Krug: 
Brother, can you spare $3.5 billion?

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Brother, can you spare $3.5 billion?

On the way to a meeting Friday, a colleague stopped me in the hallway and asked to bum a buck to buy a cup of coffee.

As I flipped through my money clip, I hoped that there wouldn’t be a single in there. I had no reason to suspect that I’d ever see that dollar again. And as I turned over that hard-earned, crisp George Washington, I couldn’t help but wonder whether I might have to send Moose and Rocco over to the borrower’s office next week to remind him of the debt and/or help him devise a “payment plan” of some sort to recoup that loan.

Perhaps that’s how creditors now are looking at our fair state, which already is strapped with debt but is intent upon going out and borrowing against it.

It’s no different than your ne’er-do-well brother-in-law signing up for a credit card to cover the credit cards that he already can’t cover.

Oh, with one exception: This time it wasn’t your brother-in-law. This time, it was your governor and state legislator.

• • •

Borrow, borrow, borrow some more: As part of Sub-Gov. Pat Quinn’s $26 billion (yes, that’s billion with a “B”) budget, we mortgaged tomorrow for today.

To keep the state running at its current state of fiscal responsibility and efficiency, we needed to bum $3.5 billion (again, that’s billion with a “B”). It’s enough to make even the most liberal fiscal conservative want to climb the walls and hang out with the conservatively fiscal liberals. And while it’s great fun to borrow money, thus fueling hopes and dreams in the now, it establishes an interesting future for all of us who plan to stick it out here in Illinois.

It will be a blast to put a quarter in the pay toilet of your local library or to have your I-Pass electronically deduct a nickel from your account each time you make a left turn.

If the state of Illinois were a consumer, it would be shopping for its next car at the buy-here, pay-here lot. We’re a credit risk. All of us. We bit off more than we could chew, but we’re still trying to jam more cake into our mouths.

And as the pen was stroked to perpetuate our inability to spend less by spending more, we still somehow managed to find less for nonprofit programs. So not only have we prepared to plunge ourselves into deeper debt, but we also soldier ahead knowing full well that we won’t be able to fund the programs we already know that we need.

Incredible stuff when you think about it.

If you step into wayback machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman and return to last month, you’ll fondly remember that Quinn said the state would be forced into cutting funding for social service programs to shreds if the Legislature didn’t bend on his demand to raise the state income tax by 50 percent. It was a preposterous notion then, because in a budget as massive as Illinois’, there was no direct correlation between the budget targets and funding social service. But the threat was an attention-grabber and intended to motivate legislators to increase the tax.

Step back out of the wayback machine, and you’ll be glad to know that there still isn’t a direct link between the budget that was passed – which requires that massive loan – and social service, the funding of which still will be cut to ribbons.

There is about a billion dollars of cuts that Quinn said Thursday that he’d handle on his own later this week. But the early line is that our current social service programs – those that people currently rely upon – will be funded at only 86 percent of what they were in the previous budget.

Talk about lose-lose.

• • •

Kick us where it hurts most: The true boot in the shin on this deal is that the local agencies don’t know yet what their stake is in the 86 percent that’s still coming their way. Budget allocations won’t be made across the board. Some programs will see more than 86 percent; others less. Right now it is a guessing game, and Quinn is wearing the fez.

Fearing the worst, because that typically is the most pragmatic path to take when trying to guess along with the guy who sits in the governor’s chair, local agencies continue to cut programs, reduce hours, and furlough their employees while sweating it out.

The entire budgeting process has been one of the biggest embarrassments in Illinois history, and that’s saying something. Our inability to get a grip on our spending is matched only by our lack of vision and compassion.

It’s enough to make you want to ask Moose and Rocco whether they know their way around Springfield.

• • •

It probably isn’t Rabid Bats, but … : The folks at McHenry County Professional Baseball said last week that they were just waiting on the completion of logos before they revealed the name of the new Frontier League team that is scheduled to begin play in Woodstock in 2011. An announcement is expected this week.

Just to get a jump, I checked GoDaddy.com and learned that McHenryCountyCurmudgeons.com is available as a domain name.

Wait until you see the logo for that, gang.

• • •

And finally … : Congratulations to JoAnn Smith, newsroom assistant at the Northwest Herald, who was honored Thursday by her peers as this year’s winner of the Roger Ehrke Award.

The award recognizes service above self and is given in honor of Ehrke, a selfless worker who died as a result of a pressroom accident at the Northwest Herald in 1995.

Smith, whose friendly voice is the first that most who call the newsroom hear, is a wonderful person and a committed professional, and our reporters, editors and photographers would be lost without her.

• Chris Krug is executive editor of the Northwest Herald. Contact Chris by calling 815-459-4122 or via e-mail at ckrug@nwherald.com. Keep up with Chris’ rants, raves and insights by following ChrisKrug (no space) on Twitter.com.