Comptroller Dan Hynes, accompanied by representatives from health care and social service agencies and businesses throughout Illinois, urged state officials Tuesday to end the financial hardship caused by late payments for the critical goods and services they provide.

"The economy is hard on everyone, but it is particularly challenging to the people who are forced to wait months and months to be paid for services they provided in good faith," Hynes said. "This is more than a matter of fairness. It is a matter of keeping social service and health care programs operating when people need them more than ever."

Hynes said the state currently is facing a $6 billion bill backlog, including a $1.4 billion short-term loan that must be paid back by the end of June. That backlog includes payments to all types of businesses, some of whom are waiting as long as five months to be reimbursed.

"Late payments by the state create a negative ripple through Illinois' economy," Hynes said. "Jobs are lost and businesses close their doors because they can no longer carry the debt forced upon them by the state's poor budgeting practices." Hynes noted that entities that receive state payments account for more than half-a-million jobs in Illinois.

Vendors throughout Illinois joined Hynes at the Capitol to share their financial struggles and to support his budgetary reforms that will help ease the payment delays and end the practice of balancing state budgets on the backs of providers and the people they serve.

The Comptroller's legislative package includes:

• SB1643 (William Delgado, D-Chicago and Mattie Hunter, D-Chicago) which requires the state to budget the total cost of Medicaid services each year and would end chronic payment delays for all providers of all types of goods and services which occurs due to the ongoing underfunding of the Medicaid program.
• SB324 (Jeffrey Schoenberg, D-Evanston) which will help the state take advantage of all available federal stimulus funding by meeting prompt payment requirements and help ensure the state can continue the remaining four years of the Hospital Assessment Program, which provides funding to more than 200 hospitals across Illinois.
• In addition, the Comptroller supports a number of legislative proposals to provide greater prompt payment protections to vendors when the state is delinquent in paying bills.

Hynes has been an advocate of proper budgeting practices by the state since becoming Comptroller in 1999. During the past several months he has held town hall meetings to draw attention to the plight of the state's social service and health care networks.