Budget Rush — Haste makes waste, and secrecy makes more waste

by Paul Kersey So, here we are again, scrambling at the last minute to evaluate a complex document that accounts for billions of dollars of state employee wages. In March of this year it was the tentative agreement between Gov. Quinn and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31.  The challenge...

by Paul Kersey

So, here we are again, scrambling at the last minute to evaluate a complex document that accounts for billions of dollars of state employee wages. In March of this year it was the tentative agreement between Gov. Quinn and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31.  The challenge then was that the document itself wasn’t available – we had to piece things together from press reports and statements from the governor’s office and the union. Now it’s the state budget, and the documents are available but they include hundreds of line items and we have maybe a day-and-a-half before they are supposed to be approved.

Is anyone else noticing a pattern here?

The state estimates that the latest contract with AFSCME will result in an additional $200 million in wages that will have to be provided for in the new budget. This includes the cost of settling a lawsuit over raises that the state was supposed to have made in 2011 and 2012, but refused to pay because the funds were not available. At first glance this might not seem like a huge amount out of an overall budget of $36 billion, but this does not include the costs of pensions and health insurance.

And it also doesn’t account for the accumulated costs of decades of collective bargaining driving up wages and benefits. To give just one example, between 2003 and 2012 average salaries for child protection workers went from $51,700 to $74,400, easily outstripping both inflation and wages for private-sector workers in Illinois.

With a more reasonable wage schedule that roughly followed the more gradual rise that median wages underwent in Illinois, the state could have probably saved – rather than paid out – an additional $100 million. That would be a total change of $300 million in wages alone. Those savings could have been used to preserve important programs, or provide relief for taxpayers, or maybe a little of both.

And now the General Assembly has to rush through final passage of budget bills that are supposed to allocate the money needed to pay those salaries and otherwise run government agencies.  Does the budget include enough money to cover the payroll? They’ve miscalculated before, and the rush to pass a budget now has to increase the odds that they’ll miscalculate again.

Between a secretive, rushed bargaining process and an arcane, rushed budgeting process, Illinois is promising its employees more than it should, and may not be appropriating enough to meet the terms of its contracts. “Haste makes waste” goes the proverb. Haste compounded by secrecy is a recipe for disaster.