ubernatorial campaigns, especially in Illinois, tend to be divisive. It seems like almost daily voters are bombarded with another scandal, real or imagined. In this election, alleged job scams and pending federal investigations have become as commonplace as baby kissing. Then there's the constant, counter-accusations between Governor Blagojevich and Treasurer Topinka over which of these two, current candidates for governor is most like the state's recently convicted, former governor, George Ryan. But this focus on scandal and insinuation really doesn't offer much substance

It also distracts voters from the crucial, substantive points upon which all three candidates for governor (yes, three, the Green Party candidate Rich Whitney made it onto the ballet) agree, that Illinois needs to enhance school funding and pay its bills on time, but can't, because the state is broke. Illinois simply doesn't have enough revenue to fund the current level of public services delivered, much less the needed revenue growth to meet future service demands or deliver transformative change, like school funding reform.

Two candidates, Topinka and Whitney, explicitly recognize the problems caused by the state's deficit. Topinka sets the deficit amount at $3.1 billion, citing Comptroller Dan Hynes as her source. She then proposes to raise revenue to fill this gap, and make a significant new investment in education, by creating a high-end, land-based casino in Chicago, and cutting $2.9 billion from anticipated Medicaid growth. Whitney acknowledges the same $3.1 billion deficit as Topinka, but rather than reduce Medicaid or rely on gaming, he proposes comprehensive tax reform, so Illinois will have the ongoing revenue needed both to eliminate the deficit and implement school funding reform

Blagojevich doesn't explicitly recognize the state's deficit with words, but implicitly acknowledges its existence through actions. In the current fiscal year, the Illinois tax system failed, yet again, to produce enough revenue to maintain last year's public services, plus make the full contribution owed to the public employee pension systems, plus pay private healthcare providers for all Medicaid services delivered to low-income populations. To avoid painful cuts to needed services, the administration created a budget that: underfunds the required pension contribution by $1.1 billion; defers into next year at least $1.7 billion in Medicaid reimbursements Illinois owes healthcare providers this year; and sweeps $200 million from dedicated funds to support general operations. Add that together, and voila, you get $3 billion―almost the exact same deficit as Topinka and Whitney. Realizing tax revenue won't do the job, Blagojevich proposes selling or leasing the Lottery to fund his education plan

Without some fundamental reform, be it a sustainable, recurring revenue increase or significant spending cuts, the state's financial picture will worsen. Determining how much the deficit will grow during the next five years isn't that tough. If you adjust both current revenues and current public service costs by inflation (using the consumer price index) and population growth over the next five years, and assume the economy grows by 4 percent annually, you can easily compare revenue growth to cost growth to see whether the deficit increases, and if so, by how much. The bad news is that, without a change in law, the state's deficit is likely to double to $6 billion is just five short years

As the state's fiscal condition deteriorates, current economic trends indicate the demand for public services will grow. A recent University of Illinois at Chicago study concluded that year-round workers increasingly rely on public assistance to make ends meet, because their wages are "too low to support families." Meanwhile, Illinois has a shortage of affordable housing stock, transit funding issues, declining incomes, and an inadequate, unfair school funding system. Not to mention that 15 percent of the state's workers lost their private employer-provided health insurance over the last decade and a half, which will certainly push even more working families to seek public assistance in obtaining healthcare

Now, I enjoy reading about a good political scandal as much as the next guy. But the seminal issues confronting our state are its fundamental inability to pay its bills, satisfy growing demand for services and reform how it funds schools. This election season, the candidates and voters would be better served with a break from the sensational, and a focus on the meaningful

Ralph Martire is executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a bipartisan fiscal policy think tank. You can reach him at rmartire@ctbaonline.org