Shrouded in mystery? Sen. Bill Brady's cotton-candy budget plan is no secret

Shrouded in mystery? Sen. Bill Brady's cotton-candy budget plan is no secret
By Eric Zorn
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
October 1, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/ct-oped-1001-zorn-20101001,0,1307128.column


Gov. Pat Quinn got off a zinger Thursday morning after the conclusion of the Tribune's endorsement interview session with the five candidates for governor.

I approached him outside the editorial board room to get his response to an emerging theme in the campaign of his Republican opponent, state Sen. Bill Brady — that the state budget is shrouded in mystery and Quinn has run a highly secretive administration.

"There's a secret plan all right for the budget," Quinn quipped. "That's Sen. Brady's plan."

Register with Chicago Tribune and receive free newsletters and alerts >>

But the zinger missed its mark. There's little evidence that Brady has a secret plan. He simply has a set of notions about righting the state's financial ship that are so vague and platitudinous that it only seems there must be specific ideas lurking behind them.

Brady says he wants to cut spending for every state program and agency by at least 10 percent, in large part by slaying the four monsters of "waste, inefficiency, fraud and abuse," as he put it Thursday. He'll show "backbone and courage" to wring concessions from state employee unions, "reform the pension system" and Medicaid, show "fiscal discipline" and make sure we "learn to live within our means."

Big, sweet and pretty, but airy and insubstantial. If Quinn is "Gov. Jell-O," as some of my brothers in commentary say, then Brady is "Sen. Cotton Candy." Bite into his finely spun rhetoric and there's almost nothing there.

Which programs and services does he intend to cut, kill and preserve as he tries to bring us out of a $13 billion hole? Press him for details, as questioners did during and after the Union League Club debate Wednesday and again Thursday, and he ultimately pleads confusion and lack of knowledge.

He says he'll convene a "council of economic advisers" if he's elected and order up a "business audit so that we can make transparent all the spending" that he claims has been hidden under the administrations of Quinn and his predecessor, Rod Blagojevich.

I challenged Brady on this Thursday morning. He's been in the General Assembly for 17 years under Democratic and Republican governors. The state auditor general's office regularly releases detailed reports — publishes them online, even — showing where money comes from and where it goes in state bureaucracy.

What doesn't Brady know that he needs to know before filling in the blanks in his plan?

"There is a lack of transparency," he said. "Yes we have an auditor general. And he provides us with reports and audits within about two years. But the governor says, and (Comptroller) Dan Hynes says, we owe over $5 billion to our vendors. We don't know who's owed what."

I followed up a moment later: "You're saying we owe $5 billion, and we don't know to whom we owe it?"

"People don't," Brady said.

"You don't?"

"Nope."

But Dan Hynes does. His office reported Thursday afternoon that there are exactly 204,688 unpaid vouchers worth $5.4 billion on the comptroller's desk.

Let's not gloss over the gravity of that boggling debt. It represents employers falling behind in issuing paychecks and in offering services to the public. It illustrates why it's so urgent that we not address our budget crisis with slogans and shrugs, particularly now that the campaign has entered the home stretch. And, admittedly, it reflects poorly on Quinn and the Democrats who've been in charge for nearly eight years.

"You have to deal with the structural deficit first, then pay back the backlog of unpaid bills," Brady said. "But Gov. Quinn won't tell us who he owes money to. His comptroller will not tell us who."

"We know with great specificity what is owed and to whom," said Hynes' spokesman Alan Henry. "Anybody who wants to know who we owe money to from the bills in our office simply has to request the information."

So much for confusion and doubt. This may present a problem for Bill Brady, whose secret seems to be that his economic plan is no plan at all.