Overspending the problem? Not so fast.

A smart, fact-based opinion piece from Eric Zorn at the Tribune showing that Rauner's diagnosis of Illinois' ills ("the Democrats have spent our state into the toilet for 30 years") is crap.

Illinois state taxes and state spending are in the middle of the pack. Local taxes may be high, thanks in some part to our ridiculous overabundance of separate governmental units, that's not the fault of Democrats—or Republicans—in Springfield.

What our state politicians have done, on a bipartisan basis, is utterly fail to put enough money toward pensions for state workers. Years of reckless irresponsibility there have left state government without enough money to both fund pensions and fund social services and education.

Insert comment about perspective here.

Breakdown in Springfield

Pretty much everything broke down in Springfield as the official spring session ended on May 31. Not only did the Democrats fight with Rauner, but Democrats fought with each other, and Republicans turned on Rauner.

Some GOP legislators bucked Rauner to override one of his vetoes, and allowed Chicago to refinance some of its pension obligations.

The State Senate, with its Democratic majority, soundly defeated the budget proposal passed by the Democratic House.

The Democratic House soundly defeated a K-12 spending bill passed by the Democratic Senate.

Rauner, who had opposed a stop-gap budget, suddenly flipped and proposed a "bridge plan" to tide the state over until after the November election on the last day of the session. Democrats argued that it was not constitutionally possible to pass this bill within one day, and said that it torpedoed bipartisan negotiations underway in one of the working groups. So they refused to bring it up for a vote.

Rauner is now on a downstate campaign trip calling for passage of his stop-gap budget and railing against bills that would have "bailed out" Chicago; his attacks on Chicago have been called "racially tinged."

Enrollment worries, indefinite impasse, etc.

The Southern ran an AP story on fears for enrollments at Illinois public universities next fall. Nothing terribly new or specific here, just confirmation of what we've been fearing/expecting.

Rich Miller of Capitol Fax made the following comment after linking to the same story:

Meanwhile, the governor has said he’s not too worried because universities have “other funding sources that are very, very significant.”  This is some seriously wrong-headed thinking.

Miller's weekly column paints a bleak outcast for budget progress, noting that both sides seem to be waiting for November, while there's little chance the election results will change the balance of power enough to break the impasse.

The Southern also reports that the Governor seems to be sticking to his guns, still calling for changes in workers' compensation and bargaining rights as the price for any increase in taxes to help craft a budget compromise. Madigan for his part seemed to be buoyed by the big union rally last week, and is no more compromise-minded than Rauner is.

The changing consensus views of where the state is or isn't headed remind me of nothing so much as teenage mood-swings. Some hope for progress a few weeks ago, now back to the two sides sulking in their corners. While social services and state universities rot.

MAP grants bill to Rauner; plights of EIU, CSU

The State Senate had joined the House in approving additional MAP grant funding. Alas, this bill is probably going nowhere as Republicans have been condemning it for failing to identify a funding source. Creative use of unspent money in a "special account" allowed everyone to get on board with the prior stopgap funding bill, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards this time around. So Rauner will likely veto the bill (after letting it languish on his desk for 60 days as he did with the AFSCME arbitration bill).

A rather pointed letter from EIU President David Glassman has been getting some play in state media. Glassman notes than in his 10 months on the job he's already reduced staffing at EIU by 22.6%. The stopgap funding bill will not avert further layoffs, he warns, which will come as soon as late July unless his school gets more funding. And as you might imagine, with over 20% of the staff laid off, remaining staffers are trying to do the work once done by others. Long-term results from this sort of sudden slashing in employee numbers are likely to be dismal.

State inaction and local effects

Lot's of "news" coming out of Springfield, but very little action, and the mood seems to be turning less optimistic.

On Monday Governor Rauner, as expected, vetoed a bill that would have mandated arbitration in the event negotiations between AFSCME and the State (i.e., Rauner) break down. He provides his reasons in a letter to state employees--one sent via the media. Rauner would rather impose terms himself, as he's arguing that negotiations have in fact reached an impasse, something AFSCME denies. If the ILRB (Illinois Labor Review Board) rules in Rauner's favor, he'll be able to impose terms on AFSCME, which will give SIU employees a choice between reduced health benefits or a doubling of insurance premiums.

A meeting on Tuesday between Rauner and the four legislative leaders appeared to produce some movement, with House Speaker Madigan agreeing to at least appoint folks to serve on a committee discussing Rauner's reform agenda. Rauner has consistently said that he will support a budget compromise with new revenues (which all seem to agree is the only way to balance the budget) only if some such reforms are passed. But subsequent statements by Madigan show little wiggle room. Madigan for his part got the House to pass funding for MAP grants, but Republicans reject the measure because it does not identify a funding source.

Budget plan presented to GA leadership, governor

A bi-partisan group of legislators has shared a plan to balance the state budget with combination of budget cuts and tax hikes. Here stories from the State-Journal Register (Springfield) and Politico .

This could be a big deal. Details from the plan are sketchy. It does not contain any of the items from Rauner's Turnaround Agenda, but also apparently does not include things like K-12 funding or any effort to address the long-term pension crisis. The only detail in either story on higher ed funding is a requirement for universities to pick up pension costs for employees making more than $180,000.

In less happy news, Capitol Fax notes that Mike Madigan issuing an uncompromising statement on his goals for this session; an informal survey of readers on that blog shows a slight majority coming down in opposition to what blogmaster Rich Miller called "reasonable compromise" on Madigan's part.

There's also a lawsuit against the Independent Map proposal to change the way Illinois draws legislative districts. Reboot Illinois has a story on the lawsuit, including speculation on whether Madigan is behind it. A group affiliated with Madigan successfully blocked a similar proposal last year.  Reboot also reposts this cartoon from the Tribune, which attacked Madigan for attempting to stop redistricting reform in an editorial today.

Optimism of a sort

Progress Illinois has a good story on a presentation today by legislators who are members of the self-styled group of "budgeteers". Legislators from both sides of the aisle are quoted as being cautiously optimistic about progress. Here's a memorable bit from two Democratic Senators, Andy Manar and Daniel Biss, calling out GOP talk about reform.

Biss commented on the Illinois GOP's calls for "structural reforms."

"I think we need to be a little bit careful about the unicorn -- that it's attractive to talk about reform when we mean cut," Biss said. "Just saying reform, instead of saying cut, doesn't necessarily mean that we're achieving a magical resolution that allows us to spend less without hurting people." . . .

Manar predicted that a potential budget agreement could mirror the spending plan Democrats passed last year. Rauner vetoed most of that Democrat-backed budget, citing its $4 billion shortfall.

"That was a bare-bones budget that was passed by the majority," Manar said.

The state senator added: "I would echo Daniel's sentiments that if there was a magic unicorn running through the Capitol, somebody would have caught it by now and would have put it into a bill, and we would have passed it and the governor would have signed it. There are no easy choices."

Bryant, Rauner losing support in Southern Illinois

Rich Miller reports findings from a new PPP poll showing that Terri Bryant is losing support rapidly.

In August Bryant had a 50-27% positive approval rating; she's now at 42% approve and 43% disapprove.

Rauner himself carried Bryant's district 60-33, but now 57% of voters disapprove of how he's handling his job, as opposed to 33% approving.

The only head to head poll I can find  dates back to February, when it was reported by the Illinois Observer; it showed Bryant ahead of her democratic opponent, Marsha Griffin.

As Rauner's victory margin shows, Bryant's district (which includes the western half of Carbondale) leans Republican, but her race certainly looks competitive at this point.

Griffin will appear at the FA event this Wednesday from 5-7 at Evergreen Park, together with Illinois Senate candidate Sheila Simon. FA organizers are also promising good food and drink. I would assume there will also be a report on progress (or the lack thereof) in bargaining. So come out and vote in the FA election, meet local General Assembly candidates, and celebrate the end of the semester.

State updates

News from Springfield is coming more slowly after the flurry occasioned by the return of the legislature.

The State-Journal Register has a story updating the progress on negotiations on the budget. The process is driven now by two bipartisan groups of legislators, neither consisting of leaders in either house, though one of the groups is working with aides from leaders and the governor. Moderate optimism seems the tone here, but no agreements have yet been reached by either group of legislators, and once they do reach agreement they will almost certainly need agreement of the leadership before putting measures to a vote.

The SJR /AP also reports that the Independent Map group delivered some 550,000 signatures on petitions to put their proposal on the ballot in November. It would replace the current system, whereby the Legislature (i.e., the majority party in the legislature) draws political districts with an independent commission. The drive will face two challenges: while they have almost twice as many signatures as required to put an initiative on the ballot, many by prove invalid; and there may be legal challenges on other grounds. Last time the group tried this, Mike Madigan had lawyers mount and win a court challenge ruling the proposal was unconstitutional.

Redistricting petitions arrive in Springfield

I've not picked up on any news on the prospects of the latest university stop-gap spending bill, the one that passed the Senate last week and would bring university funding up to 60% of 2015 levels. The House could pick up that bill when it returns to session on Tuesday. Fingers crossed.

More higher ed funding en route?

The State Senate passed a measure which would see all public and universities brought up to 60% of their 2015 budgets, doubling the amount of state funding approved in the recent stop-gap bill (for all save CSU, which is already at 60%). Here are stories from the Southern (i.e., Lee Newspapers) and the AP. Neither mentions the House (where Madigan reigns) but you'd think the large bipartisan vote in the Senate augurs well. A non-committal quote from Rauner in the AP story suggests he wouldn't veto the measure. It looks like it is funded largely by an accounting gimmick, but one one which was enough to give Senate Republicans cover (they have refused to back past measures by saying that "the money isn't there").

This would be good news, but even if it goes through, we're hardly out of the woods. We'd still be facing a 40% budget cut. And the cut was done in the most chaotic possible way, one that drained confidence in the financial status of Illinois public universities, thus leading many students to look elsewhere for higher education--or stop looking altogether.

At today's BOT meeting SIUE gave preliminary figures suggesting a 4% decline in enrollment there. SIUC administrators declined to provide any figures. Given their uncanny ability to cherry-pick promising seeming numbers even when the data looks bleak, this suggests a very substantial drop in enrollment is expected. More on rumors driving student flight after the break.

Redistricting meets the "criss-cross"

The State-Journal Register reports that efforts to put a redistricting amendment to the Illinois constitution on the ballot in November via the legislate route have failed. There is independent effort to collect enough petitions to get on the ballot, fitting called the Independent Map Amendment. They seem to have collected many more signatures than they need, but because many signatures get thrown out, the amendment could be stricken from the ballot, as a similar effort was in 2014, thanks largely to Mike Madigan.

After the break: how the criss-cross works to prevent reform.

90 minutes with Senator David Luechtefeld

Now with Luechtefeld spelled correctly! And a note re K-12.

State Senator David Luechtefeld (R-Okawville) is nearing the end of a 21 year career in Springfield (one that followed a career in secondary education). I was one of a group of IEA activists that met with him for 90 minutes on lobby day in Springfield on Wednesday--just a couple of days before the legislature acted to provide stop-gap funding for SIU. As we spoke, Luechtefeld was guardedly optimistic about stop-gap funding coming through. He voted for the eventual bill--as did everyone else in the Illinois Senate (there were a couple of dissenting votes in the House). We spoke to Luechtefeld essentially because others were speaking to other legislatures, and while Luechtefeld is nearing retirement he's respected by others in the local GOP caucus, so is influential.

Luechtefeld began smartly by saying that he recognized that SIUC was the 'most important institution' in his district, one he knew had been suffering for a long time from declining state funding, and declining enrollment, even before the current crisis. He noted the importance of SIUC to Carbondale in particular, describing the decline facing Carbondale in terms nearly as dire as those in my op-ed for the Southern the other day. Note his quote at the end of the Carbondale Times story on the stop-gap bill:

“Irreparable damage has been done to our universities and community colleges,” he said in a statement. “There are no real winners with today’s budget bill, only a sliver of relief is being provided. No one should applaud this solution or be running to take the credit.”

So Luechtefeld gets it--and he thus anticipated our main talking points. This is a good thing, of course. He could have mouthed some of the anti-higher ed rhetoric coming from the Governor's office, which essentially blames bloat, redundancy, and waste in higher ed for the state's failure to fund higher ed. But the fact that we all agreed on the problem made for a curious conversation . . .

Reprieve for Illinois Higher Education

Updated & revised at 4/22 at 9:00 pm following my being pointed to a fuller statement from President Dunn on the impact on SIU. 

Big news: the Illinois General Assembly has approved a stop-gap funding measure for public colleges and universities and MAP grants. Votes were all but unanimous in favor in both houses. Rauner will sign the bill.

Colleges and universities will get about 3o% of what the Democratic budget passed last year and vetoed by Rauner would have given them. MAP funding is at about 40%. CSU, the worst off of the universities, got 60%. And this funding should arrive soon.

A Carbondale Times story quotes Randy Dunn as follows:

“For SIU, this well appreciated stop-gap measure will give us the ability to operate into the remainder of the year without having to enact, at least for the next six months, the draconian layoffs and budget cuts I presented before the Board of Trustees last month. It also allows us to plan for operations with an uncertain level of funding now as well as for next year. It is by no means a final spending plan for this fiscal year — a fact acknowledged by almost every legislator who rose to speak on the bill’s behalf. We thank them for their acknowledgement that there is still work to be done and look forward to continuing our efforts with our campus and state-wide elected officials as they continue to fix this state budget and live up to the covenant the State of Illinois has with its public universities."

So it looks like Dunn is ruling out significant layoffs for the fall semester. That's important good news. Of course if the state doesn't provide a decent FY 17 budget, we may be right back in the same mess, but Dunn seems to think that this stop-gap will see us through the fall.

Higher ed funding tomorrow?

Update: WSIU carries a story on the last-minute failure of the bill on Thursday, including a quote from Randy Dunn. 
 
The Senate and the House are scheduled to adjourn for a week after Friday's session. There is great pressure on them to get something done for higher education, particularly given that Chicago State will apparently shut down by the end of the month absent state funding.

The result was a crazy day at the capitol. A bill that would have authorized $600 million for higher education (enough to pay something like 30% of the FY 2016 allocation, plus some MAP funding) seemed on the verge of passing, and had the approval of the governor's office. Details are murky, but it looks like a bipartisan compromise worked out by rank and file GA members was shot down by the Democratic leadership (Madigan), at least for the moment, because Madigan was (a) attempting to get more money from Rauner? (b) perfectly willing to prolong the crisis in order to do so?  (c) unwilling to support anything Rauner would sign? The compromise bill had better be reconsidered today--if it isn't, the closure of CSU and massive cuts at other universities will rest  squarely on the Democrats. You'd think that would be enough to pressure them to pass something after today's debacle.

There are fairly clear summaries of where we stand tonight in the Tribune and the Daily Herald. Capitol Fax had a story that was updated updated several times during the day.

Lobby day in Springfield

A stub of a post on lobby day in Springfield, which I attended. More later. For now a picture showing one of the more effective visuals from the day: SIU medical school students wearing their lab coats. I took a picture of them myself but here steal the better one from the State Journal-Register.

The SJR story reveals the unfortunate fact that Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers Union, slandered Rauner by saying he is "the new ISIS recruit . . .  because the things he's doing looks [sic] like acts of terror on poor and working-class people."  Thanks, Karen, for making your reckless rhetoric one of the main talking points from the day. That sort of crazy talk makes Rauner's day, making him look like the grownup in this debate (which is no easy achievement).

Springfield update

A story in the Springfield State Journal-Register says the Rauner-Madigan rivalry is worsening and "leaving little hope that the state will have a spending plan any time soon".

Others however suggest what Rich Miller at Capitol Fax calls "green shoots". Despite the public sniping, there have been private meetings, both of the principals and their staffs. 

If private conversations don't produce anything productive, perhaps threats will. Miller notes the impact from a threat by Democratic Senate President John Cullerton, who has said he will hold back K-12 funding until the rest of state government gets a budget.

Finally, there's now a democratic proposal on the table for redistricting, a long-time desideratum of good government folks. That's also an item on Rauner's Turnaround Agenda. If passed, it could conceivably allow Rauner to declare victory and engage in real negotiations about the budget.

This all in addition to other pressures: the Comptroller's decision to put legislative salaries on the slow track, and the likely legal challenge from the Attorney General to question whether the state has the authority, absent a budget, to pay any employees. Not to mention angry and fearful constituents.

So after 10 months of chaos, the pressure starts to build. Those 10 months have already done great damage, and funding on the level the Governor has proposed--a 20% cut--would not turn things around: it would just slow our decline. We need a decent budget now. Every extra day means more students who go out of state or give up on college, and every dollar cut from the eventual budget undermines our potential to rebuild.

Pay for legislature & top officials to be delayed

UPDATE: Politico predicts Illinois Comptroller race will be Rauner-Madigan proxy fight. 

Our State Comptroller, Republican Leslie Munger, announced today that she'll force Illinois' six "constitutional officers" (including herself) and all state legislators to get in line to get paid like state vendors, who currently wait at least two months to be paid.

Comptroller Leslie Munger

The (conservative) Chicago Tribune gives its interpretation of the story in the first word of its article:

Election-seeking Illinois Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger plans to delay monthly paychecks for lawmakers and statewide officials, saying there isn't enough money to pay the state's bills and other services should go to the front of the line.

And here I was not realizing that "election-seeking" was an adjectival phrase in regular use! Munger is indeed up for election this fall, as she was appointed by Governor Rauner to fill the position left vacant by the death of Judy Baar Topinka, who was probably the most respected high office holder in Illinois of either party. Munger hopes her plan will push leaders (or at least their less wealthy followers in the General Assembly) to resolve the budget crisis sooner rather than later; she also no doubt doesn't mind getting her name out there as a do-gooder before running for election.

State roundup

Capitol Fax concludes that it's now all but certain that Attorney General Lisa Madigan will indeed file a lawsuit arguing that the State of Illinois cannot legally pay state workers. (Previous coverage of that move can be found here.) The politics of this are mind-boggling. Democrats want a real shut-down to force the governor's hand, and to get the crisis resolved to benefit the 10% of state government that is already slowly shutting down. The governor responds with pious words about paying dedicated state employees--at least those not laid off yet, and attacking the Democrats for prolonging the crisis in order to push through a tax hike.  Assuming Madigan's legal reasoning is sound and supported by the courts, her move would result in a nearly complete shutdown of state government, which would presumably in result in some sort of resolution. But she hasn't filed her lawsuit yet, and it would obviously take time to get through the courts.

After the break: what Madigan is saying in the photo below, and an update on a bill that is intended to provide funding for universities and social services.

Madigan speaking to the GA on 4/12, via the State Journal-Register.

State news update

IHBE leaders warn that community colleges certainly can't front MAP grants, universities probably can't. The DE has coverage of our students' worries on this front here. Even if public universities, including SIU, somehow manage to continue funding MAP grants, the loss of MAP grants at community colleges would mean a massive loss in college access, including for many students who would otherwise eventually transfer to SIU.

GOP floats new bill to fund social services--not universities. The Republicans argue this bill would pay for such spending, unlike previous democratic efforts to fund social services and higher education. One way their bill pays for social services (and not for public universities) is to require public universities to pick up pension payments for anyone making over $180,000. I.e., it pays for social services, in part, by taking money from universities. Social services need funding, and I'm not terribly sympathetic to the financial plight of folks making more than $180,000, but universities cannot simply renege on promised pension benefits to them. The rest comes from the mysterious "special funds". They are apparently a real problem (one beyond my ken), but "sweeping" them has consequences, at least in one case where taking gasoline taxes meant to pay for leaking gasoline tanks. Ultimately the state needs a real budget: the belief that we can solve state budget problems via special funds is the state-level equivalent of saying we can solve university funding problems by cutting administrative bloat.

Rauner calls for putting partisan differences aside, attacks other side.  Our governor penned a letter to the State Journal-Register (Springfield) that started off with happy talk about putting people first and then quickly became a pitch for his own short-term proposals to fund universities and social services. My analysis of those proposals is here. The same day he called for negotiations he gave a speech at a GOP Lincoln Day dinner that the local paper characterized as a call for "Staying the Course".

The slow-motion train wreck

Here's how bad things look: the following counts as a possible end game. There is more  speculation about a judicial "solution" to the crisis. The solution--something I blogged about before but with less informative links--is that the courts rule that Illinois has no legal authority to pay employees. Or perhaps it is required, by federal law, to pay essential employees the federal minimum wage. But Illinois' payroll system is so obsolete that it can't figure out who's essential, or how to pay them only the federal minimum. In any event, if the courts rule this way, the whole thing comes to a screeching halt. And at that point we have to have a budget, as the state would be lucky even to keep the jails locked in that case. But of course the courts work slowly, so any such ruling is months away.

There's also somewhat more rosy speculation about how Republicans in the House could solve things without that trainwreck, again from Capitol Fax. It would only take a few votes to sustain a veto override. But don't hold your breath.

One of the most frustrating things about the crisis is that many aspects of state government are going along more or less as usual (K-12, for example). It's this that has allowed things to go on this far. I don't begrudge the funding that is allowing my son to go to school. But other parts of state government are going under. Those include some vital social services, like those attempting to address the epidemic of drug use, and also our public universities.