A pay raise for this legislature?

To the editor:

According to the state comptroller, the state of Illinois is running a $3.75 billion deficit this fiscal year. That's billion-- not million. Plus, the state has well over $40 billion in under-funded state-guaranteed pension plans.

Once again, that's billion-- not million.

In addition, an audit report released recently revealed that the state has over $1.5 billion in unpaid Medicaid bills and the state's Medicaid program under Governor Blagojevich is appalling and in a shambles.

Medical providers, like doctors, hospitals and pharmacies are waiting months for payment only to have their claims rejected or sent back for additional information.

So what were our state's elected official arguing about in Springfield in the final days of the spring session? About giving themselves a raise. This is absolutely unbelievable!

The state legislature is the equivalent of a private company's Board of Directors. But if the state was a private company instead of a governmental unit, the stockholders would throw the board out on their collective butts if they ran up a series of multi-billion dollar deficits as Illinois has and then tried to give themselves a raise.

But this can't happen in Illinois as the Senate killed a bill which would have allowed the recall of elected officials by a public vote.

A recent report shows that Illinois is 47 out 50 states in net job creation. In other words, far more jobs are leaving Illinois to go to other states than are coming to Illinois.

One only has to look at the quality of our state government to understand why no rational business person would move his business to Illinois when it is run like some third-world banana republic.

Don Miller
Godfrey