Unless you are using BA as short for Bad-Ass, no, I'm not BA
🙂
Is that a 1.8 million per year shortfall or a 1.8 million per 3-year shortfall?
The $1.8 Mil number is per year, I was incorrect in my previous post. Haven't gotten a conclusive answer as to how this was calculated, but It was NOT taken from the difference between the appropriation and the actual expenditure (the method I would argue is the "correct" method). Seems this number was "created" looking at the expenditure and certain portions of the Agency's revenue. So it is a somewhat misleading number, however you look at it.
And why IL isn't cutting pensions or salaries of higher-ups.
There is a lot of argument about government funding, and while there is no "correct" side to the argument, there are some correct points to be made. Many people, when faced with a budget shortfall in one area, say things like, "well, with all the wasted money in [another area], why don't we just make cuts there." It's not a bad argument from a policy standpoint, but from a factual standpoint, it doesn't hold water. Regardless of the merits of cutting government spending, both in general, and in certain areas, a cut "here" doesn't mean that money can (rightfully) go "there." It's essentially a product of the tenets of separation of power in government and in the system of checks and balances present in all American governmental sovereigns. The State's budget is made up of many different revenue streams and expenditure streams, not all of which converge. There are a few agencies in Illinois that are flush with money, and there are a few that are in catastrophic debt. The only short term solution to these discrepancies are sweeps. The same sort of sweeps that caused the problem IDFPR is facing now.
While the Illinois Office on Aging might have a surplus year over year, and the Illinois Medicare Fund might be deep in the red, sweeping money from Aging to pay Medicare is like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. Yes, for that precise moment, and for that perceived issue, there is an equalization. Unfortunately, in two or ten or twenty years, when the appropriations and funding catch up to that quick fix, things hit the fan, things you wouldn't want hitting fans. Compounding that issue is the fact that, typically, government officials know that, by the time a problem comes to a head, they will no longer be in office, and they will no longer be subject to any accountability on the issue. (Without overreaching in terms of political comparison, look at Carter's Community Reinvestment Act. In 1977, President Carter championed a bill that forced lending institutions to underwrite unsafe mortgages to certain groups of people to equalize unfair housing opportunities. Fast forward 30 years, and that Bill has forced lending institutions to underwrite tens of thousands of extremely unsafe mortgages. When the credit markets collapsed as those mortgages were foreclosed, no one could popularly point to Carter, because he'd been out of the picture for 3 decades. But every economist and lending institution knows full well that Carter's actions were a but-for cause of the collapse.)
So, while there may be merits, arguendo, to say that Illinois needs to approach major pension reform (though I would never point to "higher-ups" as a problem), pension reform wouldn't have any appreciable affect in the immediate future, and no one (with any power) is interested in legitimately looking forward. Our Governor has been lobbying for bills that would reform the State's pension systems in a slow and reasonable manner, and the support, from the Legislature, the unions, and the employees, is so underwhelming it's impressive.
