Illinois State Budget Update: May 7, 2010
May 7, 2010 | Steph
Update 6:30pm – The House has adjourned without passing a budget. Throughout the day, the House debated many issues, including a cigarette tax, the state pension system and state spending cuts but no agreements could be made. Speaker Michael Madigan was quoted saying: “When we are prepared to finish our business, we’ll come back to Springfield for one or two days — hopefully no more.” I guess we will all have to see how this all plays out.
Today the Illinois State Legislature is set to adjourn for the summer. In the last few days both the Senate and the House have been working quickly to pass a budget before the end of the session. Finally, last night at around 1:00am the Senate passed SB1211 by a vote of 31-26. The House still needs to pass this bill before it goes the Governor Quinn for his signature. Here is a brief breakdown of the key components of the budget:
Money Saving Efforts
- Suspends payments to the state pension system until January
- Extends the lapse period to pay state vendors
Revenue Raising Efforts
- A tax amnesty that would allow people to pay back-taxes without penalty (this would raise around $250 million)
- Creates a $1 per pack tax on cigarettes (this would raise around $320 million)
- Cash in on a portion of the state’s tobacco settlement (this could raise upwards of $1.2 billion but it is considered a form of borrowing)
- More borrowing
If this form of the budget is passed in the House, then the responsibility of deciding what gets cut from the budget will fall to Governor Quinn. Rather than specifying what is cut in the budget, this bill provides Governor Quinn with that task. It is also unclear just how much he will need to cut. Currently, Illinois is behind on payments to state vendors, owing around $5.5 billion, give or take by the end of June.
For over three hours today, House Democrats were engaged in a closed-door caucus with Governor Quinn before returning to a regular session to debate the budget. Just before 3:30pm today, the House defeated a bill that would allow the state to borrow money in order to make payments to the state pension system (rather than delaying payments until January). Some Democrats are now stating that it is unlikely that session will end tonight.
Continue checking in with Beats Per Minute as the day goes on for more updates on the Illinois budget.
Tags: Illinois Budget Crisis
May 8th, 2010
Disappointing in many ways.
One specific disappointment is that the Senate voted to raid the state’s tobacco settlement funds. Part of this dollar pool is basically the only shred of funding remaining to sustain community health center expansion projects in Illinois. The rest has already been cut.
Health centers typically competed for state funds to start up a new program and to partially sustain it through the initial 3 years of growth. This allowed new projects time to become self-sufficient. Why start a program if you can’t keep it going? Both of Erie Family Health Center’s dental health centers were started with assistance from this state program.