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House hears testimony on governor's budget cuts

Posted October 01, 2007 11:00 pm

Adriana Colindres

After a Virginia Tech student killed 32 people and himself in April, officials at Spoon River Community College in Canton hoped to upgrade a telecommunications system so they could warn the campus community about any potentially life-threatening situations.

But a $25,000 grant that would have paid for the upgrade was among the items Gov. Rod Blagojevich vetoed out of the new state budget in August, college president Robert Ritschel told the Illinois House Monday.

"We owe it to our students to provide a safe learning environment and our staff, a safe working environment," Ritschel told lawmakers as he urged them to restore the money. "Twenty-five thousand dollars may sound like chump change to some, but to a small, rural community college in west-central Illinois, it could buy a lot of safety, security and maybe even a small measure of comfort."

The House met Monday as a "committee of the whole" to hear testimony concerning the governor's budget cuts. Today (Tuesday), the House plans to vote on overriding Blagojevich's budget vetoes, said Steve Brown, spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

About 60 individuals testified at Monday's hearing on the impact of the governor's budget cuts. The second-term governor has said the money would be better spent on expanding access to health care.

Blagojevich was not invited to the House hearing. He was in Chicago, spending part of the day at a rally for the Chicago Cubs, who will be in this year's Major League Baseball playoffs.

Deputy Gov. Sheila Nix issued a prepared statement that highlighted Blagojevich's emphasis on health care.

"Because the budget passed by lawmakers failed to adequately fund health care, the governor cut funding for pork projects and other less critical needs," she said. "Some projects in the budget are worthwhile and we are interested in seeing some funded - but not at the expense of health care for families and mammograms for women."

Madigan also was not in Springfield Monday. He had meetings in Chicago, Brown said.

The people who testified at the hearing included:

-- Martin Rue, superintendent of the LaSalle County Veterans Assistance Commission. He used the word "devastating" to describe budget cuts exceeding $3 million for the LaSalle Veterans Home. The money was to be used for staff and medical equipment at the home, which has a waiting list of 450 veterans, he said.

-- Howard Peters, senior vice president for the Illinois Hospital Association. He said the governor's plan to expand health-care access is a good idea, but Peters also called on lawmakers to reverse Blagojevich's decision to trim from the state budget $40 million in Medicaid payments to hospitals.

-- Greg Chance, a board member of the Illinois Rural Health Association. He told House members that the association is concerned about several gubernatorial vetoes. One of them, for example, would eliminate $3 million for school-based health centers in rural Illinois, said Chance, who also is public health administrator for the Knox County Health Department.

-- Dr. Christine Becker, president of the Illinois Chiropractic Society. She criticized Blagojevich's explanation of his budget cuts, saying: "To expand health care for the poor by cutting health care for the poor makes no common sense."

While 79 House members answered the roll call about 12:20 p.m., fewer lawmakers were on the House floor for much of the hearing. About 40 lawmakers were spotted in the House chamber at 1:30 p.m., and about 50 were there three hours later.

Reps. Raymond Poe, R-Springfield, and Rich Brauer, R-Petersburg, said they would vote to override the governor's budget cuts, especially those related to education and services to people with disabilities.

Rep. David Leitch, R-Peoria, said he, too, would vote to override.

"A lot of very important items were vetoed out of the budget by the governor, not the least of which is ... $8.5 million for community-based providers in various programs to comply with requirements imposed on them by the Division of Mental Health," Leitch said. "I don't know what they could have been thinking. To my way of thinking, those are important health-care priorities and should have been left in the budget."

In further action today (Tuesday), the House is expected to vote on overriding Blagojevich's amendatory veto of legislation that deals mainly with Cook County property assessments but also would set up a statewide method of assessing wind farms for property tax purposes. The governor recommended changes to the Cook County aspects of the bill, leaving the wind farm provisions untouched.

Dana Heupel of GateHouse News Service contributed to this report. Adriana Colindres can be reached at (217) 782-6292 or adriana.colindres@sj-r.com.

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