24 Comments - Captain Completely Obvious - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:12 pm: Didn’t she vote for all of those budgets? - Oswego Willy - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:19 pm: ===And then came the Rauner years.=== I’m frustrated too but taking steps to reform Illinois is more important than a short term budget stalemate - The Owl - RNUG - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:22 pm: The tax complainers should be happy. If this had not happened, the flat income tax would need to be another 1% or so higher. - Skeptic - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:24 pm: Just think how much more we could have cut that if it weren’t for the waste, fraud and abuse? /s - Sue - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:36 pm: And during that same time frame how much did State pension contributions increase? As some of us have said in the past- as long as the pension tab keeps increasing(along with Medicaid costs)there isn’t much left over for other state programs. Sorry but we all will be paying taxes to pay for retiree expenses as the rest of the State obligations are ignored - Sonny - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:43 pm: Yeah kick down in the poor, mentally ill and sick. Real nice group on here today. Pleasure as always, Sue. - City Zen - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:46 pm: ==Didn’t she vote for all of those budgets?== Are comptrollers required to keep receipts from previous employers? - Simple Simon - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:48 pm: Sue is right. The pension debt is not optional, and it will take additional tax revenue to maintain services while the ramp continues to climb. Thanks for the suggestion that taxes be raised, Sue. As you pay higher taxes in the future, please try to remember all those decades when your taxes were too low to support the goods and services you obtained. It might make you feel better. - City Zen - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:48 pm: ==The tax complainers should be happy. If this had not happened, the flat income tax would need to be another 1% or so higher.== As should the retired. They got off scott free…again. - Nagidam - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:51 pm: ===And during that same time frame how much did State pension contributions increase?=== ===Yeah kick down in the poor, mentally ill and sick. Real nice group on here today. Pleasure as always, Sue.=== From the Article: While the state’s fiscal year 2020 budget offered small increases, funding for human services as a percentage of the state’s General Revenue Fund is at a 20-year low, dropping from 26% in 1997 to less than 16% in 2017. We are talking about a percentage the state’s General Revenues. So, if more and more money funds pensions there is less for everything else. This isn’t kicking the poor when they are down, this is a fact. A fact acknowledged by Comptroller Mendoza. - Chris Widger - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:58 pm: The General Assembly decided it was more important to not have a budget than it was to negotiate in good faith for items like term limits on legislative leaders, property tax reform, and consolidation of government units. They won and get to write history. Hopefully the supermajorities use their power to make people’s lives better going forward. - Arron shocked - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 3:59 pm: They quote years before Rauner yet hes mentioned as if hes to be blamed? - Oswego Willy - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 4:16 pm: ===The General Assembly decided it was more important to not have a budget than it was to negotiate in good faith for items like…=== “We” are NOT doing this. No. Nope. No. Rauner decided that getting 3… Dunkin, Franks, and Drury… was more important than getting 60 or 30. Here’s the real. Keep up. Rauner’s own plan was to make Dems choose… Labor or social services… and to hurt social services until he got his way. Drury, Franks, and Drury… 3 helped. If you’d like, I’ll give you Rauner’s plan, he told everyone. So stop. You’re wholly disingenuous, as much as Rauner. - Oswego Willy - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 4:22 pm: ===They quote years before Rauner yet hes mentioned as if hes to be blamed?=== (Sigh) Can you also keep up? ===And then came the Rauner years.=== As bad as those years were, and Rod and Quinn… instead of it getting better… we got two years of NO budget, exacerbating the damage at levels far worse than as awful as they were. What’s next, you’re going to say… “Rauner came to the rescue”? Tell that to all the social services that closed, the programs stopped, the social workers laid off not there to help the most needy. Dr. Diana Rauner needed to fill a $7 million hole for The Ounce… and while Dr. Rauner flat out refused to fully support other social services, Dr. Rauner, ironically, Onion-like, turned to the Pritzker Family and their Trusts too to help her social service. It was a business decision I’m guessing Dr. Diana Rauner would call it. - Earnest - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 4:22 pm: This is the state we live in, and it is a sad one. It would be even worse but for lawsuits and consent decrees like Ligas and others which forced the state to put at least a little more resources in the system. Even the FY20 budget our political leaders chose to put an extra $25 million to go above and beyond the new school funding formula rather than address the DSP staffing crisis. My recommendation to advocates: don’t go sit with your legislator and hear them say the same really nice things about how they care about people with service needs. Instead, support lawsuits against the state as it is the only thing that has ever moved the needle. - Kevin Highland - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 4:25 pm: “As should the retired. They got off scott free…again.” –City Zen Didn’t the retired already pay their contractually obligated share? How did they “get off scott free”? - Oswego Willy - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 4:53 pm: Rauner… ===“In Illinois there’s been a long-time history of what I would call social service, social justice, a bigger role for government in the safety net than in many other states,” Rauner said at a tax policy conference sponsored by the George W. Bush Institute. “I think we can drive a wedge issue in the Democratic Party on that topic and bring the folks who say, ‘You know what? For our tax dollars, I’d rather help the disadvantaged, the handicapped, the elderly, the children in poverty. I’d rather have my tax dollars going to that than the SEIU or Af-scammy (AFSCME), who are out there for their own interests.’”=== … was the one. It was not the Dems in the GA taking hostages during his term. - MyTwoCents - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 5:47 pm: The retired got to enjoy decades of artificially low taxes and a higher level of service supported by Illinois using the pension funds as a piggy bank. Now, when the bill is due and taxes are increased, they pay nothing even though they enjoyed all the benefits and the current taxpayers enjoyed little to none of the benefits. - Cornish - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 5:59 pm: This is extremely unfortunate but not surprising. The state spends too much while including actual pension payments. It will likely get much worse in the near term. In the long run, who knows? But our population loss is not making me feel good about the future - Kevin Highland - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 6:06 pm: “The retired got to enjoy decades of artificially low taxes…” –MyTwoCents All the taxpayers of Illinois enjoyed that low tax rate for the level of service provided to all the citizens of the state. - capitol view - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 8:06 pm: and just pumping money into community based services is not enough. Most of the quality providers shut their doors. There will be no takers for state money to serve the disadvantaged. - RNUG - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 9:27 pm: == As should the retired. They got off scott free…again. == There are only 2 reasons for retired to stay in Illinois: no income tax and family / grandkids. No retired income tax isn’t enough by itself; 7 or 8 other states have basically the same tax deal with,mostly, better weather. I have childless friends who will.rrtite in the next couple of years already planning moves to places like North Carolina, South Carolina, or Georgia. Take way the favorable tax treatment, and a lot of retirees (all retirees, not just state ones, will be gone in 60 seconds. - RNUG - Monday, Sep 9, 19 @ 9:37 pm: FWIW … I have gone on scouting trips with my friends. We’ve met lots of nice people,some of them from Illinois. Heck, the one house all of us rented was owned by a former Chatham resident (suburb of Springfield for those outside central Illinois reading this). Nrs RNUG is ready to move. I keep reminding her she would miss the grandkids who stop by our house walking to and from school every day. She says she wouldn’t and they could visit, but I know she would; she misses them after a week or two of travel … even with video conferencing. Family is really the thing holding us here, take away the tax break and we’ll probably live elsewhere 7 months of the year. - Sonny - Tuesday, Sep 10, 19 @ 9:47 am: “Most of the quality providers shut their doors.” @capitolview - That isn’t even close to true. Don’t post that nonsense on here. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.