Cash-strapped Illinois cobbling together emergency budget

http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/political-fix/political-fix/2010/05/cash-strapped-illinois-cobbling-together-emergency-budget/

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois House tonight passed emergency budget legislation, which would essentially give Gov. Pat Quinn the authority to decide where to spend the state’s limited money in the coming months.

In a separate measure, the House also passed a “tax amnesty” measure that will allow people who are behind in their state income tax to get caught up without paying any penalty or interests, if they agrees to do it now. The measure could raise more than $200 million for the state in back-taxes, say proponents.

The emergency budget bill, SB3660, opens with this sobering statement: “The General Assembly hereby finds and declares that the state is confronted with an unprecedented fiscal crisis.”

The crisis is a $13 billion budget deficit for the coming fiscal year that has already caused payment shortfalls to schools, hospitals and businesses around the state. With an election looming in November, the Legislature has been unable to bring itself to pass the major budget cuts and/or tax hikes necessary to address it.

This bill is their answer to this rock-and-a-hard-place dilemma. Instead of passing a budget that makes decisions they’d rather not have to make right now, it drops the whole mess into Quinn’s lap — giving him what money there is, and the power to spend it as he sees fit (and, conversely, to take the heat for wherever he decides not to spend it), until the lawmakers are all safely re-elected.

The measure passed along mostly partisan lines, with the ruling Democrats putting it over the top.

“Giving open-ended power like this to a governor, making him king for a year, is ridiculous,” argued state Rep. Rosemary Mulligan, R-Des Plaines, before the vote.

The bill also includes a series of small, largely symbolic spending cuts. It imposes a dozen unpaid furlough days on top officials statewide (including legislators), nixes their scheduled cost-of-living increases next year, cuts state mileage reimbursement and requires widespread review of all existing state contracts.

The bill now moves to the Senate, which could take it up tomorrow.

The tax-amnesty bill (SB377) is expected to raise another $250 million from tax scofflaws who will be given a chance to catch up on what they owe the state, without additional penalities, as long as they pay up before Nov. 8. It now moves to the Senate.