Is Governor on His Own to Find Budget Cuts?
Governor JB Pritzker appears at a COVID-19 briefing Monday at the Thompson Center in Chicago.
Last week, after announcing another $2 billion in borrowing from the federal government, Governor JB Pritzker said he had requested budget cut suggestions from all four legislative leaders to help close a $2 billion hole in the remaining state budget.
But, if they’re telling him what he’s telling us, he may be going it alone.
We asked the spokespeople for all four legislative leaders if they had been asked for the cuts and what they and the caucus had suggested.
Not a single one responded.
So, we reached out to Ralph Martire of the leftward leaning Center for Tax and Budget Accountability to see if his group, which is more aligned with Pritzker’s ideology, supported any cuts.
He didn’t respond.
We moved on to the libertarian-leaning, right-leaning Illinois Policy Institute to see if it had a list of cuts for FY21, the current fiscal year, but they didn’t give us line item cuts. Instead, IPI suggested pension reform (and reduction), making school funding more efficient, and lowering labor costs.
Adam Schuster, IPI senior director of budget and tax research laid out the position of the group:
"Overall, we do not operate in the false-choice paradigm presented by Gov. Pritzker. There are better options than slashing services or hiking taxes across the board. Illinois must first pursue structural spending reforms such as constitutional pension reform and school district efficiency, where the largest savings can be found. Pritzker should also use all available options to find labor savings, seeking to negotiate changes such as rightsizing state worker health insurance costs or cancelling automatic raises. Additional savings can be found by leaving vacancies unfilled, furloughing or laying off non-essential employees.
"Any additional cuts should follow two principles: 1) Avoid cuts to programs that are critically important during a pandemic and economic crisis, protecting funding for DCFS and the state police 2) Use “Budgeting for Results” outcome metrics to target any remaining cuts to less effective and important programs.”
No word yet on whether the Governor asked IPI for its suggestions.
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