With a new budget crisis threatening additional cuts in social services, the two major candidates for governor say they won’t be able to get a full handle on ways to trim state spending until they get into office next year–though both are eyeing management posts for the chopping block.
Democrat Rod Blagojevich and Republican Jim Ryan are now on record as vowing to veto any sales or income tax increase the General Assembly might forward to the next governor. That puts a premium on developing a coherent strategy to reduce spending to fill a new revenue gap that some experts believe could grow to more than $1.5 billion in the next fiscal year.
Despite mounting revenue woes, each man has vowed to make additional spending for grade and high school education a priority. And both say they want to reopen prisons and facilities for the developmentally disabled that were closed in an effort to deal with the fiscal mess.
That means whoever is the winner in November will face a monumental juggling act if they intend to both keep their campaign promises and keep the state budget in balance.
It has been more than six months since Blagojevich and Ryan won their nominations in the March primary. Yet only now have they begun to lay out the barest of details about how they plan to cut costs in order to cope with a state economy that has failed to rebound.
Both men, in responding to a Tribune questionnaire on taxes and spending, say they are looking at management-level job cuts.
Blagojevich contended that the number of supervisors and managers in agencies under the control of the governor’s office has increased by 19 percent from 1995 to last year. He has been particularly critical of middle-management increases in the state Department of Corrections.
“It is not a coincidence that this merit-compensation category includes political appointees,” Blagojevich said. “We should re-examine the state’s management practices and squeeze unnecessary costs out of the layers of bureaucracy.”
In addition, Blagojevich cited a study by a union for university workers that showed the ratio of non-teaching administrative staff to students has increased by more than 37 percent in the last 10 years. Universities have dramatically increased tuition rates to buttress those administrative staffing levels as the state reduced its general funding for higher education.
Ryan also said he will target management bureaucracy in government.
“My main focus will be in upper management positions,” Ryan said. “We will look throughout state government, but will give attention to the Department of Corrections, the State Board of Education and the Board of Higher Education.
Ryan also said he would review the employment of welfare caseworkers. Ryan said welfare caseloads have been reduced by 75 percent without a proportionate reduction in the number of caseworkers. He said he is reviewing a Senate Republican plan that called for eliminating 500 caseworkers at a savings of $50 million.
Looking for savings in other areas of the budget, Ryan said he would make efforts to contain costs in the $1.5 billion state employee health-insurance program and would push to shift more workers into less costly health-maintenance organization coverage. He also would push aggressively for energy cost savings in state buildings and conduct an overall review of state leases.
Both men also have called for an elimination of legislative pork-barrel projects funded through a secretive pot of money allocated to the General Assembly’s four leaders. Since 1999, lawmakers have voted themselves more than $1.6 billion to be spent on pet projects, and at least $100 million of that is still available to be shifted back into spending on other state programs.
Blagojevich goes out of his way to cite as an example of “politically motivated pork” a $300,000 grant given to a livestock show in Springfield run by a college classmate of House Speaker Michael Madigan, the powerful Southwest Side lawmaker who also is state Democratic chairman.
But Ryan goes beyond the issue of legislative public works spending to support freezing or reducing the state’s capital construction program for a one-year period, which could save the state $80 million in bond debt.
Blagojevich has also called for a comprehensive review of a multitude of job-training programs as part of efforts to streamline the state budget. In addition, Blagojevich has called for elimination of a $25 million subsidy to the state’s horse-racing industry, a hunt for waste in the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs budget, lobbying for increased federal funding for the Medicaid health-care program for the poor, and refinancing of existing state debt.
Blagojevich said hewould review state leases and utility use, look for better efficiencies in the way state agencies buy supplies, and try to negotiate prescription-drug cost savings from manufacturers to reduce health-care spending.
Ryan and Blagojevich each vow to comply with a 50-year plan adopted by the state in 1996 to gradually increase funding for the pension system of retired state employees.
