CHICAGO – Illinois House Republican Leader Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) released the following statement on Governor Pritzker signing SB687 today:
“For two years in a row, Republicans and Democrats have proven that we can balance the state’s budget with no new taxes on Illinois families. However, the graduated tax rates signed into law today are simply the next step to giving Illinois Democrats a blank check for uncontrolled spending for years to come. Illinois families should remain very wary on the rates that are being ‘promised’ today – as Democrats will continue to come back, year after year, and pickpocket more money from Illinois families and businesses.”
* As we’ve already discussed, the Illinois News Network is now called The Center Square. From the publisher…
When a reporter is on target within their beat, they’re said “to be hitting the center square.”
I asked several reporters if they’d ever heard of that saying and nobody has. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but when I Googled “‘hitting the center square’ reporter” I only came up with one result, the column by its publisher.
But after about ten of these, I’m starting to run out of names. Friends and colleagues have chimed in with helpful suggestions, but I don’t have enough stockpiled to make it through the week and my brain is still a little fried from the session. So…
* The Question: Your own twist on The Center Square’s name?
* The governor has been making the rounds with editorial boards and others. From his sit-down with Bloomberg…
“You need to be able to discern the difference between someone’s posturing and what they really need,” he said of his conversations with Republican legislators, who came to the governor’s mansion in Springfield for cocktails. Some privately told him that “they had talked to me more in the first couple months of my tenure in office than they did for four years under Bruce Rauner.” […]
Illinois last week became the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana, which could eventually bring in $300 million to $700 million annually, Pritzker said. The change isn’t going to encourage more use, because “marijuana is readily available now,'’ he said. More importantly, the bill allows some drug convictions to be expunged.
“Are we safer with it legalized? Are we safer with it illegal? … I believe we’re making a more just society,” he said. “This most importantly was about criminal justice reform, expunging records, and safety.”
Pritzker said the state has set aside $29 million — the largest per-capita investment in the country — to ensure a maximum census count. A move by U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to include a citizenship question could hurt the accuracy of the population count, he said. “We have to get our numbers,” Pritzker said.
At a meeting with the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board Monday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he’s inherited infrastructure repairs that have been kicked down the road for decades. He said the state has $15 billion in life safety infrastructure investments to make — and that’s just the start of it.
“Think about all the pent up demand and need — the potholes, the bridges they’re falling apart, the mass transit that we can all see everyday here in Chicago is crumbling — that needs to be done,” Pritzker said.
“So look, we have to pay for these things, and we tried to find ways to live up to our obligations to make it safe and then remember we also need to focus on economic development.”
That’ll mean building new roads in areas where there’s development that could go on and that there’s investment in communities that have “been left out frankly for far too long,” Pritzker said.
The Department of Children and Family Services is set to receive almost $130 million more in the next fiscal year. This is the largest budget increase in more than 20 years. The hike will allow DCFS to hire over 300 [new] front-line staff, like case workers and investigators.
DCFS was appropriated $1.4 billion in Fiscal Year 2000. That would be equal to $2.12 billion today, which is almost a billion dollars more than was actually appropriated for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30th. Long way to go, campers.
Members of the Illinois Board of Higher Education are satisfied with how higher ed fared in the new state budget passed by Illinois lawmakers. […]
“…major steps in repairing the damage,” [Nyle Robinson, the Higher Education Board’s Interim Executive Director] said. “In fact, this is arguably the best session for higher education in a generation.” […]
Higher ed will get an 8.2% increase in general funds over last year.
According to the board members, that’s the largest increase for any year since they started keeping track of it in 1990.
There is also a $50 million dollar boost for Monetary Award Program grant funding.
The new state budget awaiting Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s signature includes what advocates say is a much-needed $80 million increase in funding for mental health and addiction treatment.
The state’s fiscal 2020 budget marks the first time in recent years that lawmakers have approved a signficant increase in state funding for behavioral health services, said Eric Foster, Chief Operating Officer for the Illinois Association for Behavioral Health. Last year’s increase amounted to only about 3%, he said.
This year’s funding increase includes $39 million for addiction treatment and prevention and $43 million for mental health services—which represents increases in 18% and 13%, respectively. The money will be made available to service providers through grant programs administered by the Illinois Department of Human Services.
Foster said an additional $40 million appropriation to the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services will help expand access to psychiatric services; plus $7 million to HFS will be used to boost Medicaid reimbursement rates for mental health and addiction treatment. […]
Illinois spends relatively little on community-based treatment programs: $77 per person, compared to the national average of $133, according to the report; and people in Illinois living with mental illness are “more likely to encounter the criminal justice system, resulting in a large number of arrests and incarcerations,” the authors wrote.
Carol Spain, an S&P Global Ratings analyst, said the state’s recently increased forecast for income tax collections along with revenue measures passed by the legislature resulted in a budget with “few one-time revenues.”
“In S&P Global’s view, the fiscal 2020 budget signals near-term credit stability and buys the state more time to address out-year gaps,” she said in an email.
Spain added that to maintain an investment-grade rating, further progress is needed “toward sustainable structural balance, paying down its bill backlog, and addressing its pension liabilities.”
Ted Hampton, a Moody’s Investors Service analyst, said full payment of Illinois’ fiscal 2020 pension contribution, which lawmakers said was in the budget, would be a positive move.
Moody’s Investors Service affirmed its Baa3 rating and stable outlook on Illinois general obligation bonds Tuesday afternoon.
The formal action underscores the views of several municipal bond market observers that the budget does just enough to keep the state from a calamitous downgrade to speculative grade — but nowhere near enough to start talking upgrade. […]
“In the past year, the state has avoided material worsening of its credit vulnerabilities and marginally built on strengths” as “buoyant tax revenues encouraged policymakers to refrain from proposed cuts to pension contributions, and the legislature authorized some new revenue sources, as well as a referendum to potentially adopt progressive income taxes to further increase revenue-raising capacity,” Moody’s lead Illinois analyst Ted Hampton wrote.
“The accomplishments of the 2019 legislative session indicate improvement in political willingness. However, pension contribution requirements remain on track to outpace organic revenue growth, which will subject the state to persistent fiscal pressure, barring further politically difficult decisions on tax increases or essential service cuts,” Hampton warned.
* Related…
* U of I System snags $1.9 billion in funding - The new state budget doles out money for new buildings and the yet-to-be-built Discovery Partners Institute, as well as the most money ever for the state’s student financial assistance program.
* Hannah Meisel interviewed Illinois Department of Revenue Director David Harris. Excerpt…
Illinois Department of Revenue Director David Harris was one of the small group of Republican legislators who defied former Gov. Bruce Rauner in the summer of 2017 when he not only voted for a tax hike to end a two-year budget impasse, but also voted to overturn the Republican governor’s veto on the increase in income taxes. While he and many others announced their immediate retirements after that vote or their decisions to not seek re-election, Gov. JB Pritzker announced Harris would serve as the director IDOR soon after his November win over Rauner. The Daily Line spoke with Harris on Tuesday two days after the legislature wrapped up its business for the spring session, which resulted in the legalization of recreational marijuana, a $40.1 billion budget, a $44.5 billion six-year capital plan and a host of new taxes and fees in exchange for the creation of a bevy of new tax incentives for businesses. […]
Q: Do you think serving as the head of a state agency the last five months — do you think it’s changed your views on state government writ large? You come from a pretty moderate suburban Republican background and you were a longtime legislator. Do you think your views have changed on state government being truly in it?
A: My perspective has changed, yes. I’ll tell you how. As an example, I was on the [House] Revenue Committee and we’d always say, ‘What’s the revenue estimate on this?’ …We just kind of assumed the Department of Revenue had all those people over there working.
Now, we can punch a lot of numbers and we can punch a lot of numbers quickly. But I will tell you I have a research staff that used to be populated with eight people. It’s now populated with four people…if any one of those people gets in a car accident or gets sick and can’t come to work for two weeks, we have to scramble. Because of reductions — and these are all economists, trained economists, you try to hire an economist in state government at the level we’re going to pay them, it’s not easy.
Remember, the governor’s Fair Tax proposal, what does it mean if the [rates] are at such-and-such a level? We pegged it at a level where 97 percent of taxpayers in Illinois are not going to see any income tax increase, and indeed are going to see a benefit from those proposed levels.
But we’ve got to run through 6 million individual income tax filings to figure that out. It takes time. You just don’t push a button and that computer runs through six million computations. There has to be somebody there to do that.
So it’s absolutely increased my appreciation for what is done specifically at the Department of Revenue, and increased my appreciation for folks who do things like that…I’ve gained a greater appreciation for what it takes to actually run state government, whereas being in the legislature, you can sit there and criticize somebody who didn’t do something or say, ‘This just isn’t working as efficiently as it should and I’ll just pass a bill.’ You pass a bill, that means a lot of things have to happen to make sure that bill works the way you intended it to work.
* At the end of a whiny editorial about the state’s cannabis legalization measure, the Tribune editorial board opines…
Because as the Grateful Dead, early advocates of mind-bending substances, noted in song, life with drugs can make for a long, strange trip.
That’s some tortured syntax right there.
* More importantly, though, “What a long, strange trip it’s been” is a line from a Dead song called “Truckin’”…
The lyrics refer to a drug raid of the band’s hotel lodgings in New Orleans during a concert tour earlier in 1970:
Busted, down on Bourbon Street
Set up, like a bowling pin
Knocked down, it gets to wearing thin
They just won’t let you be
Leave it to the Tribune to bungle a Dead reference. The whole idea of cannabis legalization is to finally stop and reverse the very real harm done from arrest and incarceration.
Sittin’ and starin’ out of the hotel window
Got a tip they’re gonna kick the door in again
I’d like to get some sleep before I travel
But if you’ve got a warrant, I guess you’re gonna come in
Update: Daily Public Schedule: Wednesday, June 5, 2019
What: Gov. Pritzker to sign the state budget and fair tax legislation.
Where: James R. Thompson Center, 15th Floor, Blue Room, 100 West Randolph Street, Chicago
When: 3:15 p.m.
The [infrastructure funding] plan doubles Illinois’ state gas tax to 38 cents from 19 cents per gallon, which will vault the total tax burden on Illinois gas beyond states such as New York and California to second-highest in the nation, according to 2018 data from the Tax Foundation. The increase will be effective July 1.
The state motor fuel tax will also be tied to inflation, meaning it will automatically rise in future years without lawmaker approval. The hike will cost the typical driver around $100 more in its first year.
OK, but the state’s Motor Fuel Tax hasn’t been increased since 1990. Factor in inflation since then and the MFT would be… wait for it… 38 cents per gallon today.
In other words, the tax hike to 38 cents per gallon puts us right where we’d be if lawmakers had pegged the MFT to inflation back then like they just did going forward.
On its way to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk is a bundle of spending proposals that come with tax hikes on Illinoisans – and pay raises for state lawmakers.
Due to a “paperwork mix-up that went uncorrected,” according to the Associated Press, lawmakers can expect a pay hike of $1,600 included in a $40 billion budget proposal that now awaits Pritzker’s signature. […]
Since 2008, state lawmakers’ annual salary has been held constant at $67,836. But that doesn’t include $10,000 committee chairmanship stipends, per diems, mileage reimbursements and other perks lawmakers receive for what is technically a part-time job.
OK, but $1,600 works out to $30.77 per week. Not much.
And if annual automatic increases based on cost of living had not been stopped every year since 2008, they’d be making $82,126.94 right now.
Also, if you have a job that requires you to travel as much as 200 miles twice each week and stay in a hotel or rent an apartment, I don’t see the problem with per diems and mileage reimbursements.
Through all of April and all of May, wave after wave of rain hit the nation right in the breadbasket, with April capping the wettest 12 months on record for the continental United States. The past 60 days, in particular, have coincided with planting season in much of the country. […]
Recent measurements show most of Illinois’s famous topsoils are more waterlogged than they have ever been, University of Illinois economist Scott Irwin said.
Farmers cannot plant in that muck. It fouls their equipment and strangles their seeds. It is not enough for the rain to stop. The soil has to dry for as much as a week before they can plant again. According to the latest forecasts from the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, that does not look likely. […]
This is not like most years. As the calendar ticks toward the point of no return, new data released Monday shows farmers have planted 67 percent of the acres they had planned to put in corn. In key states such as Illinois (45 percent) and Indiana (31 percent), it is even lower. […]
Irwin estimates that about 85 percent of the corn acres in Illinois were covered by such insurance, often as part of enormous operations that can afford coverage. The remaining 15 percent includes many small, family farms that are left with little protection against this unprecedented weather.
Along the Illinois River—which meets the Mississippi in Grafton, Ill.—a levee was breached Monday night, the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office said, forcing the closure of the Joe Page Bridge that is the main way in and out of the county. They agency was notified of the breach around 8:30 p.m. local time. The breach threatened homes in Nutwood, a community in nearby Jersey County.
The record wet weather over the last 12 months across the U.S. caused several crests along the Mississippi River and record flooding along the Missouri and Arkansas Rivers. May generated 549 tornadoes for the month, according to preliminary reports, the most for that month ever and second to April 2011 for the most tornadoes in any month.
In some areas over the next several days, the Mississippi River will crest within a foot of the 1993 record, Mr. Fuchs said. That flood killed 50 people, caused $15 billion in damage and forced the evacuation of thousands of people.
Governor JB Pritzker has deployed an additional 200 National Guard troops to southern Illinois to monitor rising water in the region.
The additional troops bring the number to 400 patrolling the region threatened by the rising Mississippi and Illinois rivers. […]
According to the governor’s office, state agencies have provided more than three million sandbags, more than 2,700 rolls of plastic, 27 pumps and five dozen Department of Corrections detainees to help hold back rising rivers.
