Fly The Corrupt Skies

5:46 pm, 5/23/05

Fly The Corrupt Skies
The Governor's staff continue to ride on our dime:

Helping steer Illinois through a financial crisis keeps John Filan on the move.

Chicago to Springfield. Springfield to Chicago. The governor's budget director flies on state aircraft nearly once every 2 1/2 days as he tries to find ways to control costs.

I'm just going to insert a brief pause here so that can sink in.

In fact, Filan's 210 flights during the first two years of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration was nearly twice as many as the previous budget director took in nearly four years. Typically Filan, who lives in Chicago, flies on one of the six daily shuttle flights the state operates between Chicago and the capital.

The agencies pay for the flights, but those payments cover only a portion of the real costs. That means the state Transportation Department, using some funds meant for road work, has subsidized state aircraft travel by hundreds of thousands of dollars - amid three straight years of budget deficits in excess of $1 billion, agency cutbacks and layoffs.

Administration officials argue that while flights might be up, Blagojevich has cut general travel costs by 21 percent since he took office.

There's no reason he can't cut them further, what with us being a billion dollars in the hole, is there? Besides, what about the quarter of a million dollars of the tab that IDOT picks up?

[E]mployees under Blagojevich have jumped on state planes 15,000 times. That's 3,100 - or 27 percent - more than those under Ryan in his first 27 months in office.

More than 90 percent of those flights were between Chicago and Springfield.

"We have more people in senior positions that are out of Chicago than there was in the past," Blagojevich budget spokeswoman Becky Carroll said. "It is what it is."

Carroll and Filan, by the way, both cashed in big time on the rule that allows them to make the state pay for their Springfield apartments.

"Do we have the seat of government where it should be?" Risinger [(R-Peoria)] asked.

"You don't deliberately say, 'This is a hell of a deal, I'm going to use it all I can,' but if it's there and you want to do something, it's a hell of a lot more convenient to take a helicopter or a plane than to drive," said Black [(R-Danville)], who has tried unsuccessfully to get the General Assembly to order an audit of air operations.

Look, I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Illinois already supplements federal subsidy of Amtrak. How hard would it be to hop the morning train to Springfield and the evening train back to Chicago? Business class is something like $35. In a time when the state is this far in the crapper, is it that much of a stretch to ask the Governor's staff to walk among the peasants for a couple hours?