April 30, 2018
The (Champaign) News-Gazette
Budget policy and politics
The month of May is just about here, a time when state legislators traditionally get serious about putting together a state budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Indeed, Democratic legislative leaders already have announced that they hope to wrap up the budget work by the end of the month.
But there is a major impediment standing in the way of meeting that goal - it’s the political season, and politics almost always trump policy in Illinois.
If that’s not enough of a concern, Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan already has laid down a political marker by inviting Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner to stand on the sidelines while “serious” people do the budget work.
The jibes and insults the two men toss each other’s way are nothing new. Neither are fights over state spending.
Who can forget the long-standing, two-year budget battle between Madigan and Rauner that didn’t end until last year when Madigan finally won a crushing victory over his hated rival.
Illinois doesn’t need any more of that kind of dysfunction. But the budget signs are not encouraging.
For starters, Republicans so far have been unable to get Democrats to agree to an official revenue estimate around which to build the 2018-19 state spending plan.
That’s alarming because the Illinois Constitution not only mandates legislators pass a balanced budget - something they have not done for nearly 20 years - but state law requires the House and Senate to pass a revenue estimate resolution that relies on forecasts by the nonpartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.
COGFA is estimating revenues to be $37.6 billion in 2018-19. Forecasting revenue is not an exact science.
But Republican House Leader Jim Durkin makes a good point when he calls the estimate a good starting point “to work from.”
Indeed, how can one put together an effective spending plan without a firm idea of available funds?
It can’t, of course, be done. Perhaps that’s why Illinois is deep in the throes of financial desperation after years and years of making one bad spending decision after another.
At least, that’s the policy perspective. The political reality is that the state’s chief executive always gets the blame for budget problems because he’s the most visible elected official.
If Madigan is playing that game, look for budget negotiations to stall, and then, at the last minute, Madigan to pass his own budget and try to force it on a reluctant Rauner.
In that vein, two state legislators - Democratic State Sen. Tom Cullerton and Republican state Sen. Michael Connelly - last week jointly proposed a state constitutional amendment that would cap state spending. They said, however, that legislators also could agree to abide by a spending cap.
The two suggested an annual spending increase limited to 2.89 percent “for all of our budgets going forward.” The percentage is derived from averaging the annual growth of per capita Gross Domestic Product over the preceding 10 years. Under the proposal, the cap could be lifted in times of emergency.
Other states have spending caps and are prospering under them. In contrast, Illinois leaders have over the years simply spent as if there is no tomorrow. Now that tomorrow has arrived with a vengeance, they show no sign of doing anything other than passing more tax increases to feed their spending habit.
The question surrounding the tax cap amendment, of course, is why members of the Illinois House and Senate, who have repeatedly demonstrated their contempt for fiscal restraint, would suddenly embrace a proposal that would force fiscal restraint upon them.
Maybe because problems that are ignored don’t go away, but just get worse. Ultimately, legislators may have no choice other than to stop themselves before they spend again. One way to minimize that potential problem for this upcoming year would be settling on how much money the legislators have to spend before deciding how much they’re going to spend.
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April 26, 2018
(Arlington Heights) Daily Herald
Resource shift will provide needed mentorship for foster kids
Most of us will do just about anything for our kids. We teach them right from wrong, show them the importance of education and prepare them for adulthood.
We support them in any way they need it. Our love for our kids is without limit.
But what of the kids who don’t have such caring parents? Even the best of foster parents can do only so much for their charges. And once those foster kids turn 18, they’re on their own as far as the state is concerned. The financial support evaporates. And unless they’re being fostered by family members, the emotional support likely suffers, too.
The sad reality is that kids who age out of the foster care system are much more prone to homelessness or instability in their lives. They are less likely to go to college and get good health care and more likely to be unemployed and go to jail.
They — like most 18-year-olds — need mentors.
According to the National Foster Youth Institute, 25 percent of former foster kids experience homelessness within four years of aging out of the system. And 25 percent of kids who have been in foster care for two or more years are able to find permanent homes.
Enter Judson University in Elgin.
The Baptist university, which for seven years has been bringing big names to its annual World Leaders Forum, traditionally has used the proceeds from those symposiums to support entrepreneurial programs and initiatives and scholarships at the university.
Our Madhu Krishnamurthy wrote earlier this week that the university’s leadership this year decided to change things up and launch a youth mentorship program for kids who age out of Illinois’ foster care system.
“Illinois has one of the highest rates of youths aging out of the system,” Judson President Gene Crume said.
Judson is coordinating this project in partnership with a Chicago-based nonprofit called Foster Progress.
The organization assists kids in foster care and afterward with getting a college education. It does so through financial support, scholarship assistance and lobbying.
But what’s as important is the organization provides the mentorship and emotional support necessary for the transition to adulthood.
What a worthwhile effort for a segment of our society we don’t think about often enough.
If you’d like to support Foster Progress through a donation or if you’d like to volunteer your time as a mentor, visit the organization’s website at www.foster-progress.org.
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April 25, 2018
Belleville News-Democrat
Illinois debt becomes more apparent, as do governor election politics
Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza pushes hard to get Illinois leaders to face fiscal reality, but it’s too bad that so much of what she says starts with “blame Rauner.”
We often see government get more transparent around election time. Skeletons come out of the closets and sometimes public service results from those impure motives of self-interest.
Mendoza got the state law changed so that all those state agencies that sit on bills, because they know there’s no money to pay them, had to report on them every month. The latest report shows Mendoza’s office is waiting for money to pay $6.2 billion in bills, but there is another $2 billion sitting around the state agencies.
Finding out your debt is nearly 25 percent larger than you thought is disheartening, but needed if you hope to do anything about it.
Mendoza is again pushing transparency. She wants governors to stop sticking employees into the budgets of state agencies. They’ve all done it, with Gov. Bruce Rauner showing fewer than half his staff and payroll in his budget when she says he should show 102 staffers paid $10.4 million.
She lobbied the BND Editorial Board to end the deception through House Bill 5121, which passed the Illinois House and is in a Senate committee chaired by state Sen. James Clayborne, D-Belleville. We’re not sure she did much homework on the vast influence we have with our favorite lame duck promoter of female friends and cell phone salesmen.
And this week she was in front of lawmakers saying the state since January 2015 paid $1.1 billion in late penalty interest on all its overdue bills - more than during the previous 18 years combined. She wants state budgets to stop ignoring those massive interest payments.
Here’s Mendoza’s problem: Everything gets couched in those “blame Rauner” terms. That debt period is the governor’s tenure in Springfield. The hidden governor’s employee bill and interest accounting comes as Mendoza pushes J.B. Pritzker to replace Rauner.
Illinois’ fiscal meltdown should be blamed on more than the last guy to arrive at the blast furnace. Analysts gave us a near junk bond rating because Illinois failed to change spending patterns or address the $130 billion pension deficit as others did after the recession hit.
So “hurrah” for Mendoza the fiscal watchdog. “Boo” for Mendoza the political lapdog.
Plenty of blame and finger pointing is deserved by everyone in that capitol rotunda. Single-mindedly placing blame on the slightly experienced billionaire we’ve got does little to convince anyone that the new inexperienced billionaire would do any better.
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