We’ll see how close the story is to the plan, but this stuck out at me:
Schools would get at least $1?billion a year for the next four years from such a deal, with the remaining $6?billion going into an education trust fund governed by a board appointed by the four legislative leaders, governor, comptroller and treasurer, according to a Democratic source briefed on Blagojevich’s proposal late Monday.
Madigan should oppose this point simply to save Lisa the headache. It’s again a revenue stream that ends after a set amount of time while the asset isn’t available for 6 more years. While we are still speculating on the total plan, it’s worse than that–nearly $650 million a year goes to education (if one doesn’t count the displacement effect) so the net gain in the first four years is $350 million/year. What happens in year 5 if the other $6 billion is not distributed?