Budget
The Illinois Commission on Government
Forecasting and Accountability (CGFA) reports an ease-up in the hard-pressed State
of Illinois general funds. This is the account used to cover many of
Illinois’ past-due and delinquent bills and debts, such as payments to medical
care providers. In recent years Illinois
has repeatedly owed its creditors billions of dollars, with current debts
running more than $8 billion behind cash on hand. In a report released on Wednesday, September 4, CGFA reported a slight easing of this trend in August 2013. General funds tax revenues, used to pay past-due bills, increased by 3.7% over August 2012, with employed Illinoisans increasing their purchases of goods and services and paying more sales tax. In addition, $397 million in one-time money was transferred to general funds from the Income Tax Refund Fund. However, this income tax refund payment will not be repeated in any of the final months of calendar year 2013, and not all Illinois residents are employed and able to buy new goods and services (see “Economy,” below).
Economy
·
Springfield’s CGFA continues to signal
that Illinois’ economy is growing very slowly, if at all.
In its September 4 report, the General Assembly’s “economic think tank” summarized
the State’s financial numbers and trends for August 2013. Illinois’s official July 2013 unemployment
rate, at 9.2%, was the second highest jobless rate in the U.S., exceeded only
by Nevada at 9.5%. The number of persons
employed by Illinois wage-payers actually dropped during the first seven months
of this year. On a seasonally-adjusted
basis, 110,000 fewer Illinois residents were employed in midsummer than had
been collecting wages last Christmas.
Had it not been for a decline in the size of the Illinois labor force as
discouraged workers left Illinois or ceased to search for employment, the
unemployment rate in the Midwest’s largest state might well have re-crossed the
double-digit line.
·
Layoff warnings confirm dismal
economic picture. Larger private-sector employers are required
to distribute 60-day layoff warnings to many of their employees prior to job
termination, and warnings were distributed in August 2013 to almost 600
Illinois workers. Termination warnings
of this sort are often distributed when a large warehouse or factory is slated
for closure. In a typical August 2013
termination warning, 177 workers at Booklet Binding, a Carol Stream print shop
that specializes in high-value-added stitched and bound paper publications,
were told that their facility was scheduled for shutdown. The August 2013 layoff warning summary was
published by the Department of Commerce and Economic
Opportunity (DCEO) on
Thursday, September 5.
Guns – Concealed Carry
·
Under General Assembly pressure, the
Illinois State Police starts the process to register concealed carry
instructors. P.A. 98-63 (HB 183) enables licensed Illinois
residents to exercise their right to carry a concealable firearm in public
places, such as in a moving motor vehicle or on a public street or sidewalk. However, the State Police are directed by the
terms of this law not to grant an Illinois concealed carry license until a
license applicant has successfully completed a course led by a registered
provider of concealed-carry safety instruction.
Many experienced Illinois gun users, with firearms safety and concealed
carry certifications earned from other government agencies or from the private
sector, have applied to the State Police for a process to be set up to register
them as concealed carry instructors. On
Friday, August 30, the State Police released administrative rules and announced
their intent to begin registering qualified instructors. Designation of a corps of concealed carry
instructors will be a key step in implementation of the new law. Applicants for registration and approval as
concealed carry instructors will be required to submit their fingerprints and
to show proof of certification from a federal, State, or local governmental law
enforcement agency, or from a recognized organization with a record of training
activities in gun safety, such as the National Rifle Association (NRA). The new emergency rules were released under a
special provision of Illinois law that allows them to go into effect t
immediately, without a public comment period.
The State Police rulemaking action was a response to a demand of
the Illinois General Assembly. The
legislature wrote the law so as to require the State Police to begin listing a
registry of approved gun safety instructors no later than Saturday, September 7. Lawmakers asserted that the “hard” line imposed
on the State Police was necessary to prevent foot-dragging by elements of state
government that continue to oppose concealed carry. P.A. 98-63 was enacted into law on July 9,
2013 over the veto of Governor Quinn.
More information on the State Police’s temporary emergency rules
for concealed carry instruction may be found here.
Pensions
·
Pension loopholes allow high-ranking
state officials to continue collecting pension payments after pleading guilty.
Current law governing the pensions for high-ranking Illinois state
officials, including members of the General Assembly, allows these officials –
once they have qualified for payments from the cash-strapped Illinois public pension
systems – to continue to collect their monthly payments until their guilty
pleas have been finalized by the act of court sentencing. Current state and federal criminal laws
include a lengthy “sentencing phase” of the criminal trial process, in which a
guilty verdict or guilty plea is followed by a lengthy determination of the
status of the individual with relation to various factors that the court is
required to take into consideration when issuing a sentence.
On Tuesday, September 3, the Chicago Tribune reported on the
application of this law with respect to former Representative Connie Howard
(D-Chicago), who resigned from the Illinois House in July 2012 but remained
eligible for her pension during her guilty plea and sentencing phase. The former lawmaker is scheduled to be
sentenced in November 2013.
RTA
·
Governor’s 15-member reform panel
begins operations. The task force, which began meeting on
Tuesday, September 3, has been asked to examine the operations of the Chicago
area-based Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) and its three operating
boards, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the Suburban Bus Board (Pace), and
the commuter train authority (Metra).
Questions swirl around all of Chicago’s mass transit operations after
the recent controversial resignation of the Metra CEO amid a severance payment
of $871,000. The RTA and the three
transit boards operate in a confusing mixture of cross-cutting responsibilities
involving the inter-relationships between the overall authority, the three
operating boards, local governments, and State government. The RTA and the three operating boards have a
total of 47 board members appointed by 16 different public officials and
bodies, mostly county board chairpersons and the mayor of Chicago.
State Government
·
Over $135
million in no-bid contracts reported.
The State of Illinois has enacted a Procurement Code, which contains a
complex bidding procedure that is meant to be followed in almost all of the
cases where the State needs to purchase a commodity good or service (many
professional services are procured through a different process).
A loophole in the Procurement Code
is supposed to provide responsible, high-ranking state officials with a narrow
window to buy no-bid goods and services in genuine emergencies. However, a report published on Friday, August
30 indicates that over $135 million in “emergency” no-bid goods and services
were bought by the State in fiscal year 2013, which ended June 30. This emergency procurement, which was done
without suppliers competing with each other or asking for state bids, was up 33
percent over the year before and represented almost four times the annual
volume of no-bid state business awarded under this loophole during former
Governor Blagojevich’s final fiscal year (FY08).