The Mike Bertelsen Project

Lawmakers will be back in Springfield next week to talk about the budget. But what is it all about? The Bond Buyer, a publication about public finance has an article that explains the situation very well. Here's a breakdown:

• The Senate approved a series of revenue-generating measures when they signed off on the spending plan.
• The House approved the spending side of the package, but DID NOT vote on a $16 billion pension obligation bond issue, the transfer of various funds and a CAPITAL BUDGET that combined would have trimmed the deficit by more than a $1 billion.
• The Governor has called on the House to approve the ILLINOIS WORKS capital budget that would free up about $320 million in the operating budget and the transfer of $530 million from various non-general fund accounts.
• House Speaker Mike Madigan's spokesman said there's not sufficient support for the various measures to win passage.
• Without a budget, State Comptroller Dan Hynes has warned that bill payment could be delayed along with employee paychecks.
• The proposed CAPITAL BUDGET relies on about $7 billion from a partial leasing of the State Lottery, $800 million in upfront funds from the issuance of new gambling licenses, $7.8 billion in new general obligation borrowing and local and federal matching dollars.
• About $6.2 billion of the bonding would be repaid with recurring gambling expansion revenues and $1.6 billion from transportation-related taxes and fees.
• The pension borrowing plan has been dropped by the Governor due to lack of support.
• The current unfunded pension laibility is $42 billion.
• On Wednesday the 2nd, Moody's Investment Service issued a special report which monitors four states - California, Illinois, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania - that have entered new fiscal years without a budget in place.
• The timing of state budget enactment can affect the ratings Moody's assigns to state issued general obligation bonds and other debt.

We'll see what happens as this all plays out. In the meantime remember that there was no mention of the back log of unpaid Medicaid bills to the tune of $1.7 billion. No that bunch of bills does not just disappear.