Edgar: Budget plan lacks details
Former Gov. Jim Edgar had to lead Illinois through difficult budget times, and he thinks the current governor's budget-cutting methods leave something to be desired.
"It was kind of an incomplete budget message," Edgar said of Quinn's gloomy address Wednesday, which included specifics on dozens of facility closings but left even bigger spending cuts to pensions and Medicaid up to working groups.
"I would say that my first reaction to the speech was that the good news was it was very short. The second was that there wasn't much in it and that's why it was short. I just didn't see any details. You leave out Medicaid and pensions and say you're going to balance the budget, I don't know how you do that."
Edgar, who was governor from 1991 to 1999, said the governor must lead.
"I always thought that when I was governor I had to say where we were going to cut it instead of saying to the Legislature, 'It's your job to go cut it,'" he said.
And while he supported the notion of closing state facilities, Edgar said he was concerned about Quinn's plan to shut down the "supermax" prison at Tamms in southern Illinois. Tamms, which has a population of about 390 but a staff of 300, was built and opened during Edgar's tenure.
"I don't have a real problem with closing facilities," said Edgar. "The one I would question is Tamms, because Tamms is not just another prison. It's the supermax prison where you put all the really bad inmates. Not the one who committed the most atrocious crimes but the ones who act the worst in the prisons, who cause all the problems in the prisons and cause them to be on lockdown, problems that can lead to riots."
Edgar said Tamms helped to keep peace in all of the other correctional centers.
"My experience was it helped a lot to keep the rest of the prisons, which were always overcrowded and are going to be even more overcrowded now, it kept them more peaceful because you took the really bad actors out and put them in Tamms. And then the others who might be bad actors didn't want to go to Tamms. They kinda got religion and they behaved better," said Edgar, now a distinguished fellow at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois.
"All the feedback I got after we built Tamms and opened it was that it worked," he said. "It costs a lot more to keep an inmate at Tamms because you've got a lot more security on them ($64,116 per inmate per year according to the Department of Corrections, versus the statewide average of $21,405 per inmate), but the question is if you bring those folks back into the regular prisons, do you all of a sudden have more potential problems in those other prisons?"
Edgar said the Quinn administration "should be very careful" about closing Tamms.
"The thing I worried about the most when I became governor was having a prison riot. I had watched what happened to (New York Gov. Nelson) Rockefeller and I watched those prison riots and I did not want to have to deal with one of those. The day I left the governor's office, there were a lot of things I was relieved about, and one of them was I didn't have to worry about a prison riot any more."
Edgar also questioned Quinn's policy of cutting the budget everywhere but in education. Quinn proposed giving $20 million more to early childhood and $50 million more to the Monetary Award Program college scholarships.
"I don't know how you can give more to education. I don't see that. You may not cut education like you cut Medicaid, but I think you've got to say to everybody that we've got a problem and everybody's going to have to take some of this pain," Edgar said.
He also said he believes Quinn should have pushed for budget cuts at the same time he promoted the 67 percent income tax increase enacted last year.
"Raising taxes is probably the easiest part of this whole thing," he said. "The cutting of spending is going to be more brutal, which is something they should have done when they raised the taxes (in January 2011). They should have done them together.
"They've also got to stop creating new programs and spending more money. They're going to have to stay on a diet for several more years. That's just not in their nature. I know how much trouble I had in the '90s, trying to hold the line on the Legislature. They couldn't wait for me to get out of there."
This story appeared in print on Feb. 24.
MoreMoreNever forget that the pension payment skipping originated when Jim Edgar was governor. The building leases for campaign donors continued under his administration also. Yes, Jim Edgar was one of the better regarded governors; but he played the game also. The pension problem would not be a problem if the legislators, and governors over the years had paid the employer portion as required. The employees paid their share with every paycheck. It was automatically deducted. They were given no other options such as a 401K. The money that was "diverted" went to pork barrel projects. The legislators, governors, and judges had their pensions funded by the state. They said the employer payment to their pension systems was "insignificant" compared to the state employees, and university state employees. Jim Edgar's opinion on the state budget seems to be hypocritical after his role in previous state budgets.
Yes let us remember that Jim Edgar did get us in this predicament. He and Big Jim Thompson who sold the state down the road to the likes of the convicted William Cellini and company. Even to the point of hiring Cellini family members as his patronage chief. So to criticize from afar and to pontificate as he always does maybe the one thing Jim Edgar should do is to look in the mirror(if he has one) and ask did I create or start this mess? If he is as honest as he proclaims, he would answer Yes I did create this mess.
The underfunding of pensions began in earnest under the Jim Edgar administration and this practice has continued thereafter. Governor Edgar, are you suggesting or implying that state employees (who never missed a pension payment, was never an option for them) should be penalized in the form of diminished pension benefits and or increased payments due to your administration (and others thereafter) deliberately and willfully choosing to not make the State's payments?
1995 and 1996 are significant years in the history of Illinois, because they represent the only two out of the last 30 or so that Mike Madigan and the democrats have NOT been in control of the House of Representatives in our state.
And it just so happens, that in 1995, under a republican house and the Jim Edgar administration, a plan was passed that required the pension system to be funded at increasing levels each year until, in 2045, it would be funded at 100%. This plan was working quite well, and in fiscal year 2000 it was funded up to almost 75%, up from around 50% in 1995.
Then George Ryan and Blago happened, Madigan regained control, and now we're the worst of all states, by far, in the nation for undunded pension liability.
By the way, the governor does not make pension payments to the pension system. The General Assembly makes pension payments.
l am not going to debate politics with you. The point is that governors of both parties have dirty hands. Management Systems of Illinois, and Edgar's campaign for governor is just one stain on his hands. He knows Bill Cellini just as Thompson, Ryan, and Blago know Bill. Edgar knows state building leases just as well as the other governors. One governor's opinion of another governor's actions is hardly creditable. None of either party have clean hands. The whole thing is hypocritical. He would do himself better if he tended his race horses; and made no political statements. He should enjoy his retirement.
The pension system was not funded as required. Edgar's personnel, and patronage chief was Janis Cellini. The name ring a bell? Edgar testified at the federal corruption trial of one of his appointee's, and one of his campaign donors who ran Management Services of Illinois. He testified that he did not know of their wrong doings. He did get $270,000.00 from the company owners as a campaign donation though. He retired from politics shortly following that. Now, he resurfaces with political comments. He may have "required" employer pension payments to be made; but that never happened. It was just more money to be used for pork barrel projects, and hiring "appointees".
MSI was Jim Edgar's largest contributor and was paid $409,233 for the first year of its contract with the IL Dept. of Public Aid (now known as Dept. of Healthcare & Family Services). The next year, the contract was "negotiated" to roughly $11.5 million by Dept. of Public Aid officials. Noteworthy that Mr. Edgar was called to testify at the trail of one of the former Public Aid officials indicted in the scandal, but initially refused by asserting "executive privilege". Not wanting the publicity or expense in time that challenging a popular sitting governor would entail, the prosecution agreed to a compromise in which Edgar would be questioned via a videotaped deposition. Average citizens would NEVER be given this option. In this deposition, Mr. Edgar was clearly evasive, uncomfortable and contradicted a number of facts established during the trails and convictions of Ron Lowder, Curt Fleming and William Ladd and subsequent trial and acquittal of Jim Berger. There is ample documentation of MSI officials visiting directly with Governor Edgar's former chiefs of staff and with at least two former directors of Public Aid (Phil Bradley and Robert Wright, respectively) as well as with former assistant director Jim Berger. Former director Bradley deposed that he was personally aware of a number of these visits. Mr. Edgar's claims that he wasn’t aware of wrong doing are not credible given the circumstances. The MSI scandal likely ended the political career of Jim Edgar, notwithstanding other publically stated reasons.
Thank you, squeaky. Mark Twain's comment on respectability, and age comes to mind every time I see a former Illinois governor publically speaking. The honorable James Thompson is another long story. Out of the last five governors; one is in office, two are in prison, and two are honorably retired. They should stay honorably retired; and make no public statements.
You sure do have a lot of facts and figures to use in you character assassination of a good ex governor. But I won't bother with that. I know in my hear that Jim Edgar is a good solid Republican and I won't buy into your liberal elite media attempted take down of him.
@Mark Taylor; Maybe, your not reading the whole comments? The governors of BOTH parties Republican, and Democrat have been corrupt. Jim Edgar may not have been as corrupt as Thompson, Ryan, and Blago; but he does have dirty hands. This silliness of blaming, or defending one party over the other only perpetuates the corruption, and graft. It is BOTH parties. The governors, and the legislators of BOTH parties have dirty hands. When one ex-governor speaks about another governor, it is hardly creditable. Jim Edgar woulld do well to retire from public life; and make no political comments. The same goes for Jim Thompson, George Ryan, and Rod Blago. Do you understand?
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