Keep waiting.
The state, which is self-insured, has about 200 claims worth about $560,000 on
hold, said Meredith Krantz, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Central
Management Services.
Those claims, filed since July 1, aren’t being paid because there’s no state
budget.
One Springfield lawyer said he found the situation “pathetic.”
“The way I take this: If a state employee runs into your car and damages a
fender or a bumper or whatever, the state isn’t paying that now,” said attorney
Jim Ackerman, whose work includes auto liability cases.
“And if they run over your mother and kill her, the state isn’t going to pay
that for quite some time,” he said.
With no appropriation passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, CMS
does not have the authority to make payments.
Krantz said the numbers reflect all expenses, including reimbursement for
medical costs and for claim-related services. However, she added, there also are
claims still being investigated or negotiated.
CMS handles vehicle liability for all of the state’s departments, boards,
commissions, universities and agencies. In all, Illinois owns about 12,500
vehicles, roughly 9,500 of which are passenger cars, Krantz said.
By not funding its self-insurance pool, Ackerman said, the state is, in a way,
holding itself to a much lighter standard than it does its citizen drivers, who
are required to have liability insurance.
“You can blame whatever politician you prefer, but it’s really a pathetic
situation,” Ackerman said.
Rep. Jack Franks, D-Woodstock, didn’t disagree.
“This is a continuation of how inept Illinois government really is,” Franks
said. “Now, we’re not paying accident victims even though we owe them.”
Franks criticized Gov. Bruce Rauner, arguing Rauner was over-aggressive in use
of his veto pen last spring when he vetoed nearly all appropriations, with the
biggest exception being the state’s primary and secondary education spending
plan.
The governor, Franks said, should have let stand some of those appropriations,
including this liability fund and appropriations to handle health insurance
payouts for those state employees covered under the state’s self-funded program.
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“Someone needs to ask the governor why he vetoed this,” Franks
said.
Catherine Kelly, Rauner’s press secretary, said, “Rep. Franks is all
over the map when it comes to spending. He voted against the bill he
now criticizes the governor for vetoing.”
But Franks also said leadership from both parties own the blame
for Illinois failing to meet its obligations.
“Understand that the people of the state of Illinois are suffering
because we have people on each side of the aisle that care more
about politics than them, and (those politicians) still suffer from
the delusion that it’s OK for real people to suffer as long as the
other side gets blamed,” Franks said.
“If we were a company, the government would seize us and shut us
down,” he said. “That’s how bad we are.”
Said Rep. Ron Sandack, R-Downers Grove, “This is just another in an
almost never-ending, nonstop series of disappointments.”
Every day the General Assembly isn’t in session looking for a
solution to the budget impasse “is compounding a mistake,” Sandack
said.
“We ought to be in the session, and we ought to be working on a
budget and actually putting votes on the board whether (the
proposals) come from the governor or the speaker of the House or the
Senate president,” Sandack said.
“The fact that we are not doing that is just a miscarriage of
justice and a dereliction of our duties,” he continued. “And it’s
shameful.”
Despite more than two-thirds of fiscal 2016 having passed, the
first-term Republican governor and the Democratic supermajorities in
the House and Senate have been unable to reach a budget deal.
Even without an overall budget, the state still is making payments
on roughly 90 percent of the bills it covered in the previous year
because it is paying for costs mandated in continuing
appropriations, by court decrees, in the primary education budget
and for its debt service.
As of Thursday, the state’s unpaid bills totaled $7.58 billion.
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