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Yesterday we mentioned Gov. Quinn is exploring the early release of many non-violent inmates as a means to help cut from the state budget. Now, reports say the number of inmates released could go as high as 10,000 in a bid to save up to $125 million on the budget.
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This is a joke. He is just using scare tactics to ram through an income tax hike. "If we don't raise taxes, you might be attacked and killed by one of the released inmates!" Shameful. If you are going to raise taxes, at least explain the situation honestly to voters. Also, he should at least pretend that he has tried to cut expenses in some areas. He makes it seem as if the budget consists of 100% essential services and there is no slack anywhere.
What expenses would you cut?
What would I cut? I'm not going to pretend to be familiar with the expenses in the budget. However, I am going to go out on a limb and say that there are workers who are employed who are not needed, that there are units of government that might be bloated, programs that are not working, etc. After reading stories about Ryan and Blago appointing multiple friends to jobs with salaries over $100k and 100% pensions, I feel comfortable that there is waste somewhere. Obviously the state can't cut its way out of this hole they are in, but raising taxes w/o cutting just kicks the can down the road once again.
Its not the raising taxes that bothers me as much as the scare tactics - don't try to scare us by telling us that inmates will be roaming the streets looking for blood if we don't raise taxes. Arnold did the same thing in CA.
He is cutting expenses: the amount of money Illinois and other states spend to incarcerate non-violent (mostly drug) offenders is astronomical and fiscally unsound. Honestly, I can't think of a better area to cut expenses in than our bloated, ineffectual prison system.
Well, maybe some of those IDOT workers that never seem to leave their trucks could be axed too...
I think this is a great idea, I hope he does it. Maybe we can chip away at our shamefully high incarceration rate, the highest in the world.
Non-violent criminals? Please release all the potheads, I'm sure there's upwards of 10,000 who are locked up just for growing some doobage.