© 2024 WNIJ and WNIU
Northern Public Radio
801 N 1st St.
DeKalb, IL 60115
815-753-9000
Northern Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
WNIJ's summary of news items around our state.

Report: Illinois Has 'Third Deficit' That Needs Attention

Illinois Rules of the Road 2014

If you took a car trip in Illinois this summer, you might think there is plenty of roadwork going on. But a new analysis finds the state would need to bring in billions of dollars in additional revenue to maintain its infrastructure.

Martin Luby wrote the report for the University of Illinois’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs. He says the state would need a minimum of four billion dollars annually to spend on infrastructure in the coming decades.

Luby says Illinois’s other budget problems overshadowed the need for capital investments – which help bolster the state’s economy.

“Infrastructure has to be at the table,” Luby said. “It needs to be considered, and that’s one thing that’s probably not been the case because it’s easy to ignore when you have these more near term financial crises that you have to deal with.”

But Luby says if the work does not get done, it could hurt the state’s economy.

“People and businesses — they look to infrastructure in making their locational decision,” Luby said. “To the extent that we’re not investing in or maintaining our infrastructure, we’re really undermining our economic base. People aren’t going to locate there. Businesses aren’t going to locate there, so our tax base is going to decline.”

Illinois operated without a long-term capital construction plan for more than a year. Annual work and maintenance continue on a smaller scale.