Content area
Full text
New year, same story.
That's the bottom line facing Illinois taxpayers as state financial officials struggle to fill a substantial-to-huge hole in the proposed $53-billion fiscal 2005 budget that Gov. Rod Blagojevich will unveil next month.
Though some progress has been made since the state faced a nearly $5-billion shortfall a year ago, John Filan, Mr. Blagojevich's budget director, pegs the '05 gap at $1.5 billion to $2 billion. Others, such as Stephen Schnorf, who held Mr. Filan's job under former Gov. George
Ryan, see it as much worse than that, "in the neighborhood of $4 billion," Mr. Schnorf says.
As a result, business almost certainly faces more of the fee increases and reduced tax loopholes that were used to balance this year's budget. State agencies and, increasingly, grantees will be under continued pressure to cut costs. And, for the second year in a row, the state
may engage in creative and controversial financing to fund billions in employee pension benefits.
Except for raising the sales and income tax rates, "Everything is on the table," says Mr. Filan. "We're going to have a balanced budget."
"It's going to be a very difficult year," says state Sen. Christine Radogno of LaGrange, the ranking Republican on one of the chamber's two appropriations committees. "The scary thing is, we sort of picked off the...