This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 5, 2010 - The Illinois governor's race finally was settled Friday when Republican state Sen. Bill Brady conceded his loss to incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn (left), whose margin of victory grew steadily after Tuesday night. Now, attention will turn from ballot counting to number crunching as the state deals with its $15 billion budget deficit.
Longtime political watcher Charles Wheeler had said that Quinn would be elected because "it's still a Democratic state" and maybe, just maybe, a few more people than not believe Quinn that the state needs new revenue streams, and in a hurry.
But Wheeler, director of the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois at Springfield and longtime Chicago Sun-Times political reporter, pauses when asked whether Quinn is up to leading the state out of its financial morass.
"He really hasn't shown himself to be up to it thus far," says Wheeler. "I don't know if he'll be able."
His problems, says Wheeler, include "his scattershot approach, his difficulty in setting priorities and focusing on things. A prime example is the State of the State message in which he was rambling all over the place.
"That has been my impression of the way the governor's office has been run. Now, will he have learned some lessons from the campaign? The opportunity is there for him to grow, to become more focused to be, say, like (House Speaker) Mike Madigan more mentally disciplined."
Illinois' budget situation, says Ron Baiman, director of budget and policy analysis for the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability in Chicago, "is outrageous. It's not fair to the providers and it's probably not constitutional."
"There are reports of prison refuse collectors not being paid, and at some point somebody will sue the state for not providing required services," says Baiman.
There is only one recourse, he says. "The state has to increase its revenue. We cannot keep borrowing. We can't really cut these services. It's ridiculous to think we can get out of this by cutting."
Further discouraging, Baiman says, is that "the state has used pension funds as a credit card, as a piggybank."
The Senate was supposed to have addressed that issue today in Springfield, authorizing the borrowing of $4 billion to cover pension obligations, but went home without doing anything with the bill.
Wheeler says he doesn't "have a clue" whether the governor will be able to work with the legislature in tackling what is predicted will be a working deficit of $15 billion when the state's 2012 budget is crafted next spring.
"It depends on what the Republicans decide they want to do," says Wheeler. "Republicans are in a position where they can say, 'We don't control anything of significance in state government. It's the Democrats' problem. Democrats should solve it on their own.'
"Republicans, as they did this time, can milk it for all it's worth. If Democrats raise taxes, the Republicans will blame them for increasing taxes to support waste and mismanagement. But, I think there are Republican districts where it would be easy to sell (an income tax increase), a district with a state university, a state prison, mental-health or child-care facilities."
"What I don't have a good grasp on," Wheeler said, "are the political machinations. Is speaker Madigan willing to do the right thing if Tom Cross (House Republican leader) doesn't want to go along?"
Trying to figure out the will of the electorate is difficult. Yes, Quinn appears to have won, and he has proposed an income tax increase, whereas Brady took the no-new-taxes line.
"If you go by the results of surveys, like one by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute" at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Wheeler says, "folks don't want to pay any more taxes. They think the state has enough money but is not using it wisely. But they say they don't want to reduce education, health care, human services and safet,y which account for 90 percent" of expenditures.
"I'd argue that the public does not appear to be well informed on this point. Part of it is that politicians don't speak truth to them. Reporters have tried to get at it, but politicians are disciplined; they stay on their message. If you read some stories by reporters (at Springfield's State Journal-Register and the Associated Press) trying to pin down candidates on budget stuff, you can sense reporters' frustration."
Baiman says, "The state has stopped growing. We've had a net job loss and we have this antiquated tax system. The areas where we are growing, such as services, do not capture that. And we are a wealthy state, 13th in capital income. Our fiscal system isn't responding to the needs of a modern economy."
One real test for Quinn, according to Wheeler, is whether Pat Quinn can rise to the occasion as statesman and put his "gadfly" days behind him.
"He's left a lot of (former Gov. Rod) Blagojevich's people in place. He needs a devil's advocate he can disagree with. You have to reach for the best and the brightest, and he's been kind of a lone wolf on some of this stuff."
Baiman and the center holds out hope for legislative action. "I would hope they'd have a summit, convene the leaders," he said. "There already actually are some groups working on this. I would hope this would be priority No. 1. If not, it's a meltdown. It's already a slow meltdown."
David Morrison of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform in Chicago predicts that the legislature will tackle redistricting first. But the non-partisan center, Morrison points out, actually is more concerned with corruption in Illinois politics than budgetary concerns.
That said, Morrison has his views on how Illinois managed to get into its $13 billion deficit pickle. "We had Rod Blagojevich for six years. He said all the right things, but he didn't do anything about it."
Brady and Quinn both, Morrison says, promised to "cut waste, eliminate fraud, trim the fat out of the budget. The thing that's different (about them) is that it seemed Quinn is more likely to raise taxes."
Whoever is elected governor, he says, is not going to make the money crisis magically disappear.
"People look at the governor as if he is the Wizard of Oz. But that is not at all true. He has to relate to the General Assembly. Getting anything done means 60 votes in the House and 30 in the Senate. And that's not easy.
"In many ways, (the legislature) is not a democratic institution," says Morrison. "It's what the House speaker and the Senate president want to see accomplished. Those two have far more latitude. Four caucus leaders have vastly disproportionate power than the rest (of the members)."
All manner of suggestions have been floated on how Illinois can raise revenue, says Morrison, "but really, there is only so much money in the sofa."
Paul Povse is a freelance writer.