A statewide concern: Illinois’ population decline outpaces neighboring states – Wirepoints on ABC20 Champaign
“We are not in good shape” Wirepoints’ Ted Dabrowski told ABC 20 Champaign during a segment on Illinois’ latest population losses. Illinois was one of just three states to shrink in the 2010-2020 period and has lost another 300,000 people since then. Ted says things need to change. “It’s too expensive to live here, there aren’t enough good jobs and nobody trusts the government anymore. There’s just other places to go where you can be more satisfied.”
Missing from the Comptroller’s message is that instead of cutting expenses to match revenues, which is very difficult due to state laws mandating spending regardless of revenues, and instead of changing the state laws mandating spending, the state borrowed money by issuing bonds. So a challenge is how to fix a state which passed entitlements and spending which were not possible to fund with existing revenues…that was known when such laws were originally passed. The politicians who passed such entitlements and spending which resulted in votes from special interests are not going to scale the entitlements and spending back. Also… Read more »
Leaving Illinois is the only way to stop this madness.
Two of the three “Fiscal Year 2017 Budget Fast Facts” are from Fiscal Year 2018.
however, fortunately, no one will actually read it in the mad rush to bank the check.