Editorial: U-46 budget forecast puts earnestness in perspective
Grim earnestness pulses from every press release and podium these days when Illinois leaders talk about the state budget. Their declarations of woe and urgency will no doubt make for dramatic campaign commercials in 2018.
But consider them for earnestness against these statements from Elgin Area U-46's chief operating officer for earnestness:
"If they don't pass a budget ... we would be out of money by wintertime. We would use all of our reserves ... There will be several districts that will not even open because they don't have reserves."
That's U-46 COO Jeff King, hand wringing in a Daily Herald story Tuesday, a day ahead of the start of a 10-day special legislative session on the budget ordered by Gov. Bruce Rauner. Consider the import of King's speculation: Without a budget, schools may not open or local taxpayers will be hit with huge emergency costs, imposed on them by the very lawmakers who complain they aren't controlling local spending.
U-46's CEO Tony Sanders is scheduled to appear before a House committee Thursday to plead his district's case. Would that he will be more than a "prop," the term used by Rauner earlier this month to complain about social services personnel who testified in Springfield before the state Senate approved a budget.
Indeed, would that all 177 legislators will be more than props themselves as they shuffle into the Capitol under a fog of questions, chief among them being why are they there?
Cullerton's Senate, after all, already has passed a specific package of proposals including an income tax hike and spending cuts and caps, among much else. A collection of Republican state senators and representatives released last week a set of proposed bills the governor says he supports. The House speaker, the pivotal figure in the entire charade, hasn't given any clear indication of what he will let his chamber support.
What will rank-and-file lawmakers be doing for the next 10 days? Reprocessing work already completed in the Senate? And then pushing it back into the House, where the already-completed Senate budget could more easily be amended than starting from scratch on a GOP proposal whose core provisions - a tax increase, a temporary property tax freeze, spending cuts and caps and reforms of workers' compensation, school funding and pensions - differ only marginally from the work already completed?
In a Facebook message to the state on the eve of today's opening, Gov. Rauner restated words we've heard many times from every corner and every party during the past two years and counting.
"Failure to act is not an option," he said. "...We CAN reach an agreement. After all, we share a common mission. We seek to achieve a greater good, to create a better life for our children and grandchildren here in Illinois."
He claims he's ready to compromise. Senate President Cullerton calls this "crisis time." House Speaker Michael Madigan says, "People's lives are on the line and it's time to act."
It all sounds so earnest. Can 177 rank-and-file lawmakers help make it so? For the sake of U-46's schoolchildren and tens of thousands like them across the suburbs and beyond, they'd better.