* The Governor’s budget office has published its latest five-year fiscal projection. Click here. And click here for a more complete explanation and background.
If things continue down this same path (with the same levels of taxation and spending patterns), GOMB projects a total bill backlog of more than $47 billion by Fiscal Year 2022.
Oof.
* The projected fiscal year backlogs are as follows…
2017 $13.543 billion
2018 $20.639 billion
2019 $27.692 billion
2020 $34.103 billion
2021 $40.593 billion
2022 $47.121 billion
…Adding… Here is where we are as of today. We’ve broken the $10 billion mark…
*** UPDATE *** From SEIU Healthcare, with emphasis added by me…
Hi all,
Today the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget published its economic and fiscal policy report and five-year projections. Below are some summary points.
These are required to be published every year by law, as a prelude to the budget, in order to set out the “economic and fiscal policy objectives of the State” in the coming year and beyond. This year is the first year that they were moved up from January to November, and the first year the projections are for five years rather than three. (Last year’s report will be remembered for the headline that the state’s bill backlog was projected to reach $25 billion by the end of 2019.)
This year, the news is just as bad: The report shows clearly the damage the Rauner administration has done to the state budget and economy, and declares Rauner’s intention to continue the hostage situation with the state budget to pursue his ideological agenda and damage working families.
Some highlights:
- Declares that the Rauner administration will double down on a hostage-taking approach to the budget. The only mention of Governor Rauner actually getting a budget done is prefaced by “If the legislature is willing to enact adequate structural reforms…” There is no definition of what are “adequate structural reforms,” and no evidence given for the claim that these “reforms” will induce miraculous growth in the Illinois economy.
- Projects that the state’s bill backlog will grow to $27.7 billion by the end of 2019, rather than the previous projection of $25.0 billion. Through Rauner’s hostage-taking on budget and revenue, the state is digging this hole faster. By the end of 2022, this bill backlog is projected to grow to $47.1 billion. That is more than one full year of state operating expenditures.
- Observes that Illinois’ economy has performed poorly in the past 1-2 years, but refuses to even consider that this might have something to do with the protracted crisis and uncertainty Rauner has caused by refusing to sign a budget. (For example, nonfarm employment grew by less than half the national average, 12,700 manufacturing jobs left the state, and job growth has been in low-wage sectors, over the year from August 2015 to August 2016.)
- Includes a full page on the “stopgap” spending plan passed at the 11th hour this June that declares it a success by not mentioning the “limited” General Funds appropriations meant many human service providers are taking a 33% or higher cut, resulting in a continued wave of closures and no rebuilding whatsoever of these vital services since the stopgap was signed into law; and not mentioning at all the much deeper cuts to higher education and MAP grants that have state universities on the verge of collapse.
- In a list of problem areas that “crowd out” other state spending, misidentifies home care for seniors as a problem area. Home care for seniors has grown because it is a preferred care setting for tens of thousands more seniors in a growing senior population, and it has saved the state at least as much as it has cost by preventing the need to pay for costly institutional care. (Overall, the categories of spending called out in this section are highly selective and problematic. Home care for seniors might only be the most absurd example.)
election, many of them came up to me and said, ‘Stay in the Senate. We need you.’”
