Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Brady Budget Bill


Sen. Bill Brady Tuesday jump-started the conversation to end a two-year budget impasse as he introduced a full and balanced Fiscal Year 2018 budget that protects the state’s highest priority programs, reins in spending and eliminates two-thirds of the state’s mountain of unpaid bills.

Brady’s proposal provides for selling revenue bonds totaling $6 billion to significantly reduce the state’s backlog of unpaid bills and saving the state millions of dollars in late-payment interest costs. The overall proposal will take the total owed back to the June 2015 level of about $4.4 billion. The proposal also includes a hard-spending cap of roughly $36 billion in general funds.

It fully funds the school aid-formula and includes many of the budget-balancing measures proposed by Governor Rauner in February, including the $1.3 billion in pension reform savings, sale of the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago and $435 million savings in restructuring of the state employee group health insurance program. It also includes new across-the-board cuts totaling nearly $800 million and holding MAP grants to their current level.

No comments:

Post a Comment