When Statehouse Politicians Make Things Worse

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/opinion/when-statehouse-politicians-make-things-worse.html

Version 0 of 1.

A 10-month budget standoff in Illinois has reached the point where the state comptroller, Leslie Geissler Munger, says she plans to delay the monthly paychecks of lawmakers and state officials because other bills and services deserve to be paid first. The comptroller, a Republican running for re-election, seems to think this will force the Democratic General Assembly and Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, to compromise.

The paycheck strategy would be politically amusing were it not for the fact that the budget impasse is having severe effects on Illinois citizens. A prime example is the threat to Chicago State University, the 150-year-old predominantly African-American college that relies on the state for 30 percent of its $105 million budget. The school, an urban bulwark, has been forced to make plans to shut down because it has not received a dollar in state support since last July, and none is in sight.

The crisis has left many of the 4,500 students from black, low-income families shaken and angry that they could be the first casualties of the statehouse standoff, Julie Bosman of The Times reports. Other parts of the state system have endowments and affluent alumni to rely on in hard times, but Chicago State has neither.

This is an intolerable abuse of the public interest and a direct result of the cage fights over taxation and budget cutting that have made statehouse politics such an embarrassment across the nation.

Unfortunately, each unhappy statehouse is unhappy in its own way. Another prime example is Kansas, where Gov. Sam Brownback’s ruinous diet of tax cuts has decimated revenue and sparked rebellion even among his erstwhile allies in the Republican-controlled Legislature. Conservative lawmakers who had endorsed the Republican governor’s decision to slash $3.7 billion in revenue over five years by cutting business and upper-bracket tax rates are recanting now that the state is awash in red ink.

“Let him own it,” one Republican lawmaker told The Associated Press. “It’s his policy that put us there.” Others speak mutinously of scaling back the governor’s tax cuts rather than helping him with plans to cut vital state services. “We’re growing weary,” said Susan Wagle, the Senate president.

Regret in Republican ranks is small comfort to Kansans. Their mushrooming problems include the failure by the governor and Legislature to cure inequities between rich and poor school districts. Tens of millions of dollars in additional education funding are needed to meet an order by the Kansas Supreme Court to fix the problem or face school shutdowns before the next school year begins. The people of Illinois and Kansas deserve far better from their lawmakers. Voters should unseat their worst representatives this November.