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State Infrastructure Needs $18-Billion

The state legislature wrapped up its spring session on Tuesday without coming to a budget agreement with Governor Rauner. Since it takes a supermajority to pass a budget after June first, it now appears unlikely an agreement will be reached until after the November elections.

 

It is not only the annual operating budget that is in limbo, but the plan to fund the pension deficit, and the infrastructure deficit, which Dr. Martin Luby, infrastructure funding expert at DePaul Univ. and a visiting consultant with Univ. of Illinois Institute of Govt. and Public affairs, says is short by about 18 billion dollars.

 

 

That’s a lot of new revenue the state needs to fund infrastructure, but Dr Luby says every day we wait, the cost goes up sharply.

 

 

Luby says any new taxes to fund infrastructure should be dedicated funds the state cannot divert for other uses. Failure to fund infrastructure, says Luby, will hurt business growth and retention, eating into the state’s tax base and, in the long run, cost more in lost tax revenue than properly maintain our infrastructure in the first place. 

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