Illinois Has No Budget, So Where Do State Tax Dollars Go, Anyway?

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2016

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The answers are crazy. We’ll have fun looking. But you’ll probably be pretty mad by the end. Things are worse than you thought.

The bad news: We’re paying out billions more than we take in. Just without setting priorities.
The state comptroller — who makes the payments — calls it “ad hoc” and “ridiculous.”

The worse news: We’re still letting billions of dollars in services go totally unfunded.

And: We’re breaking the non-profits that provide those services.

Full story, complete with charts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	When were the...
0:03.7	What school's...
0:06.0	Who decides what the next...
0:08.0	Where's that story?
0:09.3	Why they keep the look?
0:11.2	What is this?
0:13.6	It's Curious City.
0:15.0	Where WBEZ answers your questions about Chicago, the region, and its people.
0:20.5	I'm Dan Weissman, WBEZ reporter, and this curious city question is very, very timely because this is the week we file our income tax returns.
0:29.5	This question comes from John Quinn.
0:31.3	He lives in Logan Square.
0:32.6	And he's got a kind of double-barreled observation.
0:35.3	Even without a budget, Illinois is still collecting taxes. Yeah,
0:39.0	right. Without a budget, you might remember, Illinois has not had a budget since last June. It is a
0:44.5	really, really weird situation. And yet, the state is still collecting taxes. We are all filing
0:51.0	them this week, unless you win early, whatever. So, John's question is about our tax dollars.
0:56.9	Where do those dollars go, and what, if anything, are they funding?
1:00.2	After all, John's heard stories, social service agencies, not getting paid.
1:04.1	And with no state budget, he's got a sneaky question in the back of his mind.
1:08.3	Why shouldn't we all just stop paying taxes?
1:12.3	So, funny thing, good place to start. Even though we've got no budget, we are actually
1:16.7	spending billions of dollars more than we're taking in. Yeah, this is pretty confusing. And how we got
	...

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