Wednesday, February 24, 2010

First Reactions to Gov. Quinn's budget

Governor Quinn’s new budget website does not yet show his full proposal. So far, it is not a very user-friendly website, unless you are a budget expert. But at least it has a simple way to post your opinion on the budget.

It appears Gov. Quinn is going to propose cuts across all areas of state spending including education, human services, economic development and public safety. It is not yet clear what he is going to propose about state employee pensions, retiree benefits or state income taxes.

The Civic Federation released a very informative state budget proposal this week. The Federation is a non-partisan and fiscally cautious group that analyzes the Illinois budget.

The Federation recommends expense reductions, including a reform of state employee pensions. They also support an income tax increase from 3% to 5%, but only if its expense reduction initiatives are enacted first.

Click here to see a summary of the Civic Federation’s recommendations. It is very informative and shows there are constructive solutions to our problems, but they will be painful.



State Budget - a critical year ahead


Governor Quinn launched a new website today on the State Budget.


The site includes a lot of detail about the State’s expenses and revenues. It is a lot of data to sort through. Over the coming weeks, Chicago Commons will post information here, at our Blog, about what the numbers mean to our neighborhoods and the families that we serve.


Most important: The Governor’s website has a COMMENTS section where the public can register their ideas on the budget. The Governor is going to analyze the comments to help inform his official budget to be released and debated in March.


It is the first time any Governor of Illinois has solicited public comments on the budget in this way.

Please log your comments with the Governor over the coming weeks.


We will post our commentary here, so please come read it and use it to inform your comments. And remember, you could submit more than one comment to the Governor (they are counting up responses).