* I told subscribers about the latest Governor’s Office of Management and Budget report to the Legislative Budget Oversight Commission a couple of days ago. The GOMB lowered its FY 2023 revenue estimates by $616 million, which makes it even lower than the recently revised Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability’s estimates. But GOMB increased its FY 2024 revenue estimate by $532 million ($802 million increase in state revenues, minus $270 million in an expected federal $ decrease), although at least some of that is said to be one-time revenues. Here’s Capitol News Illinois…

Gov. JB Pritzker said this week that the state remains “on a great trajectory from a fiscal perspective,” even as his office decreased its current-year revenue estimates in light of falling tax revenues.

The Governor’s Office of Management and Budget this week shaved $616 million off its estimate for current-year revenues, marking a downward revision of about 1.1 percent. The move corresponded with a $532 million, or roughly 1 percent, increased revenue estimate for the upcoming fiscal year.

* That report also showed a small uptick in spending. And the governor was asked yesterday about the revised forecast…

Q: Yesterday, you said that your budget put forth as it is now, if it was passed that it would be balanced. But it looks like for Fiscal Year 23, the spending estimate is a little bit higher than revenues with the supplemental funding that you have proposed. So do you have to maybe consider not putting more into pensions or not doing the supplementals for daycare facilities?

Pritzker: I think the good news is, as you know, that the amount that we’re talking about is a very small percentage of the entire overall budget. We’re talking about possibly 1% of the entire budget. So we, knowing that this might be coming, we’ve ramped down some of the spending here and there within all of our agencies to make sure that we could cover that 1% difference.

* The governor was also asked yesterday what specific suggestions he made to the General Assembly to rein in the exploding costs of undocumented immigrant healthcare. He listed two of what he claimed were several: Co-pays based on income and provider reimbursement rates..

Q: Yesterday, when I had asked you a question about what you plan on doing in your budget proposal about the nearly $1.1 billion budget hole regarding the [Medicaid-like program for non-citizens], and you had said that it’s basically up to the General Assembly, and you indicated that you would hope that they consider some of the options that you had presented to them so that they could fit it into the budget. Could you elaborate about what some of those options from your administration are to the General Assembly?

Pritzker: Well, as you know, it’s a program that’s different than Medicaid and different than regular private insurance. It is possible, for example, that there could be for some people at certain income levels, co-pays. That’s an example of something that would defray the cost of the program. That’s one example. Another is, you know, a question about reimbursement rates, and what level the reimbursement rates would be for whatever services are given to people. So those are two, among many. But really, we gave them many options to choose from and ideas that they could take back to their caucuses and talk about and, and we’ve tried to answer every question that’s been brought to us. But these are all things that that I think are reasonable, to consider to make sure that we’re reining in the cost, but also serving the people who most need this healthcare.

I think he was talking about the enhanced reimbursement rate that’s given to Cook County’s health system because it churns Medicaid dollars. This isn’t, for the most part, a reimbursable program, however.

Other ideas include a hard spending/enrollment cap, but the Latino Caucus is digging in its heels so far…

The recent upward revisions to estimated program costs have prompted sharp criticism from Republicans. But in a news conference earlier in the week, state Rep. Lilian Jimenez, D-Chicago, pushed back against calls to end the program.

“Many immigrants in the state of Illinois do contribute to taxes. They pay their taxes when they work, they file their taxes with an ITIN number,” she said. “They are taxpaying members of this state and should be treated as such. And they’re also human beings, most of all, and we have to remember that when we talk about cutting this or cutting that.”

* One small caution about this next story is that the Civic Federation’s report doesn’t include GOMB’s newly revised outlook for this and next fiscal years. Crain’s…

Despite a huge drop in revenue last month, Illinois’ overall budget outlook remains good and within earlier forecasts, according to Fitch Ratings.

And that report comes just as the watchdog Civic Federation gives Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s 2024 spending plan its thumbs-up.

In its assessment released today of Pritzker’s proposed $49.6 billion operating budget, the Civic Federation praised “smart” moves to inject an additional $138 million into the state’s rainy-day fund and to make $200 million in supplemental pension payments. […]

The federation expressed concern that non-pension spending is proposed to rise 8.3% over last year’s budget. However, that increase is smaller — 1.2% — when supplemental appropriations are added to the proposed budget.