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Budget action roundup

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* I’m going to take the rest of the day off for the holiday, so I won’t be turning on comments. I’ll post a video later, but let’s do a quick news coverage roundup of last night’s action.

* First up, the Medicaid cuts…

Quinn proposes to reduce the general revenue budget approved by the legislature by $376 million. The largest reduction is a $276 million cut to Medicaid funding for hospitals. The legislature approved about $2.3 billion in such funding. Quinn Budget Director David Vaught said that the reduction is meant to bring hospitals to the table to negotiate cutting their rates. In his original proposal, Quinn called for cuts to Medicaid rates that he said would save the state an estimated $550 million in the first fiscal year.

Without a change to the rates, hospitals will continue to be paid the same amount, and Quinn’s reduction would mean that the money would run out before the end of the fiscal year. “We hope that it helps convince the interested parties on this, which would be hospitals, to come to the table,” Vaught said. “We have a rate system in Illinois that’s been in effect for many years. It’s not been changed for many years. …We’re dealing with a very fast-growing industry that is growing more quickly than we can afford.” He acknowledged that some hospitals and nursing homes felt they got the short end of the stick in recently approved nursing home legislation and a workers’ compensation reform package, and that may complicate negotiations.

During the budgeting process, hospital representatives said the industry would prefer waiting longer for payments than see a drastic reduction in the rates they are paid.

* More…

The governor failed to persuade lawmakers to cut Medicaid reimbursements rates during the spring, so his cut in Medicaid spending could have the effect of simply pushing those health-care bills off to the 2012-2013 budget year, meaning hospitals would have to wait to be paid even longer.

A spokesman for Quinn budget director David Vaught said the Medicaid spending reduction would not have an impact on Stroger Hospital, and he stressed that the cut would not cause any hospital in Illinois to close.

* Now, on to the school transportation cuts…

On school transportation — money districts use to pay for busing students — Quinn sliced the $294 million lawmakers wanted to spend by $89 million.

The move became an immediate flash point. Republican Rep. Roger Eddy, a school superintendent from Hutsonville, said the cuts will hurt the Chicago suburbs and rural districts where some children need to travel many miles to get to schools.

Eddy contended that Quinn’s actions made him appear to have a “vendetta against transporting kids.”

“If you don’t get kids to school, and transporting kids is obviously vital to get them there, you can’t teach them,” said Eddy, the Republican spokesman for the House committee dealing with elementary and high school spending.

* More…

Vaught said the purpose of that cut is to focus limited state resources on classrooms.

“That’s a local function, getting the kids to school,” Vaught said, referring to the transportation money as “excess” state funds.

Reducing state aid for transportation is likely to force schools to take money away from other educational services in order to keep buses running.

* Regional superintendents…

Vaught reiterated the administration’s position that local school districts can cough up the money if they want their own regional superintendent. “This is not a proposal to say get rid of their regional superintendents,” he said.

* More…

Vaught reiterated the administration’s position that local school districts can cough up the money if they want their own regional superintendent. “This is not a proposal to say get rid of their regional superintendents,” he said.

* More…

For now, the regional offices of education, which provide a number of education-related services to local school districts, will continue to operate until the Legislature decides whether to challenge Quinn’s move.

Yep, I screwed up in the subscriber edition.

* AFSCME is unhappy…

“This is a fundamentally broken budget, an unworkable plan that falls far short of the revenue needed to adequately support basic services,” said Anders Lindall, spokesman for the Illinois division of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Lindall urged Quinn to spend at the levels needed to maintain services and then work with lawmakers to come up with more money later in the year.

But Vaught said Quinn must assume no more money will be available. “You implement right away and you do the cuts,” he said.

* Last word…

The legislature must approve all of Quinn’s budget reductions. Quinn has been scarcely involved in the budgeting process this year, and he is pushing some of the original pieces of his proposal that did not go over well with the legislature the first time around. “In spite of the fact that he’s going to be governor for four years that he was elected, he certainly has not been able to assert the power within the office and his role in the process,” said Kent Redfield, an emeritus political science professor at the University of Illinois Springfield. Time will tell if legislators will warm to budget policy they have already rejected and welcome a governor into the process who has been a less than active player so far.

posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Jul 1, 11 @ 7:07 am

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