Follow Constitution; pass balanced budget

Obviously the governor and the state legislature have a different interpretation of Article V111 Section 2.(a) of the Illinois Constitution, which reads: "Proposed expenditures shall not exceed funds estimated to be available for the fiscal year as shown in the budget."

Now I could be wrong but that certainly sounds as if the legislature is required by the constitution to pass a balanced budget. The constitution does grant the legislature to authority to incur debt in, "an amount not exceeding 15 percent of the state's appropriations for that fiscal year to meet deficits caused by emergencies of failures of revenue."

This section would not apply, because the state has been passing budgets with deficits for years, so there is no emergency situation regarding failures of revenue.

Although I am not a lawyer or constitutional expert, it would seem to me that governors and legislatures have been violating the state constitution for years and are ready to do so again, as they prepare to pass the 2011 fiscal year

budget.

Victor Darst

West Dundee