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The analysts hired by the state s Commission on Government Forecasting & Accountability put it rather delicately: Fiscal problems could jeopardize Illinois ability to gracefully emerge from the recession.
It s only March, but that may turn out to be the understatement of the year in Illinois government. We ve said it before as recently as last week, in fact and, sadly, we ll likely have to say it again: Finding the political will to get our collective finances in order is the most important job facing this state after we get the pandemic under control.
Two new reports, including COGFA s just-released State of Illinois Economic Forecast quoted above, underscore that urgency:
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One miracle, however, is insufficient to get Illinois out of the financial woods. After the defeat of Pritzker s proposed graduated income tax amendment, the state still has something in the order of a $3 billion annual structural budget deficit to fill, and how it gets filled (or somehow kicked down the road) is going to be quite a trick as Pritzker prepares for his 2022 re-election and the House struggles with selecting a speaker.
There are a couple of bright notes.
For one, Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza shrewdly used much of the federal borrowing to pay old Medicaid bills, an action that triggered an additional $1.5 billion in matching federal payments to the state. For another, the Commission on Government Forecasting & Accountability, the Legislature s fiscal research unit, says income tax revenues have risen more than $1.45 billion above budgeted levels in the first months of fiscal 2021. Though most of that was due to a one-time delay in payments intende