Governor No Lincoln

Tribune on the fiasco in Springfield, as the Democrat-run state government fails to fully come to grips with the budget:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich slashed $463 million from the state budget Thursday and pressed forward his health-care plan, selectively cutting what he views as legislative pork-barrel initiatives backed by his political foes and preserving most projects pushed by friends and lawmakers he needs in his corner.

The Democratic governor's moves guaranteed a new level of bitterness in the record legislative overtime that is expected to go past Labor Day as lawmakers address mass-transit funding and other issues. But the governor's actions also prompted questions about whether he has exceeded the boundaries of the state Constitution under his far-reaching plan to expand health care.[snip]

Despite the vetoes, Blagojevich signed into law the rest of the budget. This avoided a government shutdown and allowed Comptroller Dan Hynes to keep state employees' paychecks flowing and restart payments to state contractors waiting for their money.

Oh, and the governor took care to approve hefty pay raises for himself and all state elected officials. The governor takes an ax to the budget, the Sun Times headlines:

Left intact were projects sought by Republican and Democratic members of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, a little-known legislative panel that could decide whether the governor gets to expand health care.

Many observers interpreted the move by the governor as a bid to buy votes from long-standing Senate Republican and House Democratic critics who sit on the panel.

"It's an attempt to ... curry favor with certain members, but that's just not going to happen," said Sen. Dan Rutherford (R-Pontiac), who sits on the commission.

The governor cut funding to the Lincoln library, nearing the bicentennial celebration of Honest Abe's birth in 2009. I'm sure we'll manage with some private sector donations, but Governor Blagojevich, you're no Lincoln. This is the sorry state of the Land of Lincoln.

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UPDATE: Via Illinois Review, "Is Our State Fiscal House in Order?":

From State Rep. Bob Pritchard's "Perspective" newsletter today we learn about others who agree that Illinois is headed for financial disaster if something doesn't change:

Tom Johnson, President of the Taxpayers Federation of Illinois and native of DeKalb County, was my guest at several local service club meetings this week. He discussed the state’s spending problems and reinforced a number of observations I have been making about expenses growing faster than revenue.

The financial expert concluded that Illinois’ level of spending is unsustainable. The state’s revenue is growing at a 3 percent level per year while spending including Medicaid costs, health care and pensions are growing at 7.5 percent.

To meet expenses, leaders have delayed payments to providers, under-funded the public pension systems, and failed to offer cost of living raises to providers of critical services. These policies are simply putting off costs of current programs for our children and grandchildren to pay. I agree with Johnson that this imbalance has to stop.