Fiscal Focus

              In This Issue:
• JANUARY 2008 ISSUE •
Operational spending provides the founda-tion
for state government to provide servic-es
to the residents of Illinois. Whether it is
to pay a state employee’s salary, buy paper
and postage, or keep a computer running
with a database of automobile titles and
drivers’ licenses, dollars spent for opera-tional
costs are a basic component of state
government. [See definitions on page 3.]
As further detailed below, the largest part
of operations spending is for personal serv-ices,
and the Early Retirement Initiative
(ERI) offered in 2002 resulted in an imme-diate
reduction in state employees and con-comitant
reductions in spending for per-sonal
services, commodities, equipment,
telecommunications and so forth. Total
personal services spending was $99.6 mil-lion
lower in fiscal year 2007 than it was in
fiscal year 2002. Despite this reduction, a
component of personal services, regular
positions spending, increased by $33.9
million. Notable in this increase for regular
positions spending was a shift away from
the General Funds to other appropriated
funds, especially the Road Fund.
Expenditures for group insurance increased
as costs of medical coverage continue to
move up, as did spending for retirement to
meet the requirements of Illinois’ 1995 pen-sion
funding plan. Also, spending for con-tractual
services, lump sums and automo-tive
equipment increased to levels higher
than in fiscal year 2002. Even areas where
operations spending was lower in fiscal year
2007 than in fiscal year 2002, such as
telecommunications, commodities and
equipment, have had increases since fiscal
year 2004, the first full year after the ERI.
Similar to the case with spending for regu-lar
positions, there was a shift away from
the General Funds in supporting total
operations spending. In fiscal year 2002,
the General Funds accounted for 57.2% of
total state operations spending, but by fis-cal
year 2007 that percentage had dropped
to 51.1%.
The following is an analysis of major cat-egories
of operational spending. Only
expenditures from appropriated accounts
were analyzed, and higher education
expenditures were excluded. [A review of
operations spending for higher education
is presented separately on page 7.]
Personal Services
The largest area of operations spending
and one of the slowest growing is person-al
services. Personal services spending
includes salaries for regular state employ-ees
under the regular positions line and
salaries for judges, elected officials and
extra help under other personal services.
As shown in the table on page 3, total appro-priated
spending for personal services of
$3.893 billion in fiscal year 2007 was about
$100 million lower than in fiscal year 2002,
but it was $221 million more than in fiscal year
2004, the first full year of annualized savings
from the ERI. The growth occurred even
though personal services spending has been
significantly impacted by the ERI which
reduced the number of state employees by
approximately 12,000.
Cover Story ........................front cover, 3-7
Letter From The Comptroller ................... 2
Budget Implementation Bill Finalizes
Fiscal Year 2008 Spending Plan ... 2, 8-10, 12
Professional Service Charges ............ 11
State Employee Payroll:
More Than Just a Paycheck ...........12, 13
State Government
Employment Levels.............................. 14
August 2007 Tables .............................. 15
September 2007 Tables........................ 16
October 2007 Tables............................. 17
November 2007 Tables......................... 18
December 2007 Tables ......................... 19
Did You Know............................back cover
A Publication of the Illinois State Comptroller
Fiscal Focus
A Closer Look at State
Operations Spending
Cover Story continued, page 3