The saga of weak, ineffective Illinois state government continues.
You gotta read the editorial below.
Come on Springfield..... the state needs leadership and action. Not kindergarten partisanship.
Out for now.......
Matt
By the Editorial Board
Rockford Register Star
The resources needed by agencies in the Rockford region to
provide valuable services to the community amounts to pocket change for a state
that spends billions of dollars every year. The money those agencies are owed
can mean — literally — the difference between life and death.
Domestic violence victims with nowhere to go. Directionless
teens wandering the streets looking for trouble. Elderly residents going hungry
or starving. Single-parent families with no access to child care putting their
children in potentially dangerous situations. Drug addicts with no way to get
help.
It’s not hyperbole — it’s a near certainty that some
Illinois residents will die unless the state lives up to its promise to address
public problems.
Illinois has not adopted a budget because of the political
fight between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Democrat-controlled
legislature led by Speaker of the House Mike Madigan and Senate President John
Cullerton.
Yet even without a budget, the state is paying 90 percent of
its obligations, largely because of court orders, consent decrees and
continuing appropriations. People with clout are being paid. Nonprofit agencies
that serve the elderly, troubled teens, the poor, the mentally ill and others
in the 10 percent have no clout. Unless residents of Illinois rally around and
advocate for these agencies, the situation will not change.
Although we’ve reached a crisis point this year, the state
has been neglectful for years. The Editorial Board recently hosted a handful of
agency representatives who detailed how much money they were owed for providing
services on behalf of the state. They’ve had to cut staff, curtail services,
tap into reserves or seek lines of credit to provide services for people who
need help and can no longer help themselves.
Laying off smart, educated and caring individuals will not
attract people and businesses to Illinois. Adding people to the unemployment
rolls because the state won’t live up to its promises is morally repugnant and
economically counterproductive.
It’s a story we’ve heard far too many times in the past
decade. These agencies don’t ask for much. They ask for predictability and
reliability from the state so that they can plan their own budgets. They’ve
been willing to absorb cuts, but they need to know how much and when they’ll
get what they are owed.
What business can run if it has no idea if there’s money
coming in? The state of Illinois expects human service agencies to rely on the
bad practices that have helped the state reach the brink of insolvency:
delaying payments, borrowing, bonding debt.
To make matters worse, the state is threatening human
services agencies, telling them they must continue to operate without funding
or else be barred from ever getting a contract should there ever be a budget.
In what universe does that kind of blackmail make sense? Only in Illinois.
There’s plenty of blame to go around, but frankly, we don’t
give a hoot about assessing blame. We want solutions. Our elderly deserve to
eat. Our teens deserve to have a place to go, and domestic violence victims
deserve to live in safety.
There may not be a budget at all this year, so lawmakers
should scrap what they’re working on and consider adopting a two-year budget
and perhaps make a two-year budget the norm going forward.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures,
19 states enact biennial budgets. It used to be the norm, but states decided
annual budgeting was more efficient. Maybe for other states, but not for
Illinois.
Two-year budgets were considered incredible time-wasters by
the states that decided to change to annual budgeting. In Illinois, we’ve got
legislative time-wasting down to an art form. How much worse could it get?
If Illinois is going to be a great state again, its leaders
cannot feign interest in the plight of human service agencies. They need to show
compassion. They need to act. Providing financial support to these worthy
organizations is a moral imperative.