When it rains, it pours

Published on 4/15/02 Daily Egyptian (SIUC)

I should have gone to Galena this weekend. My life would have been so much easier. The Illinois Press Photographer's Association and its Iowa counterpart had a conference in Galena, and several members of my photojournalism class took a van up there. I stayed here to play Boy Scout again. It was a Pack-wide camp out, Scouts and their families. Not a bad sounding weekend, but it got off to a rough start with the heavy rains that hit just as I was setting up my tent, only to find the rain fly had gotten separated from the bundle and was sitting at home in the garage. Fortunately, I had a roll of plastic in the van, and we were able to keep most of the rain out until I could run home for the rest of my tent. I ended up with only an inch or so of water in the tent. Saturday was gray but dry, and I thought my problems were behind me. Until my cell phone rang. I carry the phone on these outings for emergencies, but usually I expect the emergencies to be out going, not incoming.

My wife, who stayed home, called to let me know we had two inches of water everywhere - all the drains in the house were flowing backward. The main sewer line for the house chose this weekend to close up, and every time the sump pump under the house kicked on, it back flowed on us - everywhere. I can be a handy guy, but this was a bit out of my league. So I called the property manager, who called every sewer service in the book. They either weren't answering or the phones were disconnected. Maybe they all went to Galena this weekend. I'm tempted to just kill the circuit breaker to the sump pump until the sewer guy shows up. It would stop the cyclic overflowing of my toilets and would make the problem appear to go away. But the sewer line would still be clogged, and the water collecting under the house could eventually cause new problems.

Not unlike the choices facing our state government in the battle to fix our ailing budget. Gov. George Ryan's approach seems to amount to taking a sharp machete to the budget, hacking away at things like prisons, mental health facilities and state parks. Some even think that Ryan is centering on Southern Illinois. I don't know if this is entirely true, but we do seem be getting hit hard. And some of those hits, like the Vienna Prison and Choate Mental Health Development Center, will hurt a lot. Ryan is focusing too much on cutting, and cutting in the wrong areas. Why not take a knife and trim some fat? Ryan is not running for reelection, so trimming fat should be no more politically damaging than the wholesale lopping he's looking at doing. Maybe it is time for a small tax increase. Sen. Larry Woolard has suggested temporarily raising the state income tax from 3 percent to 3.5 percent.

Raising taxes sounds bad, especially in an election year, but the reality of the tax increase would amount to only $5 a month for a family of four with an income of $20,000 per year. Frankly, I'm all for lower taxes, but in the long run an increase may have to be part of the solution. Cutting state jobs needlessly would also cut state income when the newly unemployed no longer have a paycheck to tax, not to mention the damage to local economies. The budget needs some work and some careful consideration to get not only through the current crisis, but to avoid the same problem next year and beyond. It cannot be fixed quickly and easily, like turning off a switch.