Gov. James Thompson Thursday said he would reluctantly accept supplemental spending of $20 million to $25 million this fall, as a compromise to plans by some legislators to restore millions of dollars more in funding for education and other state services.
As he continued a weeklong crusade throughout Illinois to urge that the Senate reject the restoration of $75.4 million, as approved by the House last week, Thompson also made it clear said that he will again ask the General Assembly to approve a general tax increase next year.
”I will fight as hard as anybody in this state next year for a modest tax increase . . . but to put ourselves in the hole this year against every national economic indicator, against what everything that every other governor, mayor, president and congressional leaders are doing in this shaky time in America, is only going to hurt us,” Thompson told a group of 50 businessmen and labor representatives here.
Led by Speaker Michael Madigan (D., Chicago), the House last week ignored Thompson`s warnings of bankruptcy and voted to restore $75.4 million in vetoed funds, including $62.5 million for public schools, to the state budget.
The Senate, meanwhile, approved a $69.7 million increase in the general funds budget, although Senate President Philip Rock (D., Oak Park) and other leading senators acknowledged that the state treasury probably could not absorb such spending requests. Rock called the Senate action a point from which compromise negotiations could begin.
Given a choice between a possible override of at least $75 million in spending, or a compromise calling for spending an additional $25 million, Thompson said, ”common sense would tell you to accept the compromise, which does the least damage.”
The governor, who pared $363 million from the budget in July after the legislature did not support his call for a tax increase, told the small breakfast crowd at a restaurant that an override of the education and human-service funding vetoes would result in even longer delays in paying state bills and threaten the state`s coveted high bond rating.
”The action of the House of Representatives last week, with Speaker Madigan`s leadership, is threatening to put a $75 million hole in that budget for the reason that the speaker wants to demonstrate to the mayor of Chicago that he can bail the city out,” Thompson said.
The governor also suggested that Madigan`s support of the restored funding was intended to portray Thompson and House Republicans as being against adequate education funding.
But a spokesman for Madigan said that the governor`s movement toward supporting additional spending showed there is money available for essential programs.
”He`s grasping at straws,” said Steven Brown, Madigan`s press secretary. ”I don`t know what the governor`s original schedule for this week was, but I think the time could have been used more productively than stirring up fights between the House and the Senate or between Republicans and Democrats.”
Thompson and many legislative observers doubt there are sufficient votes in the Senate to ratify the House action, although members of the Senate are facing pressures from education groups and their House colleagues. A proposal in the Senate last week to add $52 million for public education to the supplemental appropriation received only 17 votes, 19 short of the three-fifths majority it would need for final approval.
The Senate proposal, which will be heard by the House next week, allocated an additional $21 million for elementary and secondary education, as well as $10.5 million for colleges and universities and $3.2 million for the Math and Science Academy.
Thompson said a supplemental appropriation of $25 million would ”make it very difficult to get through the year, but not impossible. An override of $75 million or $85 million or $95 million would make it impossible.”
