January 28th, 2008
Gov. Blagojevich has scheduled his annual combined State of the State/Budget Address for Feb. 20.
I hear our increasingly reclusive governor will deliver his address from a couch in the basement of his Chicago bungalow. There’s no word yet on whether press or the public will be allowed in to watch.
Just kidding. The governor will deliver his address in the Illinois House to a joint session of the General Assembly, as is traditional.
Over the next couple weeks, we’ll look at some of the challenges facing Illinois, fiscal and otherwise. For starters, here’s some background on bill pressure from a recent report by Comptroller Dan Hynes:
Through the first half of fiscal year 2008, the
state’s cash flow position continued to deteriorate.
At the end of December, the backlog of
unpaid bills in the Comptroller’s Office stood
at $1.720 billion although the office began the
year holding no bills. This time last year
payables totaled $1.336 billion. Just as significantly,
the delay in paying bills was 34 business
days as of December 31st, compared to
only 22 days at this time last year. Both the
backlog volume and the number of days
delayed represent record levels for the midpoint
of the fiscal year.
January 28th, 2008
Gov. Blago’s approval rating has bounced back to 42 percent, according to a poll commissioned by the St. Louis Post Dispatch. An associated story is here.
Forty-two percent is not pretty for the second-term Democratic chief executive of an increasingly Democratic state. Still, Blago is now nearly twice as popular as he was three months ago, when his approval rating was in the tank at 23 percent.
No doubt much of the bounce in popularity is due to Blago’s free-rides-for-seniors plan, which he inserted into a mass transit bailout plan via an amendatory veto. He and his taxpayer-funded staff practically beat this plan into the heads of Illinoisans with a full-scale promotional blitz around Illinois.
I’m guessing another factor is at play here, too: Blagojevich and lawmakers have officially left Springfield for the first in a year. Yes, there have been occasional breaks over the last year. But each of those breaks occurred amid gridlock and posturing at the Capitol. Blago spent those breaks parading in front of TV cameras and threatening to call lawmakers back into special session.
The current break, now in its second week, is truly that: A break from the acrimony. It follows closure on a significant matter — how to help Chicago-area mass transit agencies, which for the better part of a year had begged for more state money.
In short, folks appear to be much more fond of their government leaders when they actually accomplish something and then disappear.
