Gov. Pat Quinn’s State of the State address Wednesday ran long in words, but Sen. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon, thinks it ran short on substance.

“Don’t expect to find anything significant about the budget, it’s not there,” Righter said. “To be fair, this is not his budget address, that is coming in February, but he should have devoted more than a handful of minutes in an 80-minute speech to talking about the budget, because it’s what’s on everyone’s mind.”

The state is billions of dollars behind in payments to state-funded organizations.

Universities and community colleges comprise $850 million of that funding backlog, according to the Illinois Federation of Teachers.

“The news is not good for universities,” Righter said. “If you count all of the bills that are due right now, it’s in the neighborhood of $10 billion.”

The exact deficit amount is unknown; it could fall anywhere between $5 billion and $10 billion, despite a constantly rising annual tax revenue.

“In the last seven years, this state’s annual tax revenue has increased by $7 billion, with a cumulative increase of over $20 billion,” Righter said. “The problem is the growth in spending has exceeded even that.”

Quinn did not address any specific plans for fixing the budget in his speech.

He called for an overhaul that he said would make the tax burden fairer while also producing more money for the state, but did not specifically renew his call for a 50 percent increase to income tax.

Righter and many other state legislators are opposed to the proposed increase without a major overhaul in governmental spending.

“(The governor and senate and house leaders) are the only elected officials in Springfield willing to support income tax increases as things are right now,” Righter said. “Constituents aren’t willing to pay more for something they know is already broken.”

Righter used Medicaid as an example of what is going wrong with the state’s budget.

“Medicaid has been growing at a rate of 8 percent a year,” he said. “That’s generally twice the rate of the rest of the budget. You have to slow the rate of that growth. We need to reign that back in. You need to say now, ‘We’re not expanding that program any more.'”

Righter believes the moratorium on spending increases should be extended across the board.

“Groups come to Springfield every year looking to get state funding for their organization,” Righter said. “It is nothing short of irresponsible to say yes to that when we’re so far behind on our payments. Stop increasing spending and work on paying your bills.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Sarah Ruholl can be reached at 581-7942

or at [email protected]