Illinois government is staring down the barrel of an explosive financial mess, and perhaps nothing frames the danger better than two big numbers.
The first is $26 billion, the grand total that lawmakers have allotted this year for the meat of what the state does: funding education, health care, child welfare, public safety and the machinery of government itself.
The second number is $13 billion, the total of red ink in the state’s main checking account that, by law, has to be erased — at least on paper — before a penny can be set aside for day-to-day operations in the fiscal year, which begins July 1.
In short, the deficit is half as big as the core of the state budget.
To experts, that is an astoundingly scary ratio that ranks Illinois as one of the nation’s worst fiscal basket cases — if not the worst. The budget deficit in Illinois is almost as big as the one facing California, a financially beleaguered state that has triple Illinois’ population, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington-based think tank.
There are a number of things that are omitted from the Trib’s report. First, the problem in Springfield didn’t just show up over the last few months. It’s been brewing for a decade or more.
Now-impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich launched a substantial expansion of state services, particularly Medicaid, but the problems didn’t start with him. They go back all the way to Jim Thompson’s time or before. It’s a bipartisan chicken that has come home to roost over a decade in which Democrats have controlled the governor’s mansion and the state legislature and aggravated the problem rather than doing something about it. As I have been saying for some time, like many states and the federal government, Illinois needed a major reorganization of how and what services were provided back in the fat years of the 1990’s. Payrolls needed to be trimmed and processes streamlined and automated. That didn’t happen (or, at least, it didn’t happen enough) and the failing is most keenly felt during the present lean years.
Pointing to the number of people on the state payroll or the total volume of the state payroll only tells part of the story. Consider:
| Budget item | 2001 | 2010 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pensions | 3.5 | 8.3 | 137% |
| Healthcare | 8.4 | 18.1 | 115% |
| Education | 4.7 | 8.4 | 79% |
| Welfare | 5.2 | 7.4 | 42% |
| Protection | 2.1 | 2.3 | 10% |
| Transportation | 2.5 | 4.0 | 60% |
| General government | 0.9 | 0.8 | -11% |
| Other spending | 2.1 | 3.4 | 62% |
| Interest | 1.8 | 3.8 | 111% |
| Balance | 1.3 | 0.1 | -92% |
| Total spending | 32.6 | 56.6 | 74% |
An overall increase of 74% outstrips the growth in state GDP (64%) and population (4%) by far. I don’t have the change in retail sales or property values over the period but I would be surprised if either of those, the state’s largest revenue sources other than the state income tax, have grown as fast as state expenditures.
Note, too, that although the sharp increase in healthcare expenditures, mostly Medicaid and the state’s portion of present and retired state employee healthcare benefits, is the largest single budget item in dollars and one of the fastest growing it isn’t the fastest growing. That would be pensions.
Care for a guess at the largest state expenditure by government group? That would be government elected officials, nearly a third of the whole.
Wow, on what is money for “government elected officials” actually spent? Is most of that for pensions?
Unspecified, but I would presume that it consists of wages, benefits, and expenses of state elected officials.
During that same time period, I’d guess that the number of state employees dropped by about 25%. We are increasingly paying people not to work with our tax dollars. We can’t afford to hire new state workers, so we hire contractors, who we then don’t pay and they quit. People who retired 10 years ago at the age of 55 are collecting near what they made when they retired (sometimes including a 5% pay increase sweetener on the way out the door).
Are the Govt elected public servants all State of Illinois govt or does that include village, county, township, etc that we have so many layers of?
Not that I am opposed to local govt, i think it is more responsive to the immediate concerns of people. For instance, I would rather have local school board members that I can call up, rather than a state school board call center, but if i am elected township dogcatcher, how much does that cost, and am i paid by state taxes?
No, just state elected officials.