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— Gov. Pat Quinn took aim at hospitals and school transportation late Thursday in cutting $376 million from the state budget lawmakers sent him.
The idea is to take part of those savings and any increase in revenue from a hoped-for economic recovery to provide more money for education and jump-start a stalled borrowing plan that would whittle down the state's multibillion-dollar backlog of overdue bills, administration officials said.
Quinn signed the budget into law only a few hours before a midnight deadline to get a spending plan in place. The new budget year begins Friday, and without Quinn's action, state government soon would not have been able to spend money.
Lawmakers, however, will have to take up Quinn's proposed cuts when they return to Springfield in October for the fall session. They could agree with the governor or override his veto. And taxpayers can expect some lawmakers to push for spending increases on social services and education.
The governor laid out the cuts in a message to lawmakers: $276 million in Medicaid spending, $89 million in school transportation spending and more than $11 million earmarked for regional school superintendent offices.
All told, the cutbacks would see the state spend a tad less than $33 billion in its operating budget the next 12 months.
On school transportation — money districts use to pay for busing students — Quinn sliced the $294 million lawmakers wanted to spend by $89 million.
The move became an immediate flash point. Republican Rep. Roger Eddy, a school superintendent from Hutsonville, said the cuts will hurt the Chicago suburbs and rural districts where some children need to travel many miles to get to schools.
Eddy contended that Quinn's actions made him appear to have a "vendetta against transporting kids."
"If you don't get kids to school, and transporting kids is obviously vital to get them there, you can't teach them," said Eddy, the Republican spokesman for the House committee dealing with elementary and high school spending.
The governor's top aides said Quinn wanted to spend less than lawmakers did.
"We don't think this is the highest priority," said David Vaught, Quinn's budget director. "When you're trying to hold spending down, we don't think it was appropriate for the General Assembly to raise this spending."
The Medicaid trims are billed as rate cuts to what the state pays hospitals to care for low-income patients. But "safety net" hospitals that have a high proportion of poor patients would not have to wait any longer than they currently do for repayment, the Quinn administration said. Many of those hospitals are in Chicago.
Sen. Donne Trotter, D-Chicago, said Quinn's rate cuts would be up for discussion, noting that the state hospital lobby isn't known to roll over.
Quinn also wants the state to enact broader Medicaid reforms, such as cutting and readjusting some rates of payments for hospitals and nursing homes, Vaught said. The governor also wants to tap into more preventive and managed care to address the medical issues of poor people before they get more complicated and expensive, Vaught said.
"We have a very complicated system that's full of inefficiencies, and we don't think it works very well," Vaught said.
Quinn has wanted to eliminate regional education offices altogether, arguing more money should be spent in the classroom than on bureaucracy.
Rep. Will Davis, D-Homewood, said the idea of cutting the state money for the offices would be a bad move because it might be tough to find local funds to make up the difference.
The lateness of Quinn's announcement meant many lawmakers and interest groups were still formulating opinions Thursday night. And the governor's office said Quinn had no public appearances planned Friday.
As the budget deadline loomed, Quinn spent Wednesday in Washington to pick up a governor of the year honor from the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
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