Politcs
Electoral politics supersede fiscal policy

The legislative fixation on election day resulted in a fiscal 1993 state budget tailor-made for the campaign trail, but ill-suited to the state's needs, especially in child care and prisons.

Budgets always reflect political concerns, of course, and every other year most lawmakers are up for election. But in 1992, the stakes are higher than usual, for it's the first election after redistricting, and all 177 seats in the General Assembly are to be filled.

For one of the few times in state history, the legislature's minority party enjoyed a free hand in mapmaking. With the new House and Senate districts drawn to Republican tastes, Democratic incumbents faced the greatest peril in the spring session of accumulating records new constituents would reject in November. In fact, a dozen sitting Democrats are running in districts that have strong Republican voting records, 10 of them anchored in the Chicago suburbs. Another eight are seeking election in downstate districts that lean Republican. On the GOP side, in contrast, only one downstate incumbent is testing hostile territory. Despite their cartographical edge, many GOP lawmakers also were apprehensive about budget decisions, fearful that election day might find a growing anti-incumbent fervor sweeping the electorate.

Indeed, due to the map's partisan flavor, early handicappers all but conceded to Republicans control of the Senate, where Democrats now hold a slim 31-28 margin. Some even gave the GOP a shot in the House, despite the Democrats' current 72-46 overwhelming majority.

With most legislators consumed with electoral survival, there was little chance for serious debate about the state's fiscal problems. Instead, budget-making especially for Democrats amounted to little more than political posturing.

© 1992 The State Journal-Register, Springfield. Reprinted with permission.

While Edgar took some political risks in the budget he proposed, seeking higher liquor and tobacco taxes to provide needed dollars for education, children's services and prisons, few lawmakers in either party were willing to bite the revenue bullet. Rejecting the modest tax increases Edgar proposed, the legislature instead hacked, slashed and carved its way to what its Democratic architects pretended was a balanced budget.

While budget-cutting is second-nature to most Republicans, the fiscal metamorphosis was truly awesome for Democrats, some of whom have never met a program they didn't like. Slicing spending "wasn't easy, it was downright tough," House Speaker Michael J. Madigan (D-30, Chicago) conceded. "It wasn't easy for me as a Democrat to stand and argue for these reductions, to go into caucus and persuade Democrats to vote for them. It was tough." Still, the desire to campaign as anti-tax, anti-government budget-cutters made it doable for the vast majority of Democrats.

In devising their budget strategy, Democratic leaders drew upon the lessons they learned during last year's 19 days of overtime. Perhaps most significantly, they discovered then that there is little political mileage to be gained from

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sticking up for the poor and the disadvantaged. Shelved was last year's rhetoric about not balancing the budget on the backs of the poor; this year, Democrats professed greater concern about maintaining the state's credit rating. Predictably, they blamed Edgar when Wall Street dropped the state a notch in response to the flaws analysts saw in the state's fiscal plan.

In the cut-cut-cut atmosphere, Edgar's proposal to eliminate $154-a-month welfare grants for some 30,000 childless adults met with little more than token opposition, and that only briefly, from Madigan and Senate President Philip J. Rock (D-8, Oak Park). Instead, with an eye toward tax-weary suburban voters, the Democratic leaders opted to portray their members as even tighter-fisted penny-pinchers than Edgar and his GOP allies.

• Madigan orchestrated a House vote in which Republicans joined to reject the governor's call for higher liquor taxes and a new tax on cigars, snuff, pipe tobacco and other products.

• Senate Democrats zeroed in on the perks of state government, slicing out dollars earmarked for beepers, car phones and similar status symbols, and carved into the ranks of executive agencies' legislative liaisons and public information officers.

• House Democrats launched an assault on middle-management government jobs, hoping their targets included a fair number of Republican patronage appointees. In all, they hacked some $375 million from the governor's budget request, including deep cuts in mental health, children's programs and prisons.

All the while, Madigan belittled Edgar as a man wanting to live beyond his means. Indeed, the speaker's refrain became almost as familiar as the Pledge of Allegiance to those watching the budget struggle: The governor wants to spend more than the speaker, he wants to spend money he doesn't have, he wants to cook the books, he's willing to risk the state's credit rating.

Gov. Edgar, meanwhile, faced an insurmountable handicap in the budget battle. As the state's chief executive, he had to live with the results, making certain that state government could run after lawmakers left the Statehouse for the hustings.

The Democrats, on the other hand, were unfettered by such good government concerns; in fact, a few crises would merely reinforce their contention that Edgar was a lousy manager, helping to lay the groundwork for the Democratic gubernatorial challenger in 1994.

Edgar had no real choice but to lend credence to the Democratic rhetoric by imploring Madigan to restore funding for some of the most critical programs, and the speaker ultimately allowed himself to be persuaded to add back some $210 million in the final package.

Seeking a final word, Edgar vetoed $33.5 million from the $28.4 billion budget lawmakers sent him in an effort to squirrel away dollars for the funding crises sure to arise later in the year. The cuts included about $2 million from legislative operating budgets, which somehow escaped the Democrats' slice-and-dice frenzy. Legislators "were very enthusiastic in their cuts in a variety of state agencies," Edgar said when announcing the vetoes. "They undoubtedly are going to be out there campaigning about how they cut spending. They wouldn't want to be left open to the fact that they didn't cut their own budget."

The governor also vetoed $354,400 from the $7.9 million earmarked for the Arts Council, chaired by Shirley R. Madigan, the speaker's wife, and pared almost $13 million from the budgets of Atty. Gen. Roland W. Burris, a Democrat, and Secy. of State George H. Ryan, a Republican. Ryan suggested the cuts for his office, but Burns, a potential gubernatorial candidate, huffed that Edgar's veto was "unprecedented" and promised to seek restoration during the fall veto session of the $4 million he lost by the veto.

In reluctantly signing what he called a "terrible" fiscal plan, Edgar acknowledged its underlying political reality: "We are in the midst of an election year, and we probably can't expect for anything better than what we have. So I will approve this budget, with some changes, and we will do the best we can to manage state government and to provide the necessary services."

Despite the governor's complaints, the result was a solid political victory for Madigan: no tax hikes or new fees, fewer dollars than Edgar wanted to spend, serious inroads into managerial ranks and virtually guaranteed headaches for the governor and his department directors for the next 12 months.

Reflecting on the session, Madigan had some advice for Democrats headed for the election hustings: "They should offer themselves as being very responsible and reasonable legislators. Circumstances today are such that we need restraint on spending ... and that's what they did. They should be proud of that, and they should carry that argument and record to the people ... and I think they'll be elected."

While the budget was crafted to provide plenty of fodder for Democratic candidates hoping to impress constituents with their parsimony, its appeal may not last much beyond election day, warned knowledgeable fiscal experts. "Once again the state budget has been stuck together with bubble gum and baling wire," said James D. Nowlan, president of the Taxpayers' Federation of Illinois, a watchdog group. "It will not hold together for the full fiscal year."

Already, some of its shortcomings are evident, as witnessed by the surprise resignation of Sue Suter, director of the Department of Children and Family Services. Suter disclosed August 5 that she is leaving the helm of the troubled agency in mid-September in the wake of budget cuts that jeopardize the department's ability to meet court-ordered reforms. Lawmakers sliced about $19 million from Edgar's budget request for DCFS, forcing the layoffs of 365 employees, including 187 direct-service workers who help place children entering the child care system, try to find foster and adoptive homes for children, and work on programs aiding youngsters with special needs.

Terming her decision a "wake-up call" to lawmakers, Suter said she could not remain as director "in all good conscience" while the budget cuts left the agency "strapped for resources" to make the mandated reforms, which include hiring additional caseworkers for the 28,000 children in the agency's care.

In the Department of Corrections, officials have their fingers crossed, hoping lawmakers guessed correctly in slicing $18 million from the budget request and that an inexorable tide of incoming inmates won't overwhelm the system before dollars are available to staff a new 950-bed prison in southern Illinois, four work camps downstate and a 200-bed work release center in Chicago.

Other deficiencies will become painfully obvious later in the fiscal year. The allocation for state employee group health insurance, for example, was sliced $25 million below the governor's request, so that come next spring, the state again will run out of money to pay medical bills for its workers, forcing some to forego health care and subjecting others to collection agency demands. "Everyone in this city, including the legislature, knows that's a phoney cut," Edgar said. "Those bills are there. They have to be paid."

Moreover, some of this year's budget decisions are sure to haunt Edgar and the new legislature when they start to build the fiscal 1994 budget next spring, in particular $110 million in onetime windfalls and more than $100 million in deferred spending. The size of the 1992 budgetary deficit is expected to be a mind-boggling $900 million-plus, the largest in state history and promising another year of hand-to-mouth existence with unpaid bills piling up in the office of state Comptroller Dawn dark Netsch.

A cash-flow crunch was virtually guaranteed when state Treasurer Patrick Quinn balked at Edgar's request to borrow $300 million to help pay old bills. The treasurer said he wanted Edgar to pledge to speed up by a month $176 million in school aid payments, a move seen as an attempt by Quinn, a likely Democratic gubernatorial contender in 1994, to curry favor with local school officials, especially in cash-strapped Chicago. The governor and Netsch, also a potential Democratic candidate for governor, argued quite rightly that the state should pay its outstanding bills before advancing money to anyone.

The incident was just another reminder that spending decisions in fiscal 1993 reflect electoral politics, not fiscal policy.

Charles N. Wheeler III is a correspondent in the Springfield Bureau of the Chicago Sun -Times.

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