 A jump in revenue, some short-term borrowing and an income tax
increase weren't enough to keep the state's backlog of bills from
growing during the past year. The state owes vendors, social service
providers and schools, among others, $19 million more than it did
last March, according to a report from Illinois Comptroller Judy
Baar Topinka.Unpaid bills, some of which are from October 2010,
totaled $4.5 billion at the end of March, according to the report.
With such a large pile of IOUs, Topinka's office said it has to
prioritize who gets paid first. Short-term borrowing, debt payments
and Medicaid payments are first in line.
Kent Redfield, a political studies professor at the University of
Illinois at Springfield, said the state dug itself such a deep hole
that it will take a while for it to find a way out.
"We've got a huge deficit problem. Part of it is unpaid bills and
part of it's that we're spending more on programs than our revenues
will support, and we also have costs going up," Redfield said.
Topinka concluded her report by saying that without "significant"
changes, the state finances will continue to stumble. There have
been several major ideas to address the situation, but so far all
have run into roadblocks.
Gov. Pat Quinn floated a plan earlier this year to borrow $8.75
billion to spread out the state's $9 billion deficit, though it
stalled in the Legislature for lack of support from either
Republicans or Democrats.
State Sen. John Sullivan, D-Rushville, said he asked Topinka
recently what exactly the backlog stood at so he could formulate
some way to pay down the bills.
"Instead of doing a borrowing bill like the governor came out
with of $8.75 (billion) maybe we could cut that in half. Maybe we
would only have to borrow four or five billion dollars to pay those
vendors and those schools that are owed money from months and months
and months ago," Sullivan said.
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He said the oldest debts should be paid first.
State Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine, said that any amount of
borrowing is a non-starter for the GOP.
"We don't view borrowing as part of the solution to this," Murphy
said, pointing to a plan by the Senate Republicans that outlined
$6.7 billion in possible cuts. "It's time to get responsible and
knuckle down and actually bring spending down to levels the people
of this state can actually afford."
Redfield said any plan -- borrowing, cutting or some combination
of the two -- needs to address the fact that the income tax increase
is set to expire in four years, which gives the state some breathing
room but doesn't fix the underlying problem.
"We either have to reduce the amount of things we say are
essential, or we have got to have more revenue, and that's a policy
argument," he said.
[Illinois
Statehouse News; By ANDREW THOMASON]
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