•May 31, 2017•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

In response to my recent challenge, 40 readers provided detailed proposals as to how they would close the gap of about $7 billion between spending and revenue in the Illinois state budget. While there was sure no consensus among readers, predominant recommendations roughly mirror what will likely come out of Springfield in the coming weeks.

As you might recall, I provided readers a necessarily limited template of possible budget cutting and revenue increase options.

Only two respondents seemed to deny reality, at least as I see it, by saying, “No tax increases, no way,” and “We’ll just have to do without, as we did at home when I was a child.” Both suggestions are appealing, though probably not useful at the moment.

Here is a summary of the more detailed responses, obviously representing an unscientific sample:

As for budget cuts, only a few suggested cutting K-12 education, and those few said every budget line, including education, should take a small 1-3 percent cut across the board.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.