* I’m excerpting too much, but Carol Marin’s column needs to be shared…
On Monday night, on WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight,” State Rep. Patti Bellock, a Republican from Woodridge and a member of the House Impeachment Inquiry, put a spotlight on it. Bellock said that while Blagojevich fiddles with the feds, a state of crisis is building in this state when it comes to critical health care and health providers.
Bellock said a doctor called her office six weeks ago. “She was in tears” saying the state was $200,000 behind in Medicaid payments to her family clinic and that soon they may have to close their doors.
When that call came in, Bellock said, she called Blagojevich’s office. “It was two days before the governor was arrested,” Bellock recalled later. “I talked to one of his aides” but the aide quickly quit or took a leave of absence after his boss was taken into FBI custody. Just one of too many examples of how state government has been frozen by this scandal. “The chain of communication is broken,” she said.
Another of Bellock’s regular calls comes from the COACH Care Center in Naperville. COACH stands for Coordinating Action for Children’s Health.
“We take care of medically fragile children,” CEO Debbie Grisko said by phone Tuesday. “Children with trachs, ventilators, feeding tubes.”
Seventy-eight percent of Grisko’s clients live at or below the poverty level — families from Champaign to the Wisconsin border, who can’t keep their kids in hospitals forever and who need help learning how to care for them at home.
“Our bills are five months behind in being paid,” Grisko said. And the irony, she points out, is that her agency estimates it actually saved the state $4.6 million in the last year by helping children transition into home care and out of more expensive facilities.
And it’s gonna get much, much worse.
The state is simply running out of money. It may not even be able to make payroll in a couple of months, from what I’m getting.
I think if I was Rod Blagojevich I’d resign even if I hadn’t been arrested. The calamaties ahead will be severe and there will be no way on God’s Earth to simply cut our way out of this problem.
* The best thing the Obama administration could do on its stimulus plan is to eliminate the state and local match for capital projects. Illinois doesn’t have the money to capture the $9 billion already out there, let alone the new projects.
A proposal to increase the motor fuel tax by a modest 8 cents a gallon for transporation projects only has drawn howls of derision in southern Illinois, the home of the bill’s sponsor, Democratic state Rep. John Bradley…
Sure, gas is selling today for less than $1.70 per gallon in many locations across Southern Illinois, but does anyone really believe that will last for an appreciable length of time? The production cuts now being made by our “friends” in OPEC and the other oil-rich nations are destined to drive the barrel price of oil upward - which will affect the price at the gas pump.
What in the world was Bradley thinking? The impact of another 80 cents for a 10-gallon purchase may be inconsequential for upper-income motorists, but it would impose an unfair burden on the people who need wheels to travel between the several part-time and minimum-wage jobs that sustain a growing number of struggling, hard-working people.
And…
“I think the whole pricing system is a sham,” Goines said. “I totally disagree with a new gas tax.”
The Reagan/Blagojevich/Bush/Etc. way has been to tell people that they can get lots of neato stuff for nothing. Well, them days is over. Somebody has to pay.
And the motor fuel tax is just the beginning.
Welcome to the governor’s office, Pat Quinn. Have a nice day.