Blagojevich said he would close the state prison at Vandalia and the youth prison at St. Charles. At the end of May, in a surprise proposal, Blagojevich also backed closure of the Pontiac Correctional Center. None of those ideas were in the final compromise.
He pushed a “Balanced Budget Act” designed to require every spending bill to include a source of the funds. That constitutionally questionable idea sounded good, but went nowhere.
He said he would pass a “Responsible Spending Act” to require that, for every billion-dollar increase in the budget, $50 million would be put in a rainy day fund. Fancy name. Not done.
Ditto the “On Time Bill Payment Act,” under which the state would have to pay its bills within 60 days or draw on a line of credit to do so. Sounds like more of that “borrow and spend” that House Speaker MICHAEL MADIGAN, D-Chicago, accused the governor of doing too much of. It didn’t pass.
He wanted $400 million in new money for education. He actually got $389 million in the final compromise. Blagojevich also has said he wants to raise per-pupil support for each student in the state by $1,000 during his four-year term. He needed $250 per student to stay on pace this year, but the actual figure was $154 per student.
The governor touted his “Opportunity Returns” program as “regionally focused ideas, ideas that play to the strengths and address the weaknesses of each part of our state.” His administration sought $50 million in new general fund money for the program, but it wasn’t part of the final budget compromise.
That jeopardizes some already-announced initiatives – though no program has yet been announced in four of the 10 areas into which the state has been divided by this program. Springfield is in one of the areas where opportunity has not yet returned.
The governor did tout a memorandum of understanding he signed with legislative leaders to advance the program, but Madigan said the agreement is merely to study the program. And the governor has yet to get a state-sponsored venture capital program going, despite pushing the idea heavily during his campaign.
He wanted to move the Department of Agriculture’s land division into the Department of Natural Resources.
“The savings from this move will help us pay the damages we now owe Mongo,” the governor joked about last year’s disqualified junior steer champion. The move didn’t happen, and the joke has turned into a lawsuit against the state by the family of the teenage girl who showed the steer at last year’s state fair.
Besides the speech itself, the governor’s office put out supporting documents with other proposals. Among them:
His administration wanted a long-standing tax exemption on farm chemicals eliminated for farms with revenue (not necessarily profit) of more than $1 million a year. Only later did it come out that the term “farm chemicals” covered, among other things, seed for crops and feed for animals. The legislature turned thumbs down on the idea, and a compromise reached with farm groups wasn’t enacted either.
The administration also wanted to eliminate the motor fuel tax exemption for non-farm non-highway vehicles, such as railroad locomotives. Blagojevich said it would save $74 million. It didn’t happen.
A proposed 75-cent-per-ride fee on taxi rides to and from major Chicago airports was to raise $6 million. No go.
Blagojevich wanted to take a “holiday” from two state programs totaling more than $30 million a year: the Open Space Land Acquisition and Development Fund, and the Natural Areas Acquisition Fund. Conservationists were up in arms, and the funding stayed.
Twit.
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