HYNES: 2007 A YEAR OF REPEATED MISFIRES, MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

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9/6/07 - HYNES: 2007 A YEAR OF REPEATED MISFIRES, MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

SPRINGFIELD, IL - Comptroller Dan Hynes Thursday characterized the 2007 legislative session as a year of repeated misfires and missed opportunities. In an address before the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, Hynes said his optimism on Inauguration Day in January, when he was sworn in for a third term as Comptroller, quickly turned into disappointment and then disbelief as a budget impasse continued throughout the spring and into summer. "Our government was brought to the brink of a potential shutdown," Hynes said. "For months school districts, state employees and thousands of others were left to wonder whether they'd get the money or services they were promised by the state of Illinois. And it's not over." Hynes said the misfires were many, from the Governor's proposed $8.6 billion tax hike and his failure to gain support for it, to the record-setting overtime session, to the suggestion that bills be paid without legal authority, to vetoes and spending reductions of projects characterized as pork. Many of those so-called pork projects, Hynes said, provided funding for health care, human service and public safety programs, including community health centers and flood control projects. Among the missed opportunities Hynes included two important programs from the FY07 supplemental spending bill, both of which fell victim to the Governor's delayed action on the legislation:

a $1.2 billion hospital assessment program that would have provided $600 million in additional funding in FY07 for healthcare costs
a $150 million school construction program, which would have provided funding to two dozen schools which were promised funding in 2002.

In addition, Hynes said, the Legislature missed an opportunity to send landmark ethics reform to the Governor via HB1, which cracks down on pay-to-play politics. The bill prohibits business owners with more than $25,000 in state contracts from making campaign contributions to officeholders awarding those contracts, requires contractors to disclose previous contributions and prevents individuals with conflicts of interest from receiving fees from state bond sales. It was approved by the House on a 116-0 vote and has 46 co-sponsors in the 59-member Senate, but wasn't called for a vote in the upper chamber. Hynes said other significant opportunities also have been missed, including a construction program of at least $1.2 billion that would allow the state to secure $6.1 billion in federal matching funds and shore up the state's infrastructure, and a mass transit proposal that would prevent a doomsday scenario of service cuts and fare hikes. He said he hopes there is time to salvage both of those initiatives.