Illinois’ FY 2014 budget: chock-full of waste
by Ben VanMetre A few years ago there was a popular narrative in Illinois politics about going through the budget line by line and eliminating wasteful spending. Those efforts, of course, never moved forward, and the narrative is dead. That’s a common theme in Springfield, where lawmakers make promises they don’t intend to keep. It...
by Ben VanMetre
A few years ago there was a popular narrative in Illinois politics about going through the budget line by line and eliminating wasteful spending. Those efforts, of course, never moved forward, and the narrative is dead.
That’s a common theme in Springfield, where lawmakers make promises they don’t intend to keep. It was dishonest for lawmakers to promise to sunset the tax hike while knowingly increasing spending, but the dishonesty turns into a slap in the face when lawmakers pack the 2014 “honest” budget appropriation bills full of wasteful spending.
During a time when Illinois is adding more people to food stamps than to employment rolls, the state’s economic outlook ranks 48th, and 1.1 million Illinoisans are unemployed or underemployed, there is simply no excuse for lawmakers to blatantly waste taxpayer money. A few examples of waste and low-priority spending items in the 2014 budget appropriation bills include:
- $7 million for statewide tourism promotion
- $5 million for the Illinois state fair
- $3.34 million for the Sparta World Shooting and Recreation Complex
- $1.3 million to the Illinois Film Office
- $750,000 on a new government shrubbery program
- $150,000 for expenses associated with the development of the Illinois grape and wine industry
And these examples just scratch the surface of the waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars. These examples follow a frightening pattern that the Illinois Policy Institute highlighted in our 2012 Illinois Piglet Book. That publication cited nearly 200 examples of wasteful government spending in Illinois totaling more than $350 million.
Examples of wasteful spending highlight the decisions of politicians who have lost sight of the core governmental services they were put in place to provide. Illinoisans will be better off when leaders finally end the undermining and corroding culture of out-of-control spending.