Illinois begins the 2014 Fiscal Year today, but leaders say they're dealing with many of the same issues which have plagued the state for some time.
Pension Crisis:
Governor Pat Quinn says Illinois' massive pension shortfall will grow at a slower pace of $5 million a day during the next fiscal year.
The daily growth was estimated at $17 million per day for the fiscal year than ends Sunday. But Quinn says taxpayers are still paying ``a steep price'' because the Legislature hasn't been able to pass pension reform.
The Democrat says lawmakers must work ``around the clock'' to address the crisis.
Illinois has the nation's worst state pension problem. Lawmakers voted this month to form a bipartisan committee to tackle the issue, and Quinn gave the group a deadline of July 9th.
Quinn says the daily growth of the state's unfunded liability has decreased partly because Illinois has made full pension payments for several years.
Crumbling Roads:
The condition of Illinois roads has deteriorated in recent years.
The percentage of roads that need repair rose from 10.8 in 2010 to 15 last year, according to a state audit. IDOT Secretary Ann Schneider says this is mainly because the department has been spending its money fixing or replacing bridges.
“We want to make sure that we are investing in our bridge infrastructure, and so we have made it a priority at the Department of Transportation to ensure that our bridges are in acceptable or better condition, and because of that, the roads don’t get to keep up as much as we would like to see them,” she said.
Schneider says the department has repaired or replaced 1,100 bridges since 2009, and that one out of 12 Illinois bridges is deficient, whereas the national average is one in nine.
She says the department would prefer to have 10 percent of roads in need of pavement repair or replacement – doing one-tenth of the state’s roads per year is a reasonable goal – but the attention on bridges has caused some deferral. She says had it not been for the capital construction program implemented in 2009, it would be worse.
Education Funding:
The concept of affordable public universities is being questioned, the president of the University of Illinois says.
Robert Easter looks at the U. of I., where 40 years ago, in-state tuition and fees cost 6½ percent of the average household income. Now it’s 30 percent, and it’s not going down if state funding stays where it is.
“In inflation-adjusted dollars, our reduction in state funding today is back to 1965 levels, a time when we enrolled half the number of students that we do today. It’s not sustainable. Tuition has increased to fill the gap, and that’s not sustainable,” he said in a speech to the City Club of Chicago.
Easter says that in the 1960s, state funding covered half the usual operating costs at the U. of I. These days, it covers 15 percent.
Easter also laments the deterioration of the partnership between the states and the federal government in the funding of research at state universities. He says the glory days were in the post-World War 2 era, “an era that fueled. I would argue, the rise of the University of Illinois, but also American education and America itself, as our economy advanced after the Second World War,” he said.
