By David Stanczak
The Chicago State Cougars’ usual function is to provide annual tune-ups for the University of Illinois basketball team. Today, CSU is performing a more vital role: Canary. As in the canary in the mine shaft, which warns miners by dying, that they need to save themselves from a toxic situation, and quickly.
Chicago State is running out of money, literally.It may not make payroll in March. In this, CSU is not fundamentally different from ISU; it is just closer to disaster resulting from the State’s failure to get its financial house in order. Located where it is , having the high percentage of non-traditional students that it has (people working and going to school on their own dimes rather than mommy and daddy’s), and lacking a host of well-heeled donors to endow it with money, Chicago State is totally reliant on State money to keep afloat (or at least close to the surface).
The money isn’t likely to come soon. The State is locked in a battle, the outcome of which is in doubt, to determine whether the public sector unions and the politicians beholden to them will continue to run the state. The State has dodged one bullet; the General Assembly sustained a Rauner veto of a bill that would have allowed an unelected arbitrator to give the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees the additional $1.6 billion in pay and benefits it is still holding out for (despite the fact that the other public sector unions have already pulled in their horns and recognized reality).
Bruce Rauner has taken a lot of heat for his insistence on fundamental reforms. In doing so, Rauner is fighting the same battle Scott Walker more articulately fought successfully in Wisconsin. The Democrats, led by Mike Madigan, want business as usual to continue, failing to acknowledge that the State is heading toward a fiscal precipice. The Democrats call themselves the champions of the downtrodden. If they really were, they’d do something to keep CSU afloat. What they don’t call themselves is the tools of the public sector unions. Those two constituencies (the downtrodden and the public sector unions) are now colliding. Let’s see which one they prefer.
The biggest difference between Mike Madigan and Nero is that Madigan didn’t start the fire. He’s just letting it burn.
David Stanczak, a Forum commentator since 1995, came to Bloomington in 1971. He served as the City of Bloomington’s first full-time legal counsel for over 18 years, before entering private practice. He is currently employed by the Snyder Companies and continues to reside in Bloomington with his family.
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