yes, this fiscal year’s budget is out of balance, but it’s not as nearly in the red as the two years when the state didn’t have a budget.
* Sen. Heather Steans chairs the Senate Appropriations 1 Committee and wasn’t horrified by what she saw today…
“This is the closest the Rauner administration has ever come to a real, balanced budget, which I appreciate. That said, I have some serious concerns about his cuts to human services, Medicaid and retired pensioners to whom we have a contractual obligation. I look forward to working across the aisle to tackle Illinois’ fiscal challenges.”
Here are some of the human services cuts she’s talking about…
* The Administration proposes a 5-8% funding reduction to the following programs:
o The Autism Program
o Infant Mortality
o Addiction Prevention
o Supportive Housing Services
o Arc of Illinois
o Best Buddies
o Children’s Place
o Chicago Area Project
o Immigrant Integration Services
o Epilepsy Services
o West Side Health Authority Crisis Intervention
My own impression is that it’s not as goofy as some of his previous budget proposals. It’s not horrible. But some big assumptions will have to change before this can be brought into balance.
* As we know, it was already tough out there for House Democratic candidates before this week’s debacle. Here is David Giuliani’s column from five days ago. I’m betting it isn’t gonna get any easier…
In the 2016 campaign, I asked then-Rep. Andy Skoog, D-La Salle, about whether he supported Madigan as speaker. He answered that no one had approached him “about supporting them for speaker of the House, especially as that won’t be considered until after the next election.”
Reality check: No one ever challenges Madigan for speaker. […]
“That’s looking a long way ahead. I have to get through the primary,” [Democratic state representative candidate Lance Yednock] told me in November. “I will support whoever supports the middle class.” […]
I recently asked the Madigan question of [Democratic state representative candidate Jill Bernal], to which she responded, “I don’t know him. I have never met him.”
I don’t know and have never met Barack Obama or Donald Trump, but I have my opinions about them. […]
Would [Rep. Sam Yingling, D-Grayslake] support Madigan for speaker?
“I’m glad to evaluate whoever throws their name into the ring,” Yingling said.
Drury said it is tarnishing the state of Illinois and if Madigan is not going to step down on his own, “I am going to give everybody a path to make it happen,” noting the House does not need 60 Democrats to stand up against Madigan.
“We just need to have eight Democrats brave enough to say we will not vote for any more legislation he puts up there until he steps down because he will then have 59 votes,” Drury said.
He personally called out Reps. Laura Fine (D-Glenview), Will Guzzardi (D-Chicago), Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), Ann Williams (D-Chicago), Katie Stuart (D-Collinsville), Sam Yingling (D-Grayslake), Deb Conroy (D-Villa Park), Sue Scherer (D-Decatur), Mike Halpin (D-Rock Island) and Jonathan Carroll (D-Northbrook).
“You campaign every two years and say you are going to stand up and you are going to show your community you are not with the speaker and everything he wants,” Drury said, adding Madigan is the face of sexual harassment in the state. “Stand with me or stand together and disregard me all together, but stand together and make sure we take power back in this House.”
Hampton also said one other thing: She’s personally aware of other Madigan staffers with harassment complaints.
The existence of other harassment complaints isn’t the problem if they were dealt with fairly and honestly. The problem will be if any other people like Hampton come forward with credible stories of how their complaints were ignored.
Rather than facing down another Republican governor or a Democratic insurgent, [Speaker Madigan] now finds himself in danger of swimming against a political movement more powerful than himself.
If more women in Madigan’s wide domain come forward with claims of mishandled sexual harassment claims — and Hampton asserted she knows of female workers in Springfield with similar stories of complaints swept under the rug— then this has a chance of snowballing. […]
If it stays confined to this one case, then Madigan may be able to ride it out, which obviously will be his instinct — the same instinct that has made him the nation’s longest-serving legislative leader.
But it will be hard to overcome the impression created here that while Madigan’s political organization has created opportunities for women in politics it was ultimately more committed to protecting the old boys’ network at its core.
* Was the Speaker listening? Woman questions why Madigan took months to fire aide: “The speaker has had the letter for three months. It doesn’t take three months to read those text messages and know that that behavior was inappropriate. It would take all of 20 minutes to know that that was sexual harassment,” Hampton said.
* Editorial: Too little, too late: This, of course, is not the first time Speaker Madigan has been accused of insincerity in his public postures. It’s happened many times before, and he survived them all without breaking a sweat. He’ll undoubtedly do so again this time because of his power and influence. Nonetheless, Hampton’s assertion that Madigan would have taken no action if the matter was not on the verge of becoming public rings true.
* Editorial: Mike Madigan flunks the #MeToo test: Alaina Hampton isn’t alone. She’s one of countless professional women to experience mistreatment. After being harassed out of her job, Hampton summoned the courage to report it to the boss — who in this case was one of the most powerful political figures in Illinois, a man who fast-tracked legislation supposedly meant to shut down a culture of creepiness in Illinois government. Madigan made a commitment to end harassment and protect women. His resolve was tested almost immediately. He failed.
* Speaker Madigan Rejects Calls For Resignation Over Handling Of Sexual Harassment Claims Of Aide: State Rep. Scott Drury, who’s running for attorney general, is a longtime critic of the speaker. He’s among those calling on Madigan to step down. However, Madigan says this is just another case of Drury doing the bidding of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. “For Drury to say that I should step aside, that’s the same thing as Rauner saying I should step aside, which I don’t plan to do.” he said.
* Is Ald. Quinn still in with Madigan?: Around City Hall, Marty Quinn is a mild-mannered Clark Kent of an alderman who seldom speaks unless he’s railing about stinky sound-reducing windows in his ward near Midway Airport, Airbnb or the dangers of registered sex offenders in public libraries. In the Southwest Ward office he shares with Madigan, Quinn is better known as a workaholic political superman. That’s why superman will likely be allowed to keep his cape—as well as his day job.
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s budget on Wednesday will propose having Chicago Public Schools, downstate and suburban school districts and state universities pay more of their teachers’ pension costs, in an attempt to save state government millions of dollars a year. […]
In all, Rauner will propose spending about $37.6 billion of the roughly $38 billion the state is estimated to bring in from taxes and fees, leaving a surplus of $351 million. Roughly $1.3 billion in proposed savings will come from shifting pension costs onto schools, as well as a proposal to slash health insurance benefits for retired teachers and state employees. The plans were outlined in budget documents Rauner’s office provided to legislative staff on Tuesday night, which were obtained by the Tribune. […]
Even so, Rauner will lay out some lofty goals. That includes $7.8 billion in new spending on a statewide construction program. Of that, $50 million would be used to upgrade facilities at the veterans home in downstate Quincy, where 13 residents died in an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease that began in 2015. It’s unclear from the brief budget documents how the construction program would be paid for.
Though he vetoed the tax hike that went into effect last summer and has been a vocal critic of it on the campaign trail, Rauner’s budget relies on the money the increase takes in. The governor does, however, offer “a path” to dropping the 4.95 percent income tax rate. That proposal relies on putting in place a new pension plan first floated by Senate President John Cullerton. It suggests state worker and teacher retirement benefits can be scaled back, but only if they agree to the changes and are given something in return.
Rauner estimates that plan could lead to $900 million in savings and would allow for a 0.25 percentage point cut in the income tax rate.
* Rauner Budget Counts On Tax Hike: Rauner wants more money to go to education and less to be spent on things like prisons and the judiciary. And according to a preview document obtained by public radio, the governor will not call for an immediate rollback of the tax increase. The day before, Democratic Senate President John Cullerton predicted that would be difficult: “If he wants to cut the income tax by 1 percentage point, that equates to $3.7 billion in lost revenue.”
* Cullerton dubious about Gov. Rauner’s budget promises: “My advice to him is why don’t you do the best budget you’ve ever done — a balanced one. And then run on that,” Cullerton said. “Be honest with people and maybe you won’t be so unpopular.”
With Bruce Rauner set to give his budget address today, the JB Pritzker campaign released a new digital ad, “Unbalanced,” highlighting Rauner’s consistent failure to introduce a balanced budget.
Year after year, Rauner has brazenly lied about introducing a balanced budget, earning the failed governor a “pants on fire” rating from PolitiFact. The new ad highlights Rauner failing to meet his constitutional duty, repeatedly lying about it, and the devastating impact on Illinois’ finances.
“Rauner has not only failed to introduce a balanced budget, he lied about his failures while Illinois families paid the price,” said Pritzker communications director Galia Slayen. “For three long years, Bruce Rauner has disregarded his constitutional obligation and today, Illinoisans across the state should breathe a sigh of relief as Rauner concludes his final budget address.”
