Latest Post | Last 10 Posts | Archives
Previous Post: Rauner approval rating drops 11 points in a month
Next Post: *** LIVE *** Session coverage
Posted in:
* From the AP…
First-term Gov. Bruce Rauner has come under increasing pressure to overhaul Illinois’ troubled child welfare system after a leading civil rights group asked for quick federal court action over “dangerously inadequate” care and services.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois filed a complaint against the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services late Friday, the latest turn in a decades-old consent decree aimed at keeping adequate foster care and child protective services in place. Rauner’s administration responded Monday by touting a new director and efforts to help foster care children. But days ahead of his first budget address, questions lingered over how the Republican will make and fund any major changes. […]
[ACLU attorney Benjamin Wolf] said Rauner’s administration inherited issues but that recent talks over problems raised by newspaper stories and lawmakers’ hearings weren’t productive. He said agency officials wouldn’t agree to immediate overhauls, which triggered the lawsuit. In previous years, DCFS has agreed to comply on issues such as reducing worker caseloads.
The complaint said the care of juveniles with mental health needs is “dangerously inadequate,” with long waiting lists for children who need specialized placements and lengthy stays in temporary shelters. The complaint cited reports from experts, providers, clients and caregivers.
That’s gonna cost money.
* And speaking of money, Reboot breaks down the numbers…
$32.1 billion Total projected state revenue, FY 2016.
$37.8 billion Estimated spending, FY 2016.
$5.2 billion/35.3 percent Amount of decline in state income tax revenue from FY 2014 to FY 2016.
$6.4 billion Estimated amount of unpaid bills on June 30,2015.
$9.9 billion Projected backlog of unpaid bills by end of FY 2016.
$6.8 billion Owed to pension funds in FY 2015.
$3.6 billion/86.7 percent Amount by which pension costs grew from 2010 to 2014.
25 percent Portion of state-generated income that goes toward pensions.
$5.4 billion Amount saved in pension payments from FY 2016-2019 if Illinois Supreme Court upholds pension reform law
$650 million Amount borrowed from special state funds for 2015 budget that must be repaid in 2016 budget
$789 million Amount of 2015 spending pulled from FY 2015 budget and placed into FY 2014 to hide spending.
$1.439 billion total hidden spending/borrowing from current budget that must be paid back in FY 2016.
* How to resolve this without income tax hikes?…
Rauner, who has pledged to manage the state’s budget crisis without raising taxes, has asked lawmakers for broad powers to move money around within the current budget and is negotiating with legislative leaders.
“I’ve got to reallocate money from nonessential government services and move it over into essential services,” Rauner told students Tuesday at Lanphier High School in Springfield.
* Finke has more on Rauner’s reallocation demands…
“It is very broad, what has been put on the table and asked for. Very unusual,” [Sen. Heather Steans] said. “We have done emergency budget acts before, but nothing in terms of the scope that’s been requested to date.”
She said the power would essentially take the legislature out of the budget picture. […]
She also said the administration has pushed for latitude over $2.5 billion in “statutory transfers,” which includes things like income tax money shared with local governments. The administration could also be given authority to take about $700 million from special state funds and not be required to repay it. Money in those funds usually comes from fees and assessments on a comparatively small group that benefits from those funds, such as regulating certain businesses.
Subscribers know more about this stuff.
* Related…
* 29 more kids among Illinois child-welfare agency’s faces of failure
* Could DCFS Child Abuse Deaths Move Rauner’s Budget?
* Parents, child care providers worry about funding delays
* State owes some Illinois State Police troopers $10,000
* Suburban day cares, court reporters hold out hope for Rauner’s plan
* Chuck Sweeny: Gov. Bruce Rauner’s budget must reveal the details he’s dodged
* Genoa continues to dream Amtrak
* Study shows economic benefits to county fairs
posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 10:56 am
Sorry, comments are closed at this time.
Previous Post: Rauner approval rating drops 11 points in a month
Next Post: *** LIVE *** Session coverage
WordPress Mobile Edition available at alexking.org.
powered by WordPress.
I think we should grant him all the power he needs to run the state just as he ran his companies. In fact I would propose he just adopt all Illinoisans as his family. Then every child in the State could get into Payton Magnet School and we would all be rich. In fact we could change our last name to Miller and there would be millions of Rich Millers in Illinois.
Comment by HL Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:01 am
==$789 million Amount of 2015 spending pulled from FY 2015 budget and placed into FY 2014 to hide spending.==
Never understood that claim. You can’t do that. Does anybody know if they are talking about lapse period spending?
Comment by Demoralized Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:01 am
Reboot Illinois? Is it really a credible source?
Comment by NewWestSuburbanGOP'er Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:03 am
“Rauner, who has pledged to manage the state’s budget crisis without raising taxes, has asked lawmakers for broad powers to move money around within the current budget and is negotiating with legislative leaders.”
Did anyone get the license number of the turnip truck that Bruce fell off of?
– MrJM
Comment by MrJM Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:05 am
Rauner wants the Casey Foundation to evaluate and recommend change. Isn’t that where former disgraced DCFS Director, Erwin McEwen went to work. After refusing to cooperate with an investigation of millions of dollar awarded to his “friend” George Smith. File this under, the more things change….
Comment by south side Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:05 am
Rauner is asking for the power to do the kinds of things that he criticized Quinn and the GA for doing, and to take them even farther. He doesn’t borrow from funds, he confiscates them.
Welcome to the real world, Governor. Not so easy now to pretend your campaign “blueprint” numbers work,
Comment by walker Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:11 am
Reboot Illinois shows only a $3 billion hole in FY16 (plus $6 billion in backlog bills carried over from FY15).
If those are the Governor’s numbers he plans to use, then the “solution” is predictable.
Take 2.5 billion from local governments/funds
Expand sales tax to certain services (500 mil)
Cuts in departments to hold year-over-year spending flat
And then talk about”long-term structural reforms” and “growth” to pay down the $6 billion backlog.
But something tells me the year-over-year hole is bigger than $3 billion.
And then you have to pass all three of those things. Only one is achievable, and then impossible to do every year without contract concessions.
Comment by Gb20 Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:13 am
What a mess that the Dems created here. Fixing it will cause a lot of pain to those who benefited little from decades of the misspending, and that’s the tragedy here. I suspect that Madigan and Cullerton will give Rauner what he asks for, at least partially for no other reason than they don’t have an answer to the question, “What do YOU think we should do to get out of this mess?”
I think at this point they understand that this is a crisis, and that they can’t keep doing business as usual any longer. We’ll see.
Comment by Arizona Bob Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:15 am
If the GA were to give rauner authority to move and spend any amount from any line item to any other line–FOR 4 YEARS–may as well just appropriate one lump sum each year. Not.
That would be such a broad relinquishing of legislative authority and prerogative to the executive it could be unconstitutional. It isn’t even usurpation, it’s surrender.
Comment by Langhorne Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:16 am
=== “Steans said the original proposal from the administration would have given the governor the authority he sought for the full, four-year term.” ===
Looks like Rauner’s proposing that smoke and mirrors budgeting continue. It’s just going to be a different brand generating the smoke and a fancier mirrors.
Comment by Norseman Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:24 am
@ Arizona Bob. Democrats deserve a ton of blame. But Republicans are culpable too.
What is hard to watch is all of the hand wringing and head scratching going on like there is no simple answer. There is a really simple, obvious solution to this problem. Raise taxes to where they were in December. Maybe make some cuts too, but this “crisis” has a simple solution. Raise revenue. Cuts alone will not resolve matters.
And by moving funds around in complicated ways to avoid raising taxes, Rauner looks as though he is doing the same kind of budget chicanery that got us into the problem in the first place. We need transparency here.
Comment by Scamp640 Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:24 am
If legislators grant Rauner the broad sweep, slash and burn authority he seeks, would they not be abdicating their authority? What would be the purpose in their constituents returning them to Sfld?
Comment by Tim Snopes Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:42 am
Illinois, like most states, has a network of multidisciplinary child death review teams across the state. DCFS provides coordination and administrative support. Review team members, local luminaries who serve for free, have been examining every child death with prior agency involvement for a couple of decades, and making recommendations, presumably.
Ditto the agency OIG, whose extensive staff reviews all child deaths with priors by statute, and has been doing so since the mid-90’s. The OIG reports to the governor and the state legislature.
And of course there’s the ACLU, which filed a lawsuit in the 90’s to fix DCFS, and monitored it for a couple of deades, until recently. Now ACLU
wants to reopen the lawsuit.
Before we taxpayers throw a pile of money at the Casey Foundation, maybe we ought to find out what all these folks have been doing for 20 years and what their recommendations have been. And why hasn’t all this monitoring worked.
We know bureacracies are hard to change, but 20 years is ridiculous.
Comment by Cassandra Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:52 am
Hey Bob … Who are “those who benefited little from the decades of the (Dems) misspending”?
Comment by forwhatitsworth Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 11:54 am
A lot of errors in the Reboot Illinois press releaser. Ex. GRF revenue 2016 is 32 billion and pension costs in the GRF budget are $6 billion - which is 19% (not 25%) of the GRF revenue. The additional pension costs are in other funds than GRF.
The truth is bad enough - no need to embellish it.
State income tax revenue in 2014 was $19.6 billion projected to be $14.5 billion 2016 - a decline of 26% (not 35%). They did the % of the lower $14.5 billion instead of the higher $19.6 billion. Makes sense - with a 25% drop in the rate how the heck do you get a 35% decline in revenue.
SB1 pension reform “saves” the State $5.3 billion over 4 years - or $1.1 billion a year average. Kind of misleading to use the $5.3 billion number over the four years. The impact on the budget is $1.1 billion - but $5.3 billion looks higher.
Per COGFA, for 2010 the State appropriated $4.038 billion for pensions. For 2014, the State appropriated $6.616 billion for pensions. Pension appropriation grew by $2.6 billion (not $3.6 billion) and by 65% (not 86.7%).
Like I said - the truth is bad enough, not sure why it needs to be made to look worse.
Comment by archimedes Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 12:03 pm
Somewhere Mike Madigan is thinking “I honestly didn’t think it would be this easy.”
Comment by efudd Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 12:32 pm
Notice how Reboot seems to hammer at pensions while ’slighting’ other state program costs.
Typical!
Comment by Federalist Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 12:35 pm
I applaud the ACLU of Illinois’ steadfast work on behalf of children at risk, but find it questionable, if not troubling, that the nonprofit decided to file suit against DCFS now. As the article states, Givernor Rauner inherited the problems of this troubled State agency. Why not then file suit under the Wuinn administration, when the allegations of abuse and neglect first surfaced? Shame on you, ACLU of Illinois. Your political calculations are short-sighted and transparent.
Comment by Black Ivy Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 12:51 pm
Federalist
“Notice how Reboot seems to hammer at pensions while ’slighting’ other state program costs.”
Just like the members of the Tribune’s editorial board, Reboot’s Executive Editor is another (former) newspaper person who saw their job / pension trashed by their corporate overlords (Matthew Dietrich, Copley / Gatehouse), and is now going after public pensions.
Comment by Anyone Remember Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 12:55 pm
==- Black Ivy - Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 12:51 pm:==
The Tribune series only recently came out. Part 1 was December 3rd.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/rtc/
Comment by Precinct Captain Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 1:09 pm
====- Black Ivy - Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 12:51 pm:==
Also note that according to the ACLU they are doing this because the GA and Gov. Rauner would not act fast enough in response to the Tribune’s series. Of course, why live with facts and reality when you can be a Raunerbot, programmed to think by someone else.
Comment by Precinct Captain Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 1:10 pm
@scamp640
=Raise revenue. Cuts alone will not resolve matters.=
Raising revenue doesn’t work with this culture either, scamp. We increased income tax in the Edgar years from 2 to 3%, a 50% increase. The revenues grew and should have been sustainable, but the irresponsible GA and Gov grew spending faster. In 2011 we increased taxes by 67% temporarily to give the GA and Gov time to adjust spending practices until the tax increase would only go down to a 25% increase in 2015. the GA had the time to get the budget in order, but they refused to make the hard choices that needed to be made to get Illinois on a sustainable path with the long term 25% increase. They got nowhere in 4 years.
Rauner is the first one in decades to take the bull by the horns and try to make needed reforms to create sustainable finances. Will the 25% tax increase from 2011 be enough? I think based on past GA history to expect ANY amount of tax increase to solve the problem without seriously changing the political culture is to deny everything we know about the leadership, as well as the rank and file, in the Illinois GA.
Comment by Arizona Bob Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 1:14 pm
With apologies to M. Sharp …
Winnin’ is easy, governin’s twice as tough
So come back, Rauner, when you grow up
Comment by RNUG Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 1:19 pm
Arizona Bob -
1. Jim Edgar didn’t “raise” income taxes in 1991, he made permanent and repurposed the 1989 income tax increase away from local government to education. Oh, by the way, Edgar campaigned on this platform, Hartigan opposed it, and Edgar won the 1990 election.
2. The increase was not 50% (from 2% to 3%), but 20% (from 2.5% to 3.0%).
http://www.lib.niu.edu/1989/ii890825.html
Comment by Anyone Remember Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 1:24 pm
@Anyone Remember1:24=Repurposed the 1989 income tax increase away from local government to education.=
That might be a good idea, especially if the money was directed to the district that the taxpayer’s address was in. That could be done fairly easily by computer cross reference.
Comment by DuPage Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 2:00 pm
Black Ivy:
Rauner has indicated his intention, despite the Tribune series, to cut the DCFS budget.
And ACLU did take the agency to court under Quinn. The difference is, Quinn agreed to address the staffing problems creating the investigation backlog.
Cassandra:
Casey is working for free. Most all death review team and OIG recommendations are implemented, although budget cuts over the last decade mean that implementing policy changes takes longer than it should.
What we have here is a permanency problem that leads to well-being issues that become safety concerns.
While everyone is focused on the safety problems of youth in residential care with complex behavioral health needs, they are ignoring the lack of permanency, with courts as major contributors, that leads to kids being in foster care for five years, which often becomes ten years, which soon becomes 15.
Comment by Juvenal Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 2:03 pm
@Anyone Remember,
Thanks for the insight.
Comment by Federalist Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 2:06 pm
@anyone remember
I stand corrected on point 2, but I would argue that making a temporary tax permanent is indeed a “tax increase”. An increase in tax obligation is a tax increase, even if it is an expiring tax.
Here’s an analogy. Say you paid off your mortgage of $2,000 per month, and your bank keeps sending you, and requiring you, to pay that amount every month through perpetuity. When you complain to them, they say, “what are you complaining about, we didn’t increase your payment, we just kept it at the same rate!” Making a “temporary” tax increase permanent is no less damaging, or despicable!
Comment by Arizona Bob Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 2:50 pm
What are these “non-essential” services we hear so much about? What kind of nut are we talking?
Comment by Wordslinger Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 2:51 pm
Arizona Bob -
My point is that Candidate Edgar explicitly said he was going to do it, Candidate Hartigan VERY explicitly said he wouldn’t do it, and the voters chose Candidate Edgar. It was voter approved!
Comment by Anyone Remember Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 3:31 pm
“It is very broad, what has been put on the table and asked for. Very unusual,” [Sen. Heather Steans] said. “We have done emergency budget acts before, but nothing in terms of the scope that’s been requested to date.”
She said the power would essentially take the legislature out of the budget picture. […]”
I think the precedent for this kind of thing is Rome…
Comment by Greg Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 3:46 pm
It is certainly possible that the courts are getting in the way of permanency for many DCFS wards in Illinois. Courts are surrounded by
patronage-oriented bureaucracies which would be smaller, and produce fewer jobs, if the caseloads dropped. Take a walk through the Cook County Juvenile Court some day. Remember the terrible struggles to get the Juvenile Detention Center to improve the quality of direct care staffing. It’s probably still going on.
We’ve heard this song before in the correctional system. Local prosecutors and judges are all too quick to put folks who can’t afford bail in the slammer, from which they can’t afford to get out while their case is decided,even though they haven’t been convicted of anything. It’s a national scandal. Lots of government jobs depend on this state of affairs not changing too much.
Not sure Rauner and his DCFS pick will want to go up against the judges though. They are probably looking for easier fixes.
Comment by Cassandra Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 3:51 pm
DCFS is indeed due for an overhaul and new ideas, and kudos to Rauner for bringing in George Sheldon to implement some much needed reforms in the child welfare system.
These Sun-Times/WBEZ stories on child deaths are beginning to bother me from a sensationalist standpoint. To be clear, one child death is too many, but an important caveat to the data they are analyzing - that they gloss over and/or never fully explain - is that DCFS began counting deaths from parents sleeping with infants as ‘deaths from neglect’ in FY11. This is why deaths from neglect shoot up at that point, although deaths from abuse have remained level going years back. The re-categorization was a strategic plan by DCFS to address this problem and was coupled with a large outreach and education campaign.
Instead of recognizing the value of this and giving DCFS credit for its efforts, media has slammed the agency for ‘more deaths’ under its watch. Attention is needed to the child welfare system, problems most definitely exist, but this brow beating is beginning to smell more like the need to ’sell papers’ than legitimate journalism.
Comment by Left Leaner Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 3:54 pm
–She said the power would essentially take the legislature out of the budget picture….–
They kind of did that on their own last May, and chose not to fix it in the veto session.
Comment by Wordslinger Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 3:55 pm
Left Leaner:
The problem for Rauner is that he used those same WBEZ/Sun-Times ads to accuse Quinn of being personally responsible for child deaths.
So, errant as they are, we are prolly stuck with them.
Comment by Juvenal Tuesday, Feb 17, 15 @ 5:19 pm