North Cook News

Illinois’ fiscal crisis has reached emergency status, Rep. David Harris (R-Arlington Heights) told a House panel on Wednesday.

“Our house is burning down around us, and I’m not saying anything that any legislator on this panel doesn’t already know, but we need to get a solution,” Harris said. “If the folks who are here testifying today add emphasis to the need for that resolution, then so much the better, but we need to get a resolution, and I hope that we can move forward on a pathway that gets a resolution by June 30.”

Harris was speaking at a House Appropriations General Services Committee hearing on the state budget and general services funding in Illinois.

“The situation, it seems to me, is pretty clear: The inflow of revenues coming into the state of Illinois is insufficient to meet the outflow of expenditures,” he said. “You can sum that up very simply by simply saying we are spending more than we are taking in. We are accumulating debt at a rate of roughly $6 billion a year.”

Illinois could be facing a third year without a budget, leading to devastating effects on its most vital human services. The hearing was held to survey funding requests from various human services agencies, but Harris reminded the committee that the state faces more than just a funding crisis.

“As we all know, our backlog of bills now approaches $14 billion,” he said. “I’m happy to hear from the people who are here today, but I will tell you straight away that we know people are being hurt, we know that institutions are being hurt – whether they are hospitals or any sort of providers- and most importantly, our state of Illinois is being hurt. It’s not just being hurt: It’s being financially destroyed by this budget impasse.”

Harris proposed a solution: decrease spending and increase revenue.

“There is a proposal out there to do that which the Senate sent to us, which, hopefully, we in the House will look at, work from, build on and, by June 30, get resolution,” Harris said. “I realize that there are other issues -- political sorts of issues -- and I hope that those can be worked out so that we can get, at last, a budget to stop this implosion.”