Springfield, Ill. – Illinois’ fiscal concerns continued to mount, as the state’s deficit reached record levels and revenues fell short of prior projections. Also this week, State Senator Kyle McCarter (R-Lebanon) said that the fourth hearing of the Senate Redistricting Committee has been confirmed for Tuesday, Oct. 13 in Carbondale.

Earlier in the week, Comptroller Dan Hynes said that Illinois’ unpaid bills are nearing a crisis point. Hynes said that the state’s total unpaid bills reached $2.9 billion at the end of September, approximately $1 billion more than last year. Hynes blamed the massive deficit on a decline in state revenues, which is a usual occurrence during a recession.

However, Senator McCarter says a bigger factor in the state’s economic problems can be directly tied to years of fiscal irresponsibility and spending beyond our means.

“The numbers don’t lie. Illinois received $7 billion in new revenue over the previous six years and it was squandered, misspent,” said McCarter. “For the party in control of the process, $7 billion wasn’t enough. They expanded programs and looked for new ways to spend more money, more money than the state was taking in. This has put us in a terrible position of not having the resources to pay our bills on time or even within a respectable time period.”

McCarter says since taking office in February, he’s stressed the need for Illinois government to get serious about job creation.

“US Department of Labor statistics show that Illinois has lost a third of its manufacturing jobs in the last 10 years and the state currently ranks 46th, in the rate of job growth, among the 50 states,” said McCarter. “In the past year alone, Illinois lost more than 300,000 jobs.”

McCarter says government can help turn around the state’s economy by taking steps to make the state more competitive in attracting and keeping jobs. He says it will also take a cooperative effort between business and labor to remove the roadblocks to job growth that puts Illinois at a disadvantage with surrounding states.

“I recently received a call from a business owner, a job creator, and he told me it’s time to address the real cause of Illinois’ job losses and it’s about the roadblocks I’ve been talking about: workers’ comp, unemployment insurance and frivolous lawsuits, said McCarter.

“Our number one focus in Springfield should be about turning this economy around,” said McCarter. “I know the governor and others in his party are advocating a tax increase to make up for the budget problems but that only takes money out of the hands of working families who are already struggling. Illinois needs jobs; good-paying, long-term job creation will stabilize our economy and get us back on the road to prosperity.”

Illinois has never had this large of a deficit in the first quarter of a fiscal year, and businesses and nonprofit groups that provide services to the state are the ones suffering the consequences of the state’s failure to meet its obligations. The state’s health care and service providers currently wait an average of three months to be reimbursed by the state, which is another questionable record for this early in the fiscal year.

However, Hynes also noted that the decrease in revenues is aggravated by the state’s lapse-period spending—which means Illinois is still paying last year’s bills with this year’s revenues.

The Comptroller’s report comes on the heels of a recent report showing that the state’s first quarter revenues are down $340 million. The bipartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability (COGFA) issued a report on October 2 which showed that in September alone, revenue receipts dropped $144 million.

COGFA’s experts anticipated the revenues to be off in the first few months, but not by this much. The report noted that revenues are expected to improve later in the year, but it is not certain that they will be at the level anticipated when the Fiscal Year 2010 budget was approved in July.

In other news, lawmakers continue to meet and consider proposals for changing Illinois’ redistricting process. Members of the Senate Redistricting Committee will travel to Carbondale to consider more redistricting reform ideas, including recommendations from the Paul Simon Institute.

The Paul Simon Institute at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale considers some of the most important—and controversial—issues that face Illinois, including gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is a term that describes the deliberate rearrangement of the boundaries of legislative districts to influence the outcome of elections. Representatives from the institute have been long-time supporters of redistricting reform, previously supporting reform legislation that failed to be approved by the General Assembly.

The Paul Simon Institute plan is one of several alternatives offered by a third party to restructure redistricting. McCarter said that whatever proposal is advanced, it is critical that reforms are adopted and the process of redistricting is taken out of the backrooms.