Hard to believe. A few years back, state leaders mailed property tax “rebates” to homeowners. They gave motorists a pass on the sales tax at the pump and scattered thousands, no millions, of state dollars across Illinois’ myriad towns and hamlets so locals could dedicate statues, decorate parking garages and deliver tutus to tiny ballerinas. It was quite a time.
These days, with a deficit running in the billions, our leaders have turned to selling bonds, pushing off obligations and squeezing public services. And, to paraphrase University of Illinois political scientist Christopher Mooney, they’ve resorted to looking under couch cushions for stray coins. About the only thing they haven’t considered is hiking general taxes. Well, they haven’t asked for those rebates back, either.
Some argue our elected officials are begging, borrowing and stealing — from our futures. Which, of course, they are. Come to think of it, that’s also what they were doing a few years back.
We can’t afford to point fingers, though. Politics Illinois-style is geared to spend ’em if you’ve got ’em. All of us want that free lunch. None of us is fighting to pick up the check.
And our political leaders do pretty much what we ask, or what we allow, despite our professed irritation with name-calling and self-serving platitudes — “making the hard choices” being merely this year’s most annoying. Politics Illinois-style is geared for this, too.
We have only ourselves to blame if the budget is a dry hole and the rhetoric is hot.
So in the final hours of last month, as the legislative session careened toward overtime, it seemed approp-riate to hunker down with a copy of The Price of Government, the new “here’s how they really should do it” treatise on public budgeting written by David Osborne, of Reinventing Government fame, and consultant Peter Hutchinson.
Fair warning: Even in milder political climes these guys could appear a bit off kilter. In the context of Illinois politics, especially end-of-gridlocked-session Illinois politics, they sound as if they’re living in some parallel universe.
Oddly, though, as our Statehouse reporters called in nonprogress bulletins from the political front, Osborne and Hutchinson grew more interesting, like a pair of unexpected visitors sharing hard-to-believe tales from exotic cultures. Places where patronage hardly exists, unions are cooperative and civil service doesn’t obstruct. Where politics actually can mean subtraction, and where government increasingly is a do-it-yourself enterprise. Where services are so carefully calibrated there’s little if any waste, and no one has to make multiple copies. Where taxes are high enough, but not too high. And ditto for spending. That’s the general idea, anyway.
To get there, we consumers — sorry, citizens — and our elected officials will need to decide together what kind of government we want and what we’re willing to pay for it. In other words, we should set priorities and jettison the rest. We’ll need a Mission Statement, of course, and a short list of achievable goals.
The Price of Government: Getting the Results We Need in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis by David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson Basic Books, 2004
Osborne and Hutchinson cite Washington state and the Minnesota school system as positive role models. (I’m not sure either has been to Illinois. The Land of Lincoln gets a big mention, though, for a massive bonding program. But not in a positive rolemodel sense.)
After getting past the image of Illinoisans gathering in mass strategic planning sessions — and setting aside the notion that we might never be ready for a right-sized, bench-marked state government — we can glean some useful suggestions from this book.
The concept of planning ahead, for instance. Osborne and Hutchinson, who assert that we’ve entered an era in which fiscal crisis will be a permanent feature, suggest governments plan at least five years out. Six would be better.
It is worth noting that, roughly speaking, Illinois’ fiscal ups and downs do tend to track on five-year cycles. Most recently, the economy was down in the mid-’80s, up, then down in the late-’80s, back up in the mid-’90s and down again about three years back.
Of course, Illinois politicians tend to follow election cycles, not economic cycles. (And some are more attuned to news cycles.) Still, a little smoothing out of the ups and downs shouldn’t be all that difficult. Perhaps we could have passed on the tutus.
The authors also suggest that it’s always smarter to make allies, not enemies. And they have no kind words for politicians who campaign, let alone govern, against the institutions they say they want to lead — or those who blame others for problems.
In a section titled “First, tell the truth,” they write: “Without a grip on the facts — even the brutal facts — leaders fall back on unwarranted hopes or outright deception. If you don’t have a grip, you shouldn’t be leading.”
In fact, Osborne and Hutchinson identify seven “deadly deceptions” in budgeting, all designed to push final fiscal reckoning into the future.
• Rob Peter to pay Paul. This involves mining special accounts to boost general operating funds. The authors note such raids can “make the budget look better this year, but the same hole will reappear next year, when Peter and Paul will both be worse off.”
• Use accounting tricks that slide billings and/or payments between fiscal years.
• Borrow. Illinois gets that big mention for issuing $10 billion in bonds last year to help “fix” the state’s operating budget. The success of that strategy is predicated on higher investment returns on a portion of the proceeds. The authors note that while one expert calls it risk arbitrage, “others might call it just plain foolish.”
• Sell off assets. Again, this is a one-time plug.
• Nickle and dime employees. This doesn’t save much and is bad for morale.
• Delay maintenance.
And, my personal favorite:
• Make something up. All budgets, are, after all, based on assumptions.
The authors also suggest a dozen nondeceptive ways to provide fiscal first aid. Among them: require unpaid employee furloughs; close tax loopholes; encourage early retirement; refinance existing bonds at lower interest rates. And, they argue, “there is nothing wrong with prudent borrowing for capital projects that will provide jobs and stimulate the econ-omy, particularly during a recession.”
The authors suggest the states could do something else: modernize their tax systems. Most states, for example, tax few or no services, which now account for almost 60 percent of consumer spending. This issue has been a nonstarter in Illinois, too.
But these authors say it’s not a math problem, it’s a leadership problem.
And that’s where we come in: We can grab the goodies while we can, then complain when we have to give them up. Or we can think through what we want — and, yes, what we’re willing to pay.
We can decide, too, whether to punish clear thinking from our leaders or reward empty political rhetoric.
Peggy Boyer Long can be reached at Peggyboy@aol.com.
Illinois Issues, June 2004
