The state of the State

Dems on sidelines with Thompson's budget

A TENUOUS Democratic-Republican balance will be in a holding pattern the next two years, if the first 100 days of the Thompson administration are an indication. In a recent interview, Secy. of State Alan Dixon, the state's top Democratic officeholder, said criticizing Gov. James R. Thompson, a Republican, is a two-edged sword. Dixon said that any criticism of Thompson's budget would involve proposing alternatives, which would then call for increased spending. "But the revenue solution is not there," he said. The legislature is relatively moderate, Dixon said, and "so are the governor and the Democratic leaders. You don't have sharp edges this year."

The major Democratic criticism of Thompson's budget has come from State Comptroller Michael Bakalis. While agreeing with the basic philosophy in the Thompson budget, Bakalis disagrees with Thompson's projected revenue estimates and spending deficits. Bakalis said the governor has chosen to accept the most conservative forecasts on the state of the economy, but the Democratic estimates — while still safe — are less bleak. "Revenues for next year can't be less than this year's, which will be $460 million. The governor says $426 million next year," Bakalis said. "Both of us agree there is going to be a deficit. The governor thinks it will be a lot bigger deficit than we do."

According to Bakalis's figures, the state's largest spending deficit occurred during the last two years of the Walker administration. "While we can't go around spending like crazy this year, the real year of sacrifice was last year."

Bakalis said the state's general fund dropped below the $100 million mark only 28 days during the current fiscal year. Last year this happened on 95 days. "There is nothing religious about the $100 million level," he said, "nothing sacrosanct. We spend $25 million a day in Illinois, so $100 million is only about four days worth of spending." In the comptroller's monthly report for March, Bakalis said the available balance would be $113 million. "We're seeing that we're not falling below the $100 million level," he said.

However, Bakalis noted Thompson would rather be low in his figures than high because of strategic political reasons. Bakalis had accused the governor in March of attempting to "bolster gloomy forecasts of the state's fiscal health by manipulating the end-of-the-month balances in the state's general funds." He said Thompson ordered the payment of a $22 million school account not required until June in order to show a final February balance of less than $100 million. If the payment had not been ordered, Bakalis said, the end-of-the-month balance for February would have been $109 million instead of $87 million. In April the comptroller said Thompson urged the Office of Education to speed up quarterly payments to local school districts. "We found no reason for doing what they did," he said. "The governor's office initiated a call to the Office of Education to make that payment earlier," Bakalis said. "But there was no rationale, no legal justification to do it so I held it and paid it when I was required to do so." Noting that the payments need not be made until the first week of April, Bakalis had said, "The comptroller's office will make the payments when legally necessary. We will not cooperate in Governor Thompson's orchestration of the state's cash flow to suit his political agenda."

So far this session Thompson has been getting a pass in the legislature, in the opinion of some Democrats. Sen. Terry Bruce (D., Olney), an assistant majority leader, said, "Everyone's falling over themselves to be nice guys. I'm surprised at the favorable reaction he's [Thompson] been getting." Bruce noted that a major appropriation bill had not yet been reported out of committee, so it was still early to forecast how Thompson's budget would fare.

The accelerated payments to schools and hospitals are part of a plan to make the Walker budget look bad, Bruce said, and include them in the fiscal 1977 budget. "There's a lot of money floating around," he said. A suit settled early in April between the state and a group of hospitals was hastened along by the Thompson administration, Bruce said, in order to include that settlement in the fiscal 1977 budget.

Dixon noted that Thompson had not sent up much in the way of legislation so far this session. "His crime and ethics programs are perfectly acceptable to our side," Dixon said. Those areas of Thompson's budget the legislature is more likely to debate are education, highways and welfare. There will be a legitimate argument over the relative priorities of schools and penitentiaries later in the session, Dixon predicted.

"Education will be the toughie," Bruce said. According to Thompson's budget, schools will receive only a 2 or 3 per cent increase over last year, "Schools couldn't keep pace with inflation at that rate," he said. The Office of Education earlier this year had said it would take $135.5 million to fully fund the formula. "Thompson gave them only $75 million. That's not going to be nearly enough."

Bakalis said he hopes the legislature extends the quarterly payment system to school districts next year "because it does help the cash-flow problem." Under the old system, there was a huge payment in September.

Bakalis said while he agrees with Thompson's basic philosophy that school districts need to become more accountable for what they do with state funds, "education has had hard time sin the last few years." The state has never met the projections in the amount of aid it was to give schools, he said, while education takes up nearly 40 per cent of the state's expenditures. "While the governor has said education will be his number one priority, and it evidently is, judging from his budget," Bakalis said, "it still represents the lowest percentage increase for schools in recent history."/ Mary C. Galligan

2 / June 1977 / Illinois Issues