In a rare display of bi-partisan unity the Illinois House on Wednesday voted to free up motor fuel tax funds, 911 money and other cash to local units of government that had been blocked during the budget impasse and then decided to spend $28 million it doesn’t have on domestic violence shelters and the Illinois Secretary of State’s office.
If Republicans and Democrats continue to cooperate in Springfield, this state could go broke very quickly.
To be clear, I had urged the state Legislature and Gov. Bruce Rauner to release the hundreds of millions of dollars the state had collected on behalf of municipalities but refused to release.
The motor fuel tax money, collected at gas pumps, is used to repair roads, bridges and purchase road salt during the winter months. The 911 funds, collected from communications taxes, are used to support emergency dispatch centers. Those funds, along with lottery prize money and the local share of video gambling revenue, were never considered part of the state’s annual operating budget and should not have been caught up in the disagreement between the Republican governor and Democratic lawmakers in Springfield.
Last month, in a direct political assault on Rauner, House Speaker Michael Madigan allowed a bill to be called that would release the money owed to local governments, a measure that had the support of mayors throughout the state, including those in the south suburbs.
Rauner, who had opposed the idea, realized his own Republican legislators couldn’t stand up to the pressure and so allowed them to support the House bill, while negotiating separately with the Illinois Senate to add more state money to purchase road salt and other projects.
Madigan’s floor leader in the House, state Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago, used a parliamentary procedure to stop it from going to the Senate where Rauner’s provisions could be added.
And so, with the clock ticking and municipalities in need of financial help, nothing happened for weeks.
On Wednesday, a day after the governor met with the four leaders of the state legislature, it was revealed a deal had been cut. The House would now add funding language to an existing Senate measure, expanding the original motor fuel tax fund spending proposal, to include some of the governor’s ideas and some new ones the Democrats had tacked on. By adding the language to an existing bill passed by the Senate, the Senate can now vote only once to move the bill on to the governor’s desk, instead of going through a three-vote procedure that would have been required had the original House bill been sent to the Senate.
On the floor of the House, Democrats and Republicans fumed that this piecemeal approach to state budgeting is ill-conceived, counterproductive and irresponsible. House members noted that at the rate the state is spending, even without a budget in place, expenditures will exceed revenues by more than $8 billion this year.
And then, one after another, after taking shots at the opposition party, the legislators said they would vote for the bill although Illinois has the worst financial rating of any state in the nation.
Again, I will stress that I lambasted government officials for withholding money from local governments, including counties and townships, who have always counted on the funds. And I have been a longtime supporter of domestic violence shelters and the good work that they do. Abused women and children shouldn’t be victimized again by the political process.
But this absurd political struggle, often championed by my colleagues in the news media, has devolved into something that no taxpaying citizen should tolerate.
The courts have repeatedly ordered the state to spend money on government programs, although it has no budget.
The governor has taken steps to release state money to keep the schools running and pay employees, although the state does not have a budget, or the money to spend.
The Democrats have refused to cave into the governor’s demands for changes to collective bargaining and the prevailing wage, contending they have nothing to do with the budget crisis.
And they want to spend money on things like home heating assistance for the poor in the winter, which was included in Wednesday’s bill, and no one wants to see anyone freeze this winter.
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The Republican lawmakers noted repeatedly that Democratic control of the Senate, House and governor’s mansion for 12 years resulted in the state’s current financial mess, which includes a $110 billion pension debit. They are right, although Republican governors before that time contributed to the problem as well.
But does it really matter now?
The fact is that Illinois lacks the funds it needs to finance all sorts of programs people support, including many of those in this measure. The fact is the elected officials of this state failed to make required payments to the pension systems, as it was obligated to do by law, for decades.
The fact is that last month the state comptroller failed to make another pension payment because, well, the state ran out of money.
There’s little doubt that the Senate, when it returns to Springfield next week, will probably approve the bi-partisan compromise to speed money to local governments and other places where it is needed.
There’s a great deal of doubt, however, that any budget agreement will be reached in the near future.
So Illinois will keep spending money it does not have largely because most of the programs it funds are necessary. Critics can talk all they want to about waste in government, but during this budget crisis it has become apparent that even conservatives admit the state does some very important things for their communities.
The governor has said his top three reform priorities are legislative redistricting, term limits and a temporary property tax freeze. Those things are very popular and Democrats would have a hard time standing in their way if the governor took his changes to collective bargaining and the prevailing wage off the table. That would be a huge victory for political reformers in Illinois.
But Rauner has given the Democrats political cover by insisting on the anti-union reforms, which have questionable public support.
The effect of all this political turmoil is that Republicans end up voting for spending measures without providing the money to fund them. Democrats do what they have always done and support each spending measure, increasing the deficit and ignoring the future.
There will come a time when all of us have to pay for this. There will be tax increases. Anyone who believes otherwise is simply ignoring reality. The state’s bills continue to mount as lawmakers spend money that does not exist.
And Rauner has repeatedly insisted he wants to increase education spending by hundreds of millions of dollars.
No change to local government collective bargaining contracts or lowering of the prevailing wages is going to increase state revenue this year, next year, or the year after that.
One member of the House noted that the governor of this state will soon be making his annual budget address for the upcoming year, even though he has no budget for the current fiscal year.
There are some people who see Wednesday’s vote as an indication that Republicans and Democrats in Illinois can work together and reach a compromise. It seems to me the only thing they can agree on is that spending money can be wildly popular, even if you don’t have it.