Behind the numbers of the new state budget
SPRINGFIELD - For months a state budget deficit that's ballooned to nearly $12 billion over two years terrorized taxpayers and lawmakers with talk of tax hikes and massive spending cuts.
Here, culled form conversations with lawmakers, is a walk through of how that deficit is, at least on paper, eliminated in a $26 billion operating budget passed by lawmakers Wednesday night.
First, the state relies on billions of federal stimulus dollars to prop up education and health care spending, using the federal dough to replace state tax dollars that have vanished in the recession. That immediately reduced the deficit by billions.
Then lawmakers chose to go about funding all state operations from police to pensions and the last thing on the table was grants to social service agencies, grants to cover state's attorneys pay and other programs and personnel who rely on state grants. The requested budget in this area was $10.8 billion, but after everything else was funded, $5 billion available.
Initially lawmakers simply passed the $5 billion plan and told the governor to figure out how to manage the gap. He rejected the deal, which resulted in local agencies that care for the elderly, disabled and needy losing their funding earlier this month.
• So lawmakers returned this week and here's how they fixed the $10.8 billion problem, for now:
- $5 billion was covered in the initial budget deal from existing state taxes
- $325 million more from raiding special state bank accounts that currently have surpluses
- $550 million more derived from refinancing state debt.
• That brings social service funding up to roughly $6 billion.
- $3.5 billion borrowed that's earmarked for social service groups
• That brings the spending up to roughly $9.5 billion.
- $1.3 billion left over has been left to the governor to manage via cuts, layoffs and other cost savings. The governor has not provided many specifics but it could result in more than 2,000 state layoffs and early release of some prisoners.