$23 Billion for Teachers

The White House is asking for $23 billion to save teacher's jobs and it's calling this a bi partisan issue.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is asking lawmakers to put aside “politics and ideology” as they consider a request for $23 billion in “emergency” funding for public schools – a measure Republicans reject as a massive federal bailout for the teachers’ unions.

The Obama administration is supporting the bill, formally titled the Keep Our Educators Working Act and sponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA). In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) dated May 13, Duncan warned that if the bill is not enacted, “millions” of school children will be adversely affected and the ensuing damage will “undermine the groundbreaking reform efforts underway in states and districts all across the country.”

In Illinois, there's a similar dynamic. Governor Quinn wants to raise the income tax by 33% in order to save teacher's jobs. States like Illinois have a constitutional duty to balance their budgets and so they can't simply borrow the money. Th problem is that education spending way up since as far back as the 1960's. About $70 billion was earmarked from the stimulus. The funds should be there and the administration just can't seem to spend less money.

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No More I Tunes Tax

Governor Quinn has walked this one back.

Gov. Pat Quinn is backing off a proposal to tax music and video downloads in an effort to plug the state’s massive budget hole, saying he still believes raising the income tax is the best way to generate money for the state.

Quinn floated the idea of taxing downloads from online services such as iTunes in a
meeting with legislative leaders earlier this week, but the proposal received a cold reception in Springfield. Today, Quinn said that he was simply offering suggestions on ways to solve the state’s budget crisis and does not support the plan, which would have generated $5 million to $10 million a year.

“We had a meeting with the legislative leaders the other day, we made a list of all
the possible things that could happen,” Quinn said. “I didn’t advocate that. I’m not interested in doing that, frankly.”

The budget woes in Illinois remain all too real.

Quinn's Budget: Heavy Cuts, Borrowing and No Tax Increases

A few weeks back the Civic Federation said that the state of Illinois was facing a long term budget deficit of about $11 billion and proposed a series of spending cuts and tax increases. Today, Governor Pat Quinn has proposed a budget with heavy spending cuts and borrowing but no tax increases.

Gov. Pat Quinn will offer a state budget plan today that relies largely on heavy borrowing and deep spending cuts, his chief of staff said during a briefing Tuesday with reporters.

While Quinn has supported the idea of raising taxes to help the state resolve its massive budget woes, the governor's spending plan won't call for a specific tax increase, chief of staff Jerome Stermer said. Still, he said Quinn believes Illinois needs additional revenue to help pay its bills.

"The governor will propose a budget that doesn't have new revenues," Stermer told reporters. "It's not a budget that he's going to like proposing, I can guarantee you that."

The problem with heavy borrowing, as proposed in this budget, is that it robs Peter to pay Paul. While the Illinois constitution demands that we have a balanced budget there are many gimmicks. For instance, if you create a one billion dollar bond offering at 7%, and sell it all this year, you would create one billion in cash flows in and only $70 million outflows cash flows. Of course, that $70 million would become a yearly outflow of cash in your budget whereas the one billion would only be written on this year's budget.

So bond offerings, like those proposed by Quinn, are a great way of balancing a budget in a particular year. What it does is further erode the state's long term financial health. The state is already at a critical stage and now we're going to go through another series of borrowing. That will only further erode the state going forward. It's exactly these sort of gimmicks that have put the state in this position to begin with. Now, it will be further made worse by this set of borrowing.

Brady Wins GOP Gubernatorial Nod

It's been more than a month since the February 2nd primary in Illinois and the GOP finally has a nominee.

In the month since Republicans voted on a nominee for governor, veteran state Sen. Bill Brady said he's come to realize his role in the GOP has been elevated far beyond serving as just another state lawmaker representing a central Illinois district.

Election officials declared Brady the official Republican nominee for governor Friday by a 193-vote margin over Senate colleague Kirk Dillard. But Brady's political moves in the last week portrayed a man who's still coming to grips with his role as the Republican standard-bearer in a fight to end Democratic dominance of state government.

Brady has proposed banning same-sex marriages and civil unions and loosening restrictions on discrimination based on gender or sexual identity — issues that play well with his conservative base but don't sell well in Illinois' moderate middle. The
Bloomington lawmaker also tried to help a local veterinarian by sponsoring a bill allowing mass euthanasia of dogs and cats, which typically involves gassing the animals.

Brady will face off against current governor Pat Quinn in November.

An Update on Scott Lee Cohen

The recent disclosures about the brand new nominee for Lt. Governor on the Democratic ticket, Scott Lee Cohen, here in Illinois has become a full blown scandal. Cohen has dug in.

Gov. Quinn's embattled running mate, Scott Lee Cohen, allegedly abused anabolic
steroids, displayed fits of rage and forced himself sexually on his wife before their divorce, court documents reviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Cohen also allegedly skipped child-support payments at the same time he was investing his own money -- a total of more than $2 million -- in his successful bid to become the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. His ex-wife, Debra York-Cohen, alleged just two months ago that he owed her nine months worth of back child support totaling $54,000 for their four children

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Meanwhile, Pat Quinn is already making it clear that Cohen ought to think about quitting.

Gov. Pat Quinn's delayed primary victory was short-lived Thursday as he was forced to distance himself from his new running mate and suggest he bow out for fear of dragging down the ticket.

Nearly two days after the polls closed, Dan Hynes conceded the nomination to Quinn, unable to bridge a gap that had grown to more than 8,000 votes as straggling precincts filed in.

It's important to note that Illinois has a peculiar process for the Lt. Governor and Governor. The Illinois Constitution mandates that each run separately in the primary and together in the general election. So, if Cohen insists on staying on the ticket, he will taint the entire ticket.

Cohen has dug his heels in for now. He says he isn't quitting. That won't last long. Dick Durbin is the first national Dem to call for him to step down. The calls will only grow louder. Cohen won't last too long into next week.

Either way, the Democrats are in total disarray. Quinn was already an underdog and this won't help.

Previewing Illinois

Finally, the political world revolves around the state of Illinois for one day. Illinois is the first in the nation to hold its primaries and so the nation will have its electoral eyes on Illinois. Nationally, the two big races will be for the U.S. Senate and Governor. Republicans have a realistic chance of winning both in November.

The Democrats are putting up Dan Hynes and current Governor Pat Quinn. For self interest, all Republicans should be rooting for Pat Quinn to win. Quinn's first act as Governor was to raise that state's income tax about 50%. As the former Lt. Governor to Blago, that taint will likely stay with Quinn. Meanwhile, Hynes, the state's current Comptroller, has been surging in the polls.

Both are Springfield insiders in a year when that's a very bad place to be. On the Republican side, three candidates have been playing whack a mole with each other. Those candidates are Andy McKenna, Kirk Dillard, and Jim Ryan. Each would have the insider's label attached to them. Because each has waged a bloody commercial battle against each other. Dillard appeard in an ad in favor of then candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 election cycle. Both Dillard and Ryan are attached to tax increases. Meanwhile, McKenna has been attached to corruption as head of the Illinois GOP.

I believe that all three will knock each other out. Meanwhile, Adam Andrzejewski and Dan Proft were both vying for the candidate of the outsider. Recently, Andrzejewski has surged after being endorsed by Lech Walesa. That endorsement has lead to an endorsement by stalwart Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck yesterday. That race remains wide open but my pick is Andrzejewski.
In the Senate side, Alexi Giannoulias, the state's current Treasurer, has been dogged recently by his connection to his family's bank, Broadway Bank. He's facing David Hoffman, the recently former IG in Chicago and Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson. Hoffman has gained traction attacking Giannoulias' big stock withdrawals over the last couple years. This has all happened while Broadway Bank has been losing tens of millions and is on the verge of being taken over by regulators. Meanwhile, Giannoulias was a loan officer at Broadway when he worked there. In fact, when he ran for the State's Treasurer office in 2006 he was dogged by loans made by the bank made to reputed mob boss in the area. Meanwhile, Hoffman has gained a reputation as corruption fighter. He was initially supposed to be a typical IG in Chicago but then waged several high profile battles with officials close to Daley. Hoffman has been dogged by what has been characterized as a terribly negative campaign including several retraction.

Once again, self interest would mean that Republicans are rooting for Giannoulias. Giannoulias was ahead as of the last set of polls but the race has taken on national significance and further exposure in the last week. That race remains up in the air. The last time the Democrats elected a true anti corruption fighter it was Mike Quigley to represent the 5th District in the U.S. House. He then cruised to victory in the special election. Hoffman would be a much tougher candidate in November. Meanwhile, Giannoulias would be tainted and bruised coming out of the primary. Jackson's campaign has been running third throughout.

On the Republican side, North Shore Congressman Mark Kirk has been leading throughout. His opponent, Patrick Hughes, is another favorite of the Tea Party movement. Kirk became its scourge following his vote in favor of cap and trade. He's also socially moderate. Still, while Hughes has been gaining recently, Kirk is the overwhelming favorite. He'd also be a favorite against Giannoulias. Against, Hoffman it would be a toss up.

While those two races will have national intrigue, the most compelling race is for the Cook County Board President. The current incumbent, Todd Stroger, has been an also ran throughout. The favorite originally, Dorothy Brown, has been dogged by some new ethics revelations recently. She's the current Clerk of the Cook County Circuit Court. She instituted a policy which laid a $5 fee for any employee that wore jeans to work. She's been unable to account for that money. There's been other questions about her employees contributions.

Questions about jeans day follow previous stories about Brown raising money for pet causes from workers in her office, which has more than 2,100 employees. She's also raised campaign money through her employees and they've been asked to contribute to gifts for her.

Today, Brown's staff acknowledged that there's no comprehensive accounting of the jeans day cash contributions that reach the tens of thousands of dollars each year. She said the office tries to verify that the number of permission stickers issued equals the number of contributions. Employees also are supposed to write their names on envelopes when they contribute for jeans day, she said. The comptroller in her office tracks the money, Brown added.

With corruption a main topic in Cook County, Brown has become vulnerable. That leaves the race open for Chicago Alderman Toni Preckwinkle and the head of the water reclamation district Terry O'Brien. That race also remains wide open.

On the Republican side, Roger Keats is facing off against John Garrido. Keats is the Candidate of the Republican Party in Cook County and he's being backed by Cook County Republican stalwart Tony Peraica. Keats remains the frontrunner in that race.

Meanwhile, the Green Party has been able to field no less than 19 candidates for offices in the Chicagoland area. This includes three candidates for the new head of the Water Reclamation District, Jack Ailey, Diana Horton, and Nadine Bopp. This includes a candidate for Governor, Senator, every Congressional district in the area, and about 70% of the Cook County offices.

GITMO to Illinois?

There appears to be growing momentum to send some or all of the GITMO detainees to Thomson, Illinois to the Super max there.

Democratic leaders in Illinois applauded a draft memo leaked to a conservative Web site Friday that they believe suggests the government is seriously considering transferring terrorist suspects from Guantanamo to their state.

The White House cautioned that the memo is merely a preparation in case such a decision is made, but Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Gov. Pat Quinn said in a joint statement late Friday that it signals "the administration has narrowed its focus" to a nearly empty maximum-security state prison in Thomson, a sleepy town of 450 people near the Mississippi River about 150 miles west of Chicago.

"Even though the final decision has not been made, we are encouraged by this development," Durbin and Quinn said. "We will continue working with the White House, the Defense Department and the Justice Department to address important questions regarding security and job creation, and finalize this agreement."

The story comes after a leaked memo wound up on the web site Big Government. Thomson, Illinois is a small town of less than 1000 people on the Northwest edge of the state. The prison is actually just outside the city limits. The area has been struggling financially since most of the prisoners were moved. As such, the city manager of Thomson cheered the decision when it was first floated in the fall.

Immediately, both Pat Quinn and Senator Dick Durbin cheered the decision. This is a major opportunity for Republicans. President Obama's old Senate seat is up for grabs and so is the Governorship. Pat Quinn, the state's current Governor, is already on record as favoring the decision. Dick Durbin has done the same.

I haven't seen any polling but I would be willing to bet plenty that the state in general is opposed to this by a wide margin. Congressman Mark Kirk, who's running for Obama's seat, came out and opposed the decision immediately when it was first floated in the fall. All Republican candidates for both Governor and Senate should be jumping over themselves to condemn this potential decision. The Democrats have giftwrapped a huge issue and the Republicans should be doing everything they can to make this gain as many legs as possible.

It should be noted that the Obama administration has stressed that no final decision has yet been made. Furthermore, in order to move any detainee the administration would have to come to Congress for funding. So, this is still a long way away from being finalized.

That said, Big Government is already reporting a protest forming near Thomson.

“This is America and our government is supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people, and we the people were not even consulted about this decision to bring suspected terrorists to Illinois.” Beverly Perlson, founder of the Band of Mothers, and one of the rally organizers, said during a phone interview.

The rally, organized by the Illinois Tea Patriots and the Band of Mothers, has been in the works since November when the Obama Administration’s plans initially surfaced. It is scheduled to be held three days before Christmas, on December 22, outside the State Officiated Public Meeting at Sterling High School, Sterling Illinois, at 1:00 pm.

This story is still developing and so stay tuned for updates.

UPDATE: Right on cue, here's a Rasmussen poll on Illinoisians view of moving the detainees to the state.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Illinois voters oppose relocating some suspected terrorists from the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba to a prison in their state.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 39% of voters in the state favor housing the prisoners at the Thomson Correctional Center, a near-empty maximum security facility 150 miles west of Chicago. Ten percent (10%) are not sure.

...

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul in Illinois

There's an intra Democratic party confrontation here in Illinois with implications for the Governor's race.

Comptroller Dan Hynes said today that he won't sign off on Democratic primary rival Gov. Pat Quinn's plan to borrow $500 million to help pay down the state's backlog of unpaid bills.

Quinn fired back, saying Hynes was playing with people's lives by refusing to sign on to the borrowing plan."There's a human toll to the comptroller declining to support cash flow borrowing here. Human beings are a stake here, individuals who are counting on public health a safety services, child advocacy services, services for seniors and employees who here at the holidays need a paycheck. So I think it's incumbent on everybody in government to work together on this issue," Quinn said.

There are several undercurrents here. First, both Hynes and Quinn are currently running against each other in the Democratic primary for Illinois Governor. Second, what Quinn wants is for Dan Hynes, the State's Treasurer, to approve a plan to have the state issue bonds, or effectively borrow money, to pay its bills and make up its deficit shortfall. It just so happens that the shoe was on the other foot in 1992 and it was Pat Quinn who then vetoed a similar proposal as the State's Comptroller when then Governor Edgar asked for exactly the same thing.

The basic principle is simple here. The state of Illinois has a major budget shortfall is having major troubles paying its bills. Governor Quinn already raised taxes to try and alleviate the shortfall. The state is still well short. Now, he wants to borrow to make up the shortfall. Now, if you have bills and you don't have money, and then you simply max out your credit card to pay the bills, that's robbing Peter to pay Paul.

In other words, you are simply adding another creditor to pay your current creditor. You aren't solving anything. That's what Pat Quinn would like to do. The state doesn't have enough money to pay its bills so he wants to borrow more money to pay those bills. Worse yet, he uses the same tired scare tactics to sell his point: doctors, nurse, teachers and cops will lose their jobs if his scheme isn't passed. He said the exact same thing when he raised the state's income tax by 50%.

He can do all this because the state engages in Enron like accounting. Illinois, like most states, has a balanced budget amendment. So, how does issuing bonds, yet another debt, to pay other debts, balance a budget? It's because there are gimmicks in the budget system. In this case, the only debt to this year's budget would be the payment on the bonds. That may even be zero since there may not even be a payment due. On the other hand, the asset would be the entire worth of the bond. That's because the entire worth of the bond would go into the state's coffers this year. The state's budget is done on a cash flow level. Of course, the yearly payment on the bond would be locked as a debt for every year remaining. Meanwhile, the asset could be used only this year.

It's gimmicks like this that have caused the state to have a bigger and bigger shortfall yearly. It uses gimmicks to balance the budget. These gimmicks place strains on future budgets and voila. Meanwhile, pols often claim that without them teacher, cops and nurses will lose their jobs. Of course, no state ever went bankrupt paying teachers, cops, and nurses. They went bankrupt through waste, fraud and abuse. That's what's happening in Illinois but Quinn, like all pols, fails to see any cuts there.

U of I CSU and the Unfortunate Fusion of Race and Politics

Yesterday, the long saga over the clout scandal at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign (my Alma mater) took it's latest turn.

Gov. Pat Quinn announced Wednesday that he won't fire the two University of Illinois trustees who refused to resign amid an admissions scandal, and he started to rebuild the board with new appointees.

Quinn said trying to remove the holdout trustees would drag the school into a protracted legal battle and he didn't want a "cloud of litigation" hanging over the university. One trustee had vowed to fight Quinn in court

Here's something that isn't likely to be mentioned. The two remaining Trustees that refuse to be pushed out, James Montgomery and Frances Carroll, are both African American. In fact, they're the only two African American trustees left. Governor Quinn is of course white. All of this may in fact be mere coincidence and may mean absolutely nothing.

At the same time, the scandal at Chicago State continues to unfold. That scandal continues to receive little scrutiny from most of the media. At Chicago State, only four of the seven trustee posts are even filled. Some of the three unfilled have been vacant for more than a year. Three of the four are African American. Staff at CSU have repeatedly asked the Governor when he would appoint replacements to the vacant posts and his office has said that he is in the process of making a decision without yet giving a firm timeline.

At the root of both situations is corruption. In the case of the University of Illinois, powerful politicians like Dick Durbin, Michael Madigan and Chris Lauzen made personal appeals to higher ups including members of the board of trustees to reverse admission decisions and often times those that wouldn't have gotten in on their merits got in on their connections.

At Chicago State, the board of trustees appears to be engaged in a power play. Several administrators, including the Director of Human Resources, were fired without cause and their positions remain unfilled. Meanwhile, after a search that cost the school $75000, the school chose as its president Wayne Watson. Watson's appointment wasn't viewed favorably by most of the campus, but he was voted for unanimously by the four trustees. On top of it, Watson was forced to start his presidency two months late because he would violate his pension terms otherwise. His contract with CSU has not yet been augmented, and no emergency meeting has been scheduled to augment it yet. This chain of events appears to be largely orchestrated by the president of the board of trustees, Reverend Leon Finney. Because only four of the seven trustee positions have been filled, the Finance committee is a committee of one at CSU, Leon Finney.

There's an irony here. A cynic would believe that Quinn has allowed for CSU to spin out of control because taking on the board of trustees would expose him to the issue of race. Yet, I've been told that a large part of the staff at CSU that's concerned by what's been happening at the school over the last several months feels that Quinn is ignoring the corruption there because it's mostly African American. At the core both of these scandals are about corruption plain and simple. We'd all like to believe that our public servants would confront corruption regardless of race. There's of course no proof that Quinn is making any decision with an eye on race. What we can't dismiss is that the mixed school with mostly white administrators is getting the bulk of his attention while the school with mostly African American administrators receives very little attention. The audience can draw whatever, if any, conclusions from that.

Scandal At Chicago State?

At the end of May, a scandal broke at Illinois' top public school, the University of Illinois (and my alma mater). The Chicago Tribune reported that powerful politicians within the state including the Speaker of the House in Illinois, Michael Madigan, used their influence to call in favors with members of the board of trustees of the University to help get family and friends into the school that wouldn't otherwise have been accepted. In its aftermath, Governor Pat Quinn quickly created a blue ribbon panel to investigate the situation.

A panel investigating the role that clout played in University of Illinois admissions recommended in its final report released on Thursday that all trustees voluntarily submit their resignations and let Gov. Pat Quinn decide which ones to accept.

In a scathing 45-page report, the Illinois Admissions Review Commission found unqualified students were admitted because of political connections, and recommends that any new trustees conduct a review of the university's president, the chancellor of the Champaign campus and other administrators.

This was all perfectly appropriate and expected. The University of Illinois is an institution in the state and the politicians involved were some of the most powerful in the state. Now, another scandal is growing at another state institution that is receiving far less attention and Governor Quinn is paying far less attention to it.

Chicago State University is a far smaller and more marginal state school (than the University of Illinois that is) on Chicago's South Side. The contract of Interim President Frank G. Pogue’s ended on June 30. At that point, Governor Quinn approved $75000 for a "national search". That national search ended with Wayne Watson. On the one hand, Watson was a curious choice. First, he was running the City Colleges of Chicago at the time meaning the chancellors didn't look very far in their "national search". More than that, Watson is tied to several pieces of corruption and waste. Most recently, Kennedy King college, part of the CCC network, had a $100 million cost overrun in construction of a campus in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. Furthermore, no one involved in the construction could explain the overrun AND crucial documents went missing.

Construction of the new Kennedy-King College campus is more than $110 million over its original budget, and officials can't explain why or locate key documents that could shed light on the spiraling costs.

Project documents obtained by the Daily News also provide little explanation for the overruns on the taxpayer-financed project.

Here's more media coverage of the situation.

The e-mail exchanges between the City Colleges of Chicago and the Public Building Commission — sometimes testy and filled with frustration — detail some of the bottlenecks sent costs spiraling.

The new campus began as a $93 million project. To date, costs exceed $250 million.

The 500 e-mails obtained by the Daily News through the Freedom of Information Act reveal:

In July 2008, the City Colleges noted that special gas line connections for equipment in a massive teaching kitchen had been installed backwards. That took more than six months to fix.

Meanwhile, back in 2002-2006, Watson authorized the PBS station run by the City Colleges, local WYCC, to produce private videos for local politicians like Jesse Jackson Jr.

Under orders from then-Chancellor Wayne Watson, the PBS television station at City Colleges of Chicago used its budget to produce free videos of powerful politicians and friends of the chancellor, an internal college e-mail shows.

The political programs, dating between 2002 and 2006, spawned a state ethics investigation and figure into a new federal lawsuit that alleges the publicly funded WYCC television station violated the terms of its government grant funding and broke federal tax rules for charities.When the station's former manager complained about the political projects, she was fired, according to the lawsuit.

The political programs showcased golf events, a fundraiser and a "State Senate California Trip" in connection with then-State Senate President Emil Jones. Then-Ald. Todd Stroger and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, among others, also were featured in programs.

So, while these scandals all made Watson a curious candidate, there was one thing that made him a natural candidate to take over at CSU. That is that Watson is an ally of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. While it's natural, if they were just going to ask Daley for a lackey of his, the $75,000 the school, using tax payer money, spent for the "national search" seemed wasted.

At the beginning of the month, Watson was introduced to students and staff though he was introduced as President Elect. This is a curious monikor since after all he was never actually elected. It also left the school without a President for the start of the school year. Sources in the school expect Watson to officially be announced President on October 1st. Though nothing beyond "rumors" explain why Watson is still only President Elect. At least one professor thinks that given that Watson is still not technically President he is performing certain functions illegally.

Was the continuous back and forth about the parade an indicator that the "PE" was actually serving in an official capacity? Was the installation of a telecommunication system at the official residence an indication of acting in an official capacity? Were the numerous meetings and requests for information from the "PE" as far back as May an indicator of acting in an official capacity? Who was responsible for giving the movers instructions about what furniture was to go where in the official residence? Was it the "PE"'s official cheerleader and chief sycophant, someone rumored to now be in charge of the marketing efforts for the university. The University Legal Counsel's office has not responded to my Freedom of Information Act requests in the legally mandated time period. What is the "PE" and his masters on the BOT hiding? Will we find out that what we are seeing is simply a continuation of the malfeasance and incompetence of the BOT manifested in the flawed hiring process of the "PE"?

Meanwhile, there are reports that the board of trustees is getting involved in day to day functions of the school in violation of the board policies. There are reports that Board Chairman Leon Finney, Jr. pressured the provost Dr. Sandra Westbrooks to fire a number of administrators. These administrators included VP of Student Affairs, Executive Director of University Relations and Interim VP of the Office of Institutional Advancement. All of these folks were fired without cause.Most of those positions continue to remain unfilled. At the same time, all of the fired administrators continue to receive 90 days worth of benefits because they were fired without cause. Since CSU is a state school, these folks are receiving this severance with state tax payer money.

All of this happens with little media scrutiny and even less scrutiny by the Governor Pat Quinn. All the while, Quinn is pleading for a 50% income tax hike because of a "budget shortfall".