Being on multiple legislative e-mail lists, I received alerts yesterday advising me that the enormous hole in the state budget had been patched, again, through the practice of "fund sweeps." This phrase, one of those like "credit default swaps" that makes ordinary taxpayers' eyes glaze over, means that money sitting in various "special funds," instead of being used for the purposes for which it was intended and collected, will instead be diverted into the General Funds pool. Think of it as if you'd set up a special savings account for your childrens' education, or had a cookie jar in the kitchen where you put pin money to save for an upcoming wedding, but instead, when things are tight, you dip into it to pay your electric bill.
Interestingly, not one of the e-mails I got detailed which funds were being raided. So I checked. The bill itself, which got completely amended about a dozen times, is online. As a public service I am listing the funds, the amounts diverted, and a link to the bill at the end of this post (below the fold).
The list is mind-boggling. First, the total: $224 million in raided funds. That's a lot of lettuce.
Second, the sources. Probably you had no idea that we had 300 different funds to plunder, with opaque monikers such as the "Auction Regulation Administration Fund" from which we're plucking half a million bucks, the "Professions Indirect Cost Fund" from which we're diverting $2 million, or the "Subtitle D Management Fund" that will involuntarily donate a quarter-million dollars to this year's spending. Probably you also have no idea what all those funds do. I wonder if our legislators do.
I've been mostly a lurker here of late, just kind of catching up on the news. I keep looking for discussion of what's happening in the state since the Dems took it over. To me it's a shameful, unmitigated disaster, a textbook case about how not to govern.
It's embarrassing now to remember how I thought the Dem takeover would be a chance to show what Democratic control could do. Is that what's happening? Is destroying public transportation, childish posturing from the governor and legislative leaders, and naked pandering to special interests what we have to offer the country?
I think there's a very real possibility that by the time election day comes around Illinoisians will be so disgusted that even Durbin and the Dem prez candidate could get a bad surprise. Maybe we're doing a little too much thinking globally and not enough acting locally. Maybe we need to start thinking about what to do about Blogo and Madigan, among others, in their next primary.
