There's more to trim from state budget

The troubling thing about the $40 million surprise going to Chicago State University isn't that the institution is getting the money, but that a figure that size could be tucked away so deep in the state budget that even its beneficiaries miss it.

That's something for lawmakers to think about this fall as they resume the search for ways to balance the state's spending plan - and, indeed, as they watch the underpinnings of their $31 billion construction-spending system begin to melt away like the layers of North Aurora baker Bob Brougham's ill-fated cake in the California sun.

Under the heat of the ongoing budget controversy, state politicians, understandably, have often repeated their frustration with so many people and institutions complaining about the tax hikes and questionable revenue sources - read video gambling - used to balance the budget. The governor himself, once a leading critic of wasteful government spending, has lamented that the state has cut all the fat it can.

Unfortunately for spend-happy lawmakers, the public is just not buying that. Our take is that lawmakers simply are refusing to look hard enough for the least-painful expenses to cut. Our take is that the state hasn't even come close to cutting all the fat it must.

And, as Daily Herald senior state government editor John Patterson pointed out in a story Sunday, the revenue issue is not going away, even on proposals that have already been put into place, like the $31 billion capital bill. Liquor distributors are suing over whether the higher tax on their products treats them unfairly. Towns and counties across the state are rejecting the use of video gambling as a revenue source.

And still, instead of hearing about expenses lawmakers think we can get by without, we hear about multimillion grants that the recipients don't know anything about.

We hear threats from the governor and various legislators that demonstrably valuable health care and social service programs will be gutted. On the local level, we see the kind of spineless politicking that led Tuesday to a failure to reduce the unconscionable Cook County sales tax increase by a measly half-percentage point.

No reasonable person thinks that the state, or for that matter a local government, will be able to address its financial needs easily. We all know that addressing a nearly $12 billion deficit will require sacrifices of some sort from nearly all of us. And while $40 million represents just a tiny fraction of Illinois' shortfall, we all consider the sum a substantial amount of money.

Realizing that so large a sum can be slipped into the state's budget so quietly that even the people getting it don't know until they read it in the paper just reinforces our belief that the budget is stuffed with pet projects that lawmakers just don't have the courage or the interest to remove.