* There’s talk of bankruptcy in East St. Louis. With property tax revenues down and gaming proceeds from the local riverboat tanking, the city is facing a $5 million budget shortfall and is having a rough time meeting its payroll…
Two councilmen said the city may be looking at filing for bankruptcy after the fire and police pension boards rejected the city’s request to borrow about $1.5 million from the two boards, and the bargaining units within the police and fire departments are crying foul over contract violations. […]
“Our backs are against the wall,” [Councilmen Roy Mosley] said. “The police bargaining unit doesn’t want to negotiate with us. The firemen have worked with us and I thank them for doing that. We can’t pay what we don’t have. We’re not trying to take any money from anybody. We just don’t have any money to pay the union contracts that were negotiated when the city had money, and that’s the bottom line.”
Mosley said the city has had to pay out large chunks of money in lawsuits to, and because of, several police officers. […]
He said, however, that “Eighty percent of the city’s budget is the police and fire departments.”
Marion also said, “If you cut everybody out of the budget, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to close the $5 million budget gap the city has.”
I’ll have more on New Jersey’s budget situation next week because I just haven’t had much time to study it, but one of the proposals by the state’s new governor is to forbid all local governments from getting in over their heads by limiting their lee-way in future contract negotiations…
[Gov. Chris Christie] also is calling for new handcuffs on towns and school districts as they bargain with unions, to prohibit towns from awarding contracts with pay increases, including benefits, of more than 2.5 percent.
One seriously doubts that’ll happen here, and it probably won’t even happen in New Jersey. Still, it’s an idea that I don’t ever remember seeing before.
* Gov. Christie mentioned Illinois in his budget address, by the way. After I wrote a column about Christie, I ended up (temporarily, at least) on his press release list, so somebody out there apparently saw it. Here’s what Christie said in his address…
…Many of our fellow states are resorting to the techniques and tricks that have gotten New Jersey into so much trouble in the past.
In Illinois, they are raising income taxes and increasing borrowing to solve this problem. Sound familiar? Like New Jersey, they will see taxpayers leave and revenues fall. We have already been there and feel the sting of that failed policy today.
* As I reported to subscribers yesterday, the House Republicans submitted a long list of budget ideas to Gov. Quinn this week. The Southtown Star does a story today..
House Republican lawmakers have sent Gov. Pat Quinn recommendations on how state government might look to cut spending in the state’s current financial crisis.
The four-page letter, signed by 46 House Republicans, urges Quinn to look at fiscal reforms, Medicaid changes and job creation.
While there’s not an exact dollar amount specified in terms of proposed savings, the letter identifies how more than $5.3 billion could be used differently.
Sounds like a lot of money, right? There’s a big catch…
House GOP lawmakers proposed, among other things, that Quinn look to eliminate General Assembly scholarships, abolish the lieutenant governor’s office, impose a freeze on state hiring and salary increases and redirect $5 billion earmarked for capital projects for operations.
As I’ve already told subscribers, redirecting $5 billion of the capital plan to state operations simply cannot be done with the current revenue situation. Plus, lots of members didn’t even know that item was on the list. Oops.
OK, so now they’re down to about $300 million in savings. Much of that comes from postponing funding for high-speed rail.
Illinois Issues Statehouse bureau chief Jamey Dunn has a partial list over at Illinoize. Some of the ideas aren’t bad at all, but this is no real solution.
* Since the top item on this post deals with unions, let’s throw this one in here. As our videos showed yesterday, Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Brady was bashed on the union issue…
Speaking at a gathering of the Illinois Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Quinn told the pro-union crowd that Brady owned a construction company that only hired non-union workers, and Madigan said the Republican senator from Bloomington would work “to spread that gospel all over the state of Illinois.”
“We’re not going to have a middle class if we allow a lot of anti-labor, anti-union operators to get in politics and tear to shreds fundamental things we all agree on,” Quinn said. “He doesn’t believe in the minimum wage. He wants to abolish it.”
The Brady campaign responded…
Jerry Clarke, campaign manager for Brady, issued a statement in response: “We’re not going to have a middle class if we continue the job-killing policies and insider politics of the Blagojevich-Quinn administration.”
* Related…
* A first step in cutting pensions: Finally, a bill to create a two-tier state pension system isn’t dead on arrival in the state Legislature. On Wednesday, a bill to provide significantly lower benefits for newly hired employees in two of five state pension systems, the ones covering legislators and judges, passed a House committee. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, expects the bill to pass the full House this week. No other major pension reform bill has gotten that far in the last two years.
* Measure advances to raise retirement age for lawmakers, judges
* Bill targets pensions of judges, legislators
* Illinois budget crisis sharpens
* Sen. Hutchinson: “We haven’t been doing that for the last 25-30 years”
* Herald-Review: Solid budget will do more than games
* Budget expert calls Quinn tax proposal ‘insufficient’
* Con-fer-ence: An excuse to spend lavishly?: Southland school administrators and board members - many who are running financially strapped districts - dropped a bundle on meals, hotels and travel to an annual fall conference they insist makes them better leaders. Their big destination: downtown Chicago.
* Sneed: Dart, who is no stranger to controversy, is going to force inmates to wash their own prison uniforms . . . and eat breakfast at 4:30 a.m.!
* Dispute over Downstate horse track leads House to oust board
* Illinois House moves to fire the Illinois Racing Board
* Ending employee discounts at Illinois universities unlikely this year