Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was sentenced this week to 14 years in prison, but the real sentence is the one taxpayers will serve many years after. He mastered the art of pairing populist rhetoric with expensive new programs directed toward his core constituencies.

To pursue his highly visible programs and agendas, Blagojevich needed money. He found it by diverting billions from the state’s pension system. By taking “holidays” from required pension system contributions and by nearly doubling Illinois’s debt, he burdened future generations to support favored groups in the present.

Perhaps worst of all, as CEO of Illinois, Blagojevich institutionalized a culture of deficit spending. He accomplished this so effectively that Blagojevich’s successor, Gov. Pat Quinn, and today’s lawmakers feel comfortable perpetuating the ruinous habits of spending and borrowing more than the state can afford. Fiscal ineptitude is the new norm.

The Illinois Policy Institute has a new report out that details Blagojevich’s lasting effect on Illinois’ fiscal condition. Read it at www.illinoispolicy.org/blago. Here’s the “top ten” list:

No. 1: Disregarded obligations to state pensioners

Policy: Blagojevich diverted billions of dollars from the pension funds of future government retirees to pay for his own spending priorities.
Problem: Blagojevich ballooned existing spending programs, ignoring his responsibility to ensure the health of the state’s pension systems. Retirees and taxpayers are on the hook for his political expediency.
Program cost: Excess of $3 billion for future taxpayers

No. 2: A culture of deficits

Policy: Grow spending to appease Blagojevich’s core constituencies.
Problem: While Blagojevich was creating and expanding unaffordable programs, the state’s financial position deteriorated year after year.
Program cost: Worst rating of net assets in the nation.

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Faced with a $315 million budget shortfall, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has proposed serious changes to how county officials spend taxpayers’ money. She’s challenging the public employee union bosses to come to the negotiating table. She aims to utilize private sector contractors to keep costs low. These all are necessary and commendable steps. Less so are the tax increases she has proposed: hiking the vehicle tax, raising county taxes on beer, wine and liquor, and redefining certain tobacco products (like cigars and smokeless) so taxes could be levied on them.

Last Monday, the four Republican members of the county board signed off on increases and provided the necessary margin for passage in the finance committee. The package of fee and tax hikes will cost residents an astounding $51 million, even as taxpayers are still reeling from January’s state income tax hike.

Targeting politically incorrect products may seem easy, but that doesn’t make it right. When you buy a bottle of liquor in Chicago, you already pay eight taxes: a county sales tax of 1.25 percent, county excise tax of $2/gallon, city sales tax of 1.25 percent, city excise tax of $2.68/gallon, state excise tax of $8.55/gallon, state sales tax of 6.25 percent, federal excise tax of $13.50/proof gallon, and a transport tax of 1 percent. Add these all together and it turns out a whopping 58 percent of the average bottle cost goes to taxes and fees. One sip for Uncle Sam, one sip for you.

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President Obama’s home state of Illinois is proving to be an example of “what not to do” when it comes to promoting job growth, and a massive income tax hike was among the poor policy choices recently pursued by Democratic state leaders.

Illinois lost more jobs during the month of July than any other state in the nation, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report. After losing 7,200 jobs in June, Illinois lost an additional 24,900 non-farm payroll jobs in July. The report also said Illinois’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.5 percent. This marks the third consecutive month of increases in the unemployment rate.

Illinois started to create jobs as the national economy began to recover. But just when Illinois’s economy seemed to be turning around, lawmakers passed record tax increases in January of this year. Since then, Illinois’s employment numbers have declined. When it comes to putting people back to work, Illinois is going backwards. Since January, Illinois has dropped 89,000 people from its employment rolls.

A petition to repeal the state’s income tax hike needs your signature.

Government unions are suing the State of Illinois for not issuing what would have been their third round of raises in just seven months. Last week, members of AFSCME took to the street to demand “fair pay.”

Do Illinois state workers suffer from unfair treatment? My group, the Illinois Policy Institute took a closer look at the issue, and found that government workers enjoy generous pay and perks – often far beyond what many outside of the public sector could ever hope to receive. Consider the findings:

• The average compensation for an Illinois state government worker was $69,500 in 2008. The average private sector compensation? Just $56,500.
• In real terms, private sector compensation (wages plus benefits) in Illinois declined 2 percent over the past 15 years, while state worker compensation increased by 17 percent.
• Over a 40-year career, the average Illinois state worker will receive about 510 more paid vacation days than the average private sector worker.

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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is traveling to Springfield, Illinois today to do a fundraiser for Bill Brady, the Republican gubernatorial candidate. While he’s in town, Christie should drop by the capitol and give Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, a Democrat, a lesson on how to trim state labor costs.

While Governor Christie has sensibly challenged the public employee union status quo in the name of fighting deficits, Governor Quinn is cementing union perks in place even as the state’s fiscal condition deteriorates.

The recent announcement of a deal between Quinn and AFSCME to stop any public employee union member layoffs and facility closings through June 2012 is causing a minor uproar in the Prairie State. Illinois is facing a record $4.7 billion backlog in unpaid bills, and the union’s agreement to accept a measly $50 million in savings in return for the concessions doesn’t pass the smell test.

The fact that AFSCME endorsed Quinn just days earlier brings up unpleasant reminders of Illinois’s history of a “pay to play” state. According to reports, Quinn’s budget director David Vaught attended a union endorsement session, albeit on his personal time.

Labor costs make up one in four dollars spent from Illinois’s general funds, and walling off a major chunk of the state budget from any spending reforms makes balancing the books infinitely more difficult. Under the Quinn deal, changes to the collective bargaining agreement would be forbidden until one-third of the way through the next gubernatorial term. By then, Illinois could be bankrupt. The state needs more flexibility to deal with public sector unions, not less.

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John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute, offers his thoughts on the GOP spat over Christine O’Donnell’s victory in Delaware. It’s a refreshing read.

Tuesday night, I happened to be watching live when Karl Rove fulminated on the Christine O’Donnell win in the Delaware GOP Senate primary.  You can see the full video here but I’ve provided a transcript (from Fox News) of some of the key passages below.  Among the things Rove said:

• “This is the inexplicable (emphasis added) one because Christine O’Donnell has come on here at the — very end of the campaign. There’s a huge turnout tonight in Delaware. The total was estimated to be 30,000 people going into the primary and has come out 56,000. She has dealt a defeat to one of the state’s longest, best-known, thought to be most-beloved political figures, a former governor and nine-term Republican Congressman in Mike Castle.”
• “One thing that Christine O’Donnell is now going to have to answer in the general election that she didn’t have to answer in the primary is her own checkered background….I’ve met her. I got to tell you, I wasn’t frankly impressed as her abilities as a candidate.”
• “And again, these serious questions about how does she make her living? Why did she mislead voters about her college education? How come it took nearly two decades to pay her college bills so she could get her college degree? How did she make a living? Why did she sue a well-known and well thought of conservative think tank?”

Here’s what Rove should have said:

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Traveling on Amtrak’s Texas Eagle from Chicago to St. Louis on November 10 will set you back $24. More, if you want to ride in a first class sleeper car compartment. Add $136 for a superliner roomette, $217 for a family bedroom, and $260 for a superliner bedroom.

But there’s a big problem. Even with higher charges, taxpayers are subsidizing first class sleeper service.

Amtrak’s Sleeper service comes with some nice perks. Beds to stretch out in, sometimes a private bathroom (no having to share the gross public toilet). Some rooms even come with a shower. On top of that:

Sleeping car passengers are entitled to a range of hotel-like amenities, including fresh linen and towel service, complimentary bottled water and daily newspapers.

A new Waste Action Alert details how cutting federal subsidies for first class sleeper car service on Amtrak could save up to $1.2 billion over ten years.

Why the spending is wasteful:

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Paris Hilton may be able to shop without looking at price tags, but the State of Illinois doesn’t have that luxury—particularly when it already has $4.7 billion in unpaid bills. Even so, state legislators receive precious little information on how much the laws they’re approving will save or cost taxpayers.

A summer 2010 survey by the Illinois Policy Institute found that out of 545 bills pending review by the governor, only 3 percent—or 16 bills—had fiscal notes attached. Fiscal notes are like “price tags” for legislation. They are intended to estimate the costs, savings, revenue gain, or revenue loss resulting from the implementation of proposed legislation.

Many of the fiscal notes found in the Institute’s survey were just a couple of sentences long. Believe it or not, we found a fiscal note that was just one word: “minimal.”

The result of this lack of information? Legislators and the public are unable to conduct a proper analysis of the budgetary effects of proposed legislation, and this has real consequences for the state budget. Indeed, the Blagojevich All Kids Expansion passed in 2005 had no fiscal note, although an Auditor General report found that the program’s net cost was $70 million in fiscal year 2009. The statewide sales tax holiday held this August was passed with no fiscal note, even though it is likely to reduce expected tax collections by tens of millions of dollars. Unfortunately, these examples are the norm, not the exceptions.

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“How Health Care Reform Affects You.” Chances are you’ve seen an article along these lines pop up in your magazines of choice lately. I certainly have. Chances are the articles gloss over the major problems inherent in ObamaCare — if they’re not a straight out endorsement of the takeover.

Stephen Spruiell takes the latest incarnation of this problem to task over at NRO with “Real Simpletons: A popular magazine ignores the downside to Obamacare.”

My wife subscribes to Real Simple, a women’s-interest magazine specializing in articles on how to make life more organized. I often joke that our lives would be more organized if we didn’t have eight copies of Real Simple floating around the apartment at any given time. But since they are around, I’ll flip through them occasionally to see if there’s anything worth reading. And today, in the latest issue, I saw a short feature titled “How Health-Care Reform Affects You.”

The article reads like an advertisement for Obamacare. One would be forgiven for thinking it a part of the administration’s campaign to improve the legislation’s popularity. Here is a complete list of the article’s subheads:

More services will be paid for in full.
Lifetime limits are history.
Your children can remain on your policy until age 26.
Kids with preexisting conditions cannot be denied coverage.
Insurers have to spend more money on care.

That’s it: All good, no bad, and the only two sources quoted in the article represent non-profits who supported the legislation.

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The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn takes a closer look at an important bipartisan effort underway in Illinois:

Contrary to all the obituaries, hope and change and a new spirit of bipartisanship are alive and well in Barack Obama’s America. Just not in Washington.

In the state legislature of post-Obama Illinois, a largely white Republican Party is joining forces with reform-minded African-American and Latino Democrats. Together they are challenging two establishments: machine Democrats backed by teachers unions, and suburban and downstate Republicans mostly indifferent to inner-city issues.

The vehicle is an educational voucher bill that needs only the approval of the full Illinois house to land on the governor’s desk. Introduced by the Rev. James Meeks—a powerful Democratic state senator who has also been one of Mr. Obama’s spiritual advisers—the bill provides a voucher of up to $4,000 for as many as 22,000 elementary students now languishing in the worst Chicago public schools. The voucher will give them the opportunity to attend the private school of their choice. The state Senate passed the measure last month, and last week the leadership-dominated House Executive Committee approved it by a vote of 10 to 1.

The article included a quote from my colleague Collin Hitt, Illinois Policy Institute’s Director of Education Policy, who noted:

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Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal editorial highlighted the baby steps Illinois is taking toward enacting public employee pension reform, noting that this could be the “start of a nationwide backlash against the scandal of runaway public pensions.”

State government employees in Illinois receive generous defined-benefit pension plans with compounded annual cost of living increases. As of August 2009, 536 Illinois public employee retirees earned a pension of more than $100,000. Former state employee (and now U.S. Senator) Roland Burris received a pension payment of $121,747 in 2009. You can look up the individual pension payments for state retirees at IllinoisOpenGov.org.

In response to the public’s growing frustration with Illinois’s habitual fiscal mismanagement, the General Assembly passed a pension reform bill that keeps the defined-benefit structure but institutes a benefit cap, requires an older retirement age, and prohibits double dipping. Governor Pat Quinn has yet to sign the bill, but he called for similar reforms in his March budget blueprint.

As I pointed out in the Wall Street Journal editorial, what the legislature passed were the bare minimum reforms. They only apply to newly hired employees, not existing employees.

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Recovery.gov has a vast and challenging mandate: “to allow taxpayers to see precisely what entities receive [stimulus] money in addition to how and where the money is spent.” To its credit, Recovery.gov offers a fascinating look into how government goes about spending $787 billion.

However, the website is troubled with inaccuracies, and these problems are undermining its credibility. Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Dave Obey agrees: “The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes.”

Given that stimulus award recipients are responsible for providing much of the information you see on Recovery.gov, it’s reasonable to expect some errors in the reporting process. Alas, some of the information seems to come out of thin air.

Phantom Congressional Districts.

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Illinois’s home health care workers have rejected an attempt to unionize providers under the auspices of SEIU and AFSCME. From CBS Chicago:

Illinois workers who are paid by the state to care for severely disabled people in their homes have voted down an effort to unionize.

More than 3,000 home health care workers mailed in their ballots this month; the ballots were counted on Monday and most of those workers voted not to join a union, according to Alan Symonette, an arbitrator with the American Arbitration Association, which counted the vote.

The workers could have voted to join the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees or the Service Employees International Union, but more than half of them voted to remain non-union.

Michelle Malkin has the vote totals:

SEIU – 293 votes
AFSCME – 220 votes
NO UNION – 1018 votes

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Dan Proft, Illinois gubernatorial candidate, released the following Thursday:

The plot thickens — as in SEIU’s pay-to-play plots in state government, including its most recent naked power grab: Its repugnant effort to intervene between children with disabilities and their parents by making home health care workers for disabled children in Illinois a closed shop.

In an editorial on President Obama’s nominee to head the National Labor Relations Board, the Wall Street Journal shines a light on Craig Becker, an associate general counsel at SEIU whose career is traced back to Gov. Rod Blagojevich:

One of the many accusations leveled against former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is that he accepted money from the SEIU in return for taking actions giving collective bargaining rights to Illinois home health-care workers. While Mr. Becker denies any knowledge of, or role in, contributions to the former Governor, he does admit that he provided “advice and counsel to SEIU relating to proposed executive orders and proposed legislation giving homecare workers a right to organize and engage in collective bargaining under state law.”

Gov. Pat Quinn picked up where Blagojevich left off when he issued Executive Order 09-15, which allows SEIU to try to takeover the Home-support Services Program. It is worth noting that Quinn is relying on SEIU’s political muscle and campaign cash in his campaign for governor.

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Earlier today Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty explained to BigGovernment.com readers how the Baucus health care plan is a prescription for higher taxes and higher premiums.

In keeping with the theme that good perspectives and ideas often come from the states, 33 state-based think tanks came together this morning to announce a health care reform alternative to ObamaCare.

“President Obama and other supporters of government-run health care like to proclaim that there’s no alternative to their plans,” said John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute. “Our patient-centered reform package offers a clear alternative that puts patients, not bureaucrats, first.  It protects the doctor-patient relationship, offers viable solutions for the uninsured, and keeps medical care affordable for all Americans.”

Patient-centered health care reform:

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According to a 2008 annual progress report from the Illinois Housing Development Authority, ”ACORN Housing” was listed as a recipient of a $100,000 capacity building grant for a “Predatory Lending Database Program.” The funding was announced in November 2008.

Rebecca Boykin, Communications Manager for the Illinois Housing Development Authority, provided this update on the grant:

The Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) awarded a $100,000 grant to ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc. as part of the Predatory Lending Database Program, which helps provide counseling for homebuyers facing predatory loans, in an effort to decrease the likelihood of future foreclosures. ACORN Housing was selected for funding following an application process that included a review of its HUD certification. Under the grant guidelines, ACORN Housing is required to submit a progress report later this month. They’ve been granted a portion of the $100,000. The remainder is under review in light of recent events.

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Three state legislators have asked Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (D) for the suspension of all state funding and contracts with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) pending a review of the group’s activities. The trio includes Representative Ron Stephens (R-Highland), Senator Dave Luechtefeld (R-Okawville), and Senator Kyle McCarter (R-Lebanon):

“In light of the multiple news reports exposing ACORN’s questionable behavior, as well as video evidence showing ACORN employees offering tax assistance to open brothels and tips on how to launder money into a congressional campaign account, Illinois government needs to take a good, long look at the business it does with this organization,” Stephens said. “We need to see what this group is really up to and whether or not any contracts and connections they have with the state are worthy of the use of public money.”

Stephens said the organization has received grants from various state agencies. Stephens said he and some other legislators are still gathering information on how much money the organization has received.

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