Mendoza: Fed Bailout Didn't Help Close Bill Backlog
State Comptroller Susana Mendoza.
Illinois no longer has a bill backlog.
When you’re job is paying those bills and it’s an election year, you want to tell the world, just as State Comptroller Susana Mendoza is doing. We spoke to Mendoza Friday on WMAY Radio in Springfield.
“I’ve been methodically and strategically chipping away at this backlog, which was as bad as $16.7 billion,” said Mendoza. “When I was elected, I walked into a bill payment cycle of an average of 210 days delay. That’s how long your average vendor had to wait for the State of Illinois to pay them for services they had dutifully rendered to our state.”
Mendoza says it was a matter of chipping down state bills, especially bills where she got matching federal funds and none came from a federal bailout.
“It didn’t happen because of a bailout, it happened because of a lot of hard, strategic work,” Mendoza said. “[We began] targeting bills that would give us a federal match of 50 cents. For every one dollar I pay in a Medicaid bill, the feds will give me 50 cents. So I looked to target bills that would help us stretch the value of every single tax dollar.”
On the first day of the new fiscal year on July 1, Mendoza said the state bill payment cycle was at 0 days, but is well inside the 30-day payment window she wants. As of Friday, Mendoza said the oldest bill in her office was 10 days.
“That’s a lot of happy vendors for the first time in decades,” she said.
Many Republicans allege the state is only paying bills on time thanks to higher than expected revenues and federal COVID relief money. Mendoza says the bailout had nothing to do with the state’s success paying down debt.
“Zero. None of it has anything to do with the American Rescue Plan Act dollars,” she said.
Mendoza said the state bill payment cycle was already under 30 days before ARPA funds showed up.
But, while Democrats are celebrating bills payed on time, a budget surplus, and an increase in state rainy day funds, Mendoza says they should still proceed with caution.
“We need to do more to stabilize our rainy day fund and our pension stabilization fund,” Mendoza said. “We’re talking short term and long term benefits for taxpayers. We didn’t get a new bike for Christmas here. We didn’t get a new pretty Lexus with a bow in the driveway. Essentially, we need to think about this [new revenue] as how do we keep from getting our car repossessed.”
The current rainy day fund is over $850 million. Mendoza said the fund was under $60,000 in 2017, which would fund government for fewer than 30 seconds.
She says Democrats should be responsible, especially with lower revenue expected in the new fiscal year.
“We need to start thinking responsibly, and the responsible thing to do is get that money in the coffers and save it for a rainy day,” Mendoza said. “I certainly don’t want any Comptroller in this state to be in the position to do what I did and navigate a fiscal crisis, with, essentially, no rainy day fund. “