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Illinois

Propose your ideas for a billion dollars in state spending cuts. Be as specific as possible. And if you can’t come up with a billion dollars in total, real cuts, don’t bother posting.

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 9:42 am

Comments

Implement the recommendations of DCEO’s Campus Energy Efficiency Report - $25 million

Place all K-12 schools under similar energy efficiency standards - $100 million

Sunset non-essential tax expenditures until education is fully-funded:

Vehicle Use Tax Expenditures - $21 million
Motor Fuel Tax Expenditures (except the municipal expenditure) - $139 million
Corporate Income Tax Expenditures - $234 million
Electricity Excise Tax Expenditures - $64 million
Underground Storage Tank Tax Expenditure (except for waterways on our borders) - $18 million
Hotel Operator’s Tax Expenditure - Permanent residents - $8 million
Fishing License Discounts - $13 million
Cigarette Tax Collection Rebate - $10 million
Corporate Franchise Tax Cap - $6.4 million
Real Estate Tax Exemption for Horse Racing - $3.8 million

Reduce spending at DCEO to FY 2003 levels, plus $100 million to cover inflationary expenses - $500 million

TOTAL SAVINGS: $1.142 billion

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 10:25 am
The Comptroller’s most recent report on tax expenditures can be found here’

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 10:27 am
I’m sure that others will find it easy to pick holes in Yellow Dog’s list, but I’d point out that the Underground Storage Tank Fund, a small Motor Fuel Tax hike that I actually voted for, is used to clean up gas station tank leaks. Now, I would admit that charging the service station owner only $10,000 is totally absurd, but such leaks can spoil drinking water and should be cleaned up as soon as possible.

Not all of us have Lake Michigan drinking water.

In short, I don’t consider this “tax expenditure” as worthless as Yellow Dog.

Kids drinking poisoned water probably won’t do too well in life.

The other tax expenditures don’t sound like budget cuts, they sound like tax hikes.

I admit to not understanding the energy efficiency standards proposed for local schools and how that saves $100 million in the state budget. My guess is that local taxpayers would have to pay some much larger amount to achieve what I assume is $100 million a year in savings.

If public officials really wanted to save energy on new public buildings really, they would have 38 “R” walls. These can be provided by Solarcrete for the same cost as leaky brick or concrete walls. I wish I had known about the process when we built our stucco addition in 1998.

Comment by Cal Skinner Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 10:43 am
As Cal has pointed out, Yellow Dog’s list is not cuts in expenditures, but additions to revenue.

Total state expenditures are approaching 50 billion. 1 billion is 2 per cent. I would get 1 billion in real expenditure cuts simply by reducing every agency and service budget by 2 per cent.

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 11:16 am
The 2% reduction across the board sounds like an ideal solution. Business and individuals make those decisions when faced with a loss of revenue.

Comment by Lee Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 11:27 am
Anonymous is right. Furthermore, every single agency administrator knows where those cuts can be made without affecting services. They won’t admit it but if forced to do so, each could come up with a reasonable and fair plan. If they can’t figure it out they are not competent to hold the position. There is a lot of flab in every agency.

I would strongly consider moving all those whose health insurance is paid for by the state of Illinois (by us taxpayers, in other words) to managed care: employees, retirees, and those currently receiving Medicaid and associated programs, and, of course, legislators, judges and so on. That would likely save well over a billion and the overall quality of care for the entire group would rise as more powerful participants begin to demand higher quality care.

Comment by Cassandra Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 11:28 am
Cal - The tax expenditure I propose eliminating is a tax rebate for storage tank owners. I agree with you that not poisoning children is a worthy goal. I simply disagree with the state that we should be paying people not to poison children.

A tax expenditure is by definition an expenditure. Providing a $13 million discount for fishing licenses has the same net effect as providing $13 million in grants for people to buy fishing licenses, it just comes from the opposite side of the ledger.

I think if you told parents in McHenry County “We’re not going to fully fund education this year or provide property tax relief, but we are going to spend $13 million to provide discounts for fishing licenses”, most voters would say your priorities are out of whack. I think they’d have the same reaction to all of the tax expenditures listed.

As for the energy efficiency savings, those are estimated NET annual savings which the state can put back into the GRF. You’re right, all new construction should be built to high energy efficiency standards, but these savings can be achieved by utilizing private companies that perform energy audits of EXISTING public buildings and implement simple things like ensuring HVAC filters are changed regularly. The companies guarantee a savings in their contract, keep a percentage of the energy savings for themselves, and then pass the rest of the savings on to the contractee - in this case, the state. It’s green, it’s fiscally responsible, and it’s risk-free.

BTW, Cal, you’re always railing against higher taxes, where’s your plan to cut government spending by $1 billion?

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 11:32 am
Actually, kids, GRF spending for FY07 was about $27 billion. You could add the rest in, but that’s stuff like federal reimbursements, etc.

Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 11:40 am
Please elaborate on the rebate for storage tank owners.

And, since fishing licenses are sold by private businesses, is the “tax expenditure” you mention really the commission the stores get for selling the fishing licenses?

Comment by Cal Skinner Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 11:46 am
Here’s a link to the appropriations for FY ‘07:

‘07 Budget.

I defy anyone to tell me where you would cut $320 million (2%) from the Department of Health and Human Services budget, which includes Medicaid. The ENTIRE administrative budget for that agency is $342 million, and that includes $181 million for administering child support enforcement.

I’d also love to hear your plans for cutting 2%, or $8 million, from the State Police, which has an administrative budget of only $13 million.

Remember Rich’s instructions:

“Be as specific as possible. And if you can’t come up with a billion dollars in total, real cuts, don’t bother posting.”

If any of you were given the responsibility of cutting your household budgets by 2%, the last thing you’d do is say “No problem, I’ll just cut everything by 2%.” Start reducing your mortgage payments, your utility bill payments and insurance payments by 2%, and see what happens. Tell me how much sense it makes to drive your car 98% of the way to work every day.

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 11:51 am
“across the board” cuts are the mindless tool of politicians - I thought the folks here thought of themselves as thinkers. ATB means - I don’t know what I’m cutting, but I will - no priorities, no assessment of needs, just mindless. Most agency heads could tell you an equal or greater amount of things that they should be doing, that are required by state law to be doing, that citizens assume they are doing, but they are not doing, due to insufficient funds. There is this inane assumption that the current amount of revenues from all tax sources just “magically” equals the needs of the state, so pare expenses to meet that amount. What an amazing coincidence! The analogy to the private sector is false - a business can decide to close certain locations - the state can’t just say - we won’t do misdemeanors anymore; south of I-70 just won’t get parks anymore; we’re phasing out Eastern Illinois University. Decide the government you want - raise the revenues to support it.

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 11:56 am
Cal - Underground Storage Tax Expenditure: its real simple. We give full refunds to airports, railroads, and liquified propane storage facilities. We even spend $1.3 million on rebates to folks just for paying the taxes they owe on time.

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 11:57 am
Here’s another big savings: move people out of state prisons who are there on simple drug possession charges and place them in community-based addiction treatment, job training, and parolee monitoring programs where they belong.

Moving 13,000 inmates out of DOC would save an estimated $520 million (based on the DOC’s fiscal note estimates of $40K per inmate per year). I’d propose reinvesting half of that into the aforementioned state programs, for a net savings of $260 million, plus an estimated increase of $3.5 million in income taxes collected (assumes half the former inmates land jobs making $20K a year), and an additional $2 million in sales tax revenue (assumes 25% of wages spent on taxable goods and services).

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 12:05 pm
Yellow Dog Democrat - $1,400,000,000 in specific spending cuts.

Yellow Bellied Republicans - $0 is specific spending cuts.

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 12:10 pm
YDD, who wil hire a convict when they can hire illegals who are not violent criminals for less?

I will submit a real list, but we can start with 0 pay outside of mileage for legislator overtime pay.

Comment by Wumpus Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 12:15 pm
YDD, who wil hire a convict when they can hire illegals who are not violent criminals for less?

I will submit a real list, but we can start with 0 pay outside of mileage for legislator overtime pay. Also, cut Blago’s air travel fees to 0, make him drive

Comment by Wumpus Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 12:15 pm
Cassandra -

I don’t think you can argue that moving Medicaid recipients into managed care will save any money. Keep in mind that 2/3 of the Medicaid expenditures are for seniors and the disabled, and that the administrative costs of Medicaid are only 3%, while the administrative costs of private managed care companies is 25%. Unless your proposing actually cutting care for seniors and the disabled, you can’t save money that way.

Other than that, I’d love to hear how you came up with your $1 billion figure. Do you even know how much the state spends on health care for current employees, or are you just pulling numbers out of thin air? I suspect it’s thin air, because with only roughly 35,000 state employees, a $1 billion cut would represent $28,600 per employee, and I just find it a little difficult to believe that we’re spending even close to that per employee now.

Get real, people.

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 12:19 pm
Wumpus, I hope you present a list, because those two “savings” you mentioned are peanuts.

Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 12:22 pm
Another thing you have to remember is that you cannot cut 2% ATB from the 07 budget and assume the 08 budget is balanced. You have to also account for inflation from the 07 to 08 budgets - state agencies, like everyone else in Illinois, will be paying more for things like electricity and gas in 08 than in 07, and like all private-sector employers their personnel costs will also be higher.

In other words a 2% cut in 08 over 07 is actually a much larger cut.

Then consider that you also have to make a much larger pension payment and that you SHOULD close the gaps between the current Medicaid payment cycle and a timely one, and between the current education funding level and the recommended foundation level, and you realize that there is simply no way to cut out of this mess. Significant added revenue is a must.

PS to Cassandra, the vast vast majority of “all those whose health insurance is paid for by the state of Illinois” are already in managed care. The savings you posit from such a “switch” have already been realized, pocketed and spent. Next?

Comment by Reality Check Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 12:23 pm
Wumpus - thanks for that list of $165,000 in savings. Only $999,835,000 to go.

If we’re only interested in taking cheap political shots and not actually solving the state’s budget crisis, I have a better idea, BTW. Require the Governor and all agency directors to reside in Springfield.

We could also void all state contracts with companies (including their principals and lobbyists) who have contributed $5,000 or more in aggregate to the Governor over the last five years, rebid the contracts, and prohibit the Gov’s big donors from re-applying.

To be fair, I’d create a 60 day window for those affected to obtain a refund from the Gov’s campaign committee which he could not refuse.

THAT should save us a few bucks.

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 12:29 pm
Would the people who posted agreeing with the 2 percent ATB cut idea now please repost the rest of their savings? Thanks.

Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 12:44 pm
Rich - sounds like you’re suggesting that 2% ATB cuts in GRF spending by agency (which totals $27 billion), would only save $540 million, and folks still need to come up with another $460M. Is that correct?

Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 12:53 pm
$460
- 41 Chicago State University
- 9 misc executive salaries for directors
_________
$410

Comment by 6'2" Yeti Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 1:29 pm
There are close to 60,000 current state employees and 200,000 current retirees I believe. Given the size of this population, added to the the Medicaid, Allkids, etc population of about 2.5 million according to the guv’s office, it seems reasonable to assume that large savings could be realized by requiring managed care for all recipients of state-subsidized health care–care that is paid of entirely by us, the taxpayers. I believe the total bill now is $7 billion. A 14 percent reduction doesn’t seem that unreasonable if the negotiations were done effectively.

Comment by Cassandra Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 1:30 pm
Again, state employees and retirees are already in managed care, so pretending to save money by moving them there is not a real solution.

Comment by Reality Check Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 1:37 pm
YDD is right on the money. The budget debate should be focused on creating more revenues because you can’t just “cut” X% from human services, corrections, aging, etc. without cutting into programs that are helping people today stay healthy and live independent lives, free from institutionalized living and care — whether it be nursing homes or the correctional system, which would cost the state boatloads more cash.

Also, under blagojevich the state has already moved more than half its medicaid enrollees into managed care plans. they can’t move seniors and some other populations at will because there are problematic federal rules in place that don’t allow them to do so without having certain waivers in place first — which can take years to get.

This again goes back to a fundamental issue that many people have been raising for a long time — Illinois has a revenue problem, not a spending problem. Can you still cut a bit here and there? Sure. But, it won’t get you anywhere close to meeting the annual costs of pensions, medicaid, education and other services whose costs increase each year dur to inflation. So YDD is right to bring the issue back to raising new revs because that’s where the problem is (although I don’t agree with cutting dceo funding back to fy 03 levels; that would be irresponsible since most of that money is going back to communities for economic developement and infrastructure improvements).

Comment by demgrrl Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 1:42 pm
Given that the Lt. Gov has no duties in the constitution why don’t we start with eliminating his office and then merging the duplicative duties by merging the Treasurer’s office and the comptroller (setting up once heck of a fun election).

That doesn’t get us to $1 billion so I would in turn remove all contracts that DCEO and the Gov can hand out to cronies which should put the cuts at over $1 billion.

Comment by S.I. Anon Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 2:14 pm
SI Anon, you’re not even close.

Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 2:20 pm
Here’s another vote of confidence in raising new revenues, a la YDD’s (and others’) suggestions. To attempt to fit Rich’s original question, I’d have to word this so: We should cut at least a billion dollars’ worth of policymakers’ pathological fear of doing the right thing — raising general taxes. And we ought to raise more $$ than that, while we’re at it. Any other proposed “solution” is delusionally simplistic. We simply cannot cut or revenue-gimmick our way out of the many problems we face, from shortfalls in education to transportation to pension obligations to basic fiscal soundness. Let’s bite the damned bullet, already.

Comment by Cap'n Crud Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 2:32 pm
I gave the initial 2 per cent argument.

If you want to use $27 billion as your base, I believe that my initial argument still holds at 4 per cent.

The inflation argument does not hold because income and sales tax collections increase with inflation.

By the way, I am a democratic precinct committee person and I believe that we should have public education, public highways, and a certain level of social services. I just know that every public entity that I have been directly inside has way more that 4 per cent waste.

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 2:44 pm
YDD: If any of you were given the responsibility of cutting your household budgets by 2%, the last thing you’d do is say “No problem, I’ll just cut everything by 2%.” Start reducing your mortgage payments, your utility bill payments and insurance payments by 2%, and see what happens. Tell me how much sense it makes to drive your car 98% of the way to work every day.

The analogy here is such:

One could restructure their mortgage to pay 98% of what they now pay a month fairly easily. One could lower the thermostat a degree or so, change a few bulbs to energy-saving and save 2% on their energy bill. One could shop around for insurance, and wouldn’t be hard to get the same coverage for 2% less. One could squeeze 2% better vehicle economy by conservative driving, proper tire inflation, and buying at the cheapest gas station.

Again, as with the family budget it’s all a matter of establishing priorities, having the will to make sacrifices of the unneccessary and economizing the necessary, and throwing sacred cows away when necessary. Removing 2% of fat is fairly easy to achieve; ask any butcher. It’s not like we are asking for 10% here.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 3:42 pm
I don’t know how much it would save, but penson reform would have to amass a considerable amount of dollars.

Healthcare forever, retiring at 50, I’m not knocking it for state workers, but I’ll have to work until I’m 90 or dead to retire.

We need to look at reform here, the costs are completely unsustainable for the long term.

Comment by Downstate Dem Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 3:51 pm
the costs are completely unsustainable

Really? What are the normal costs for pensions and retiree health care?

I think you don’t know. But I’ll help you out. $1.3 b for the pensions in FY07 and $1.8 b for health care (FY06).

That pensions figure is about 9% of payroll. The national average is over 12%. The health figure is going up but because everybody’s health costs are going up, not - as some here suggest - because retirees aren’t in managed care. In fact they are, at rates that exceed those of private-sector retirees.

At any rate, for pensions and retiree health care, combined normal costs are about $3 b, or not much over 5% of the state budget.

Put short, I think it’s your grasp of facts that is unsustainable.

Comment by Reality Check Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 4:14 pm
Require a balanced budget by constitutional amendment, enact a line item veto, and elect a real leader as gov.

Comment by bonehead Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 4:15 pm
Look like we are arriving at an interesting point. Demgrrl and YDD appear to be suggesting that there is no way for the state to spend less. That begs the point of where do all the annual revenue increases go. Revenue growth is in excess of 5% per year compounded for the past few years.

There is a limit as to what a business and individual can pay in taxes and user fees. The state needs too remain at least vaguely comptetitive. Capital and commerce are mobile. Tax too had and it will leave.

What we need are legitimate management specialists to trim down the patronage army and weed out the placeholders on the payroll. Then we can begin to manage growth. I bet we can reduce staff by an averaage of 10% across the board and make up the difference in productivity increases.

And no matter what we do, stop promising more giveaways.

Comment by plutocrat03 Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 5:32 pm
I don’t know where the 60,000 + state employees are, but there aren’t that many. The past several years, after the start of the fiscal year, departments have been required to give up 2% of their budgets across the board already. So that’s a nice idea. They giveth and they taketh away…right away.

I think if they stopped having a separate fund for overtime and put that towards regular staffing or towards something positive that would help. The state is spending millions in each department right now each fiscal year on overtime.

I don’t have the answers, Rich, but Cassandra needed to be corrected about the number of state employees. If only.

I hope someone comes up with an answer before the whole thing comes apart. It’s become a freak show working for this state.

Comment by Tessa Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 5:58 pm
Wow! You have discussed the budget more today than the General Assembly has all session.

Comment by Anon Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 6:17 pm
Unless there has been a very substantial change in the past 4 years (and there may have been because of the effects of early retirement; employees were always less leery of managed care) retiree participation in the managed care options was pretty low

Comment by steve schnorf Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 6:19 pm
I won’t presume to come up with a billion in cuts because I haven’t gone over the budget. But I do work for a state agency that has become top heavy with purely political hires earning obscene amounts of money for doing “pretend” jobs and hands out millions of dollars in contract money to “connected” organizations. When the method for keeping the state employee count down is to hire people on contract and then pay them a salary that is close to $100,000/year which is considerably more than most long-time non-political employees ever make - well multiply that out over every state agency and I’m guessing you could cut a whole lot of fat from the budget.

Comment by cynically anonymous Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 7:59 pm
The coded state employees are around 54,000 and the non-coded employees are around 12,000. So your total is around 66,000. Hard to understand, I’m sure. When they talk about state employees, it usually means code employees (under the jurisdiction of the gov). Cynically anon is pretty much on target. Also, you have a lot of agencies doing duplicate work.

Comment by Blue Dog Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 9:41 pm
The rest of you folks might not like it, but YDD and Schnorf are right on point with their comments. If ATB cuts were easy to do, rest assured Filan would have done them by now. Steve’s memory is still pretty good; a recent study I read of participation in managed care by State employees/retirees shows the persistence of high utilization of the traditional plan.

Having said that, here’s my plan, noting that in some cases we have to spend money to save money:

1) State pays for managed care insurance. You wanna go see Dr. Kevorkian and he’s not in the plan, you pay the difference. Savings;$200m (including actives, retirees, TRIP)
2) Elimination of “last day” pension calculation for State Police and other “alternative formula” SERS employees. Given that this group is now one/third of SERS’ actives, switching to a “final average salary” calculation should save at least $10-15 million per year.
3) Eliminate all CMS operations that are fundamentally noncompetive with the private sector. At a minimum, this would mean farewell to the State Garages and a great deal of the Telecom Revolving Fund. Save at least $25 million annually by less costly services, no facility maintenance, and less bureaucracy.
4) Adopt and enforce uniform energy conservation standards for all State owned and leased properties. Along with YDD’s sound suggestions for higher ed and K-12, the total saved could approach $200 million annually (I’m a bit rusty on the amount of leased space.)
5) Elimination of the various contractual relationships established over the past four years, some of which seem to be self-perpetuating. Guesstimate of total over all agencies: $50-60 million.

If my numbers are any good, this is about halfway there. Here’s my thought on how to get the rest:Where a State agency or bureau exists primarily to serve one industry or sector as opposed to the general public, the industry should fully fund the costs of the agency through fee income. For example, the Gaming Board and Racing Board should be fully funded by the boats and tracks. The Div. of Insurance, which provides services to the public as well as regulates an industry, should not be fully self-funding.

#s

Comment by NumbersGuy Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 11:20 pm
Not really short term, but how about closing and consolidating smaller high schools throughout the state? Most counties under 40,000 can do with only one high school.

I know it doesn’t deal with the budget hole this year, but it would help deal with some of the structural inefficiencies we have.

Comment by Fraydog Tuesday, Jun 5, 07 @ 11:53 pm
Uh…Tessa, you’re right about the way too many highly-paid MC employees in state government.

But it looks like, if Blue Dog is correct, I’m right about the number of state employees. And I’m pretty sure he’s correct.

So, to summarize, put all recipients of state-funded health care (the 2.5 million recipients of various versions of Medicaid, Allkids, etc, the 60,000 plus current employees and their families,
the 200,000 retirees and their families, a total of well over 3 million) into managed care and get a competent state negotiator. Three million is 25 percent of the state’s total population. That’s a huge bargaining chip right there. If you have to get some federal waivers, get them. That’s what government bureaucrats are there for.

Comment by Cassandra Wednesday, Jun 6, 07 @ 12:48 am
There are some good ideas here. However, I think Rich should have added one more criteria; the cuts have to be doable.

Any changes in employee benefits (e.g., moving them all into managed care, elimination of “last day”) would have to be negotiated with AFSCME, Teamsters, FoP. etc. Many of the other changes would require legislative action (e.g., reducing nursing home rates by 2%).

It’s possible to come up with some decent ideas to save some money. It’s a far different thing to cause them to happen. Show me the legislators, R or D, who are going to vote to reduce elementary and secondary school funding by 2%, much less 4%, but if you don’t do it you can’t hit your target for the State Board. Unless you’re able to pass those cuts in medicaid rates, TANF payments, Higher Ed funding, child welfare grant rates, child care subsidy rates, and on and on, you can’t hit your 2% or 4% goal. It simply can’t be done mathematically.

It’s like the question; “if two towns are 60 miles apart, and you drive 30 miles per hour from town A to Town B, how fast do you have to drive going back to average 60 MPH for the whole trip?” Answer, it’s mathematically impossible to drive fast enough going back, just like it’s impossible to do an ATB and hit an overall goal if you take 75% of spending off the board before you start.

I’m not defending anyone here, just stating a fact. If you tell me you just have to have the willpower to make the cuts, that question is asked and answered.

Comment by steve schnorf Wednesday, Jun 6, 07 @ 1:35 am
No outsider can know more about waste and abuse than the department employees themselves. Pass a law giving state employees (maybe any citizen) the right to keep 20% of the first years savings up to $1 million. Let them come up with suggestions, make them formal and public, maybe posted to the web for broad dissemination. You could even pool ideas across committees.

At the same time, the presumption is that government must do all the things it is doing today. Why? If the free market can provide it, then government is duplicating that effort at a higher cost and lower benefit. School vouchers would give instant tax relief at the local level.

Our local HS spends $16,000+ per student. For that money you could send your kids to the prep schools Bush and Gore attended. (& get an education)

A simple change in the law could allow private bus companies to run the same routes as the RTA & CTA. This gives even more relief.

Illinois will not be competitive with other states and will continue to bleed people and talent without reforming the bad habit of putting government first.

Flame away!

Comment by Illini CanDo Wednesday, Jun 6, 07 @ 7:48 am