Gov. Pat Quinn will be giving his formal State of the State address on Wed. Jan 13.

But with just a little prompting from La Salle County Board Chairman Jerry Hicks, D-Marseilles, State Rep. Careen Gordon, D-Morris, spun her own informal version of the state of the state on Monday at the meeting with the La Salle County Board's Legislation and Rules Committee.

"The deficit is approximately $12 billion dollars. When the defendant" — her term for impeached former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, "I refer to him as the defendant because that's what he is — came into office it was between $4 billion and $6 billion that he inherited from the prior administration."

"The prior convict," suggested Tom Ganiere, D-Ottawa, in reference to imprisoned former Gov. George Ryan.

"Thank you," said Gordon, who then continued.

"It jumped up so quickly because when Gov. Quinn took over it was determined in his first 30 days in office that invoices were being withheld by the defendant's office. So when everything was given to Comptroller (Daniel) Hynes and a complete audit was done, it was actually determined that the deficit had gone up to $11 billion or $12 billion. Until then we didn't actually know how much was owed by the state."

Gordon's visit was the second time in as many meetings that a local legislator accepted an invitation to get together with committee members to exchange views on county and state concerns. Last month, state Sen. Gary Dahl, R-Peru, was the guest.

The discussion ranged on a number of topics.

The county's funding problem for its juvenile detention home was among the first discussed. A lack of promised funds from the state has forced the county to pick up an increased share of the home's operational costs.

Gordon said one solution may be to create multi-county detention centers. She said that not only would be a solution for counties like La Salle that are having funding problems, but also a solution for small counties that could not even think about funding their own.

Unfairness in educational funding also was discussed.

"In La Salle County I have both the Seneca and Marseilles school districts. In one school district I have fifth-graders taking quizzes and tests on hand-held computers, and in other one they say 'We need textbooks and we need to keep our library open. Is there anyway you can get us a computer lab?' Those districts are just five miles apart."

For a while the discussion turned to tax increment financing districts, which are used by municipalities to channel the property tax revenues that would go to public schools and other local governments to help fund private development projects.

Gordon said she was opposed to the "rape and pillage" strictly residential tax increment financing districts.

"I think purely residential TIFs are ridiculous. Mixed use is fine, as long as there's some commercial development in there as well. ...

"The purpose of TIFs was not to give a tax break to someone building homes. They are supposed to bring in business and economic development."

Ganiere said lack of control over municipal TIFs was a problem for the other local governments with TIFs.

"If the cities don't want to negotiate they don't have to. To say that is only unfair is very minimizing. There should be some king of at least minimum share (of the new tax money) the cities should have to give the other taxing districts ...

"That money has to be made up someplace else, so, in essence, it causes other property taxes to go up."

"If (a municipality) wants to put one in and they want to thumb their nose at all the other taxing districts they can do that," said Rick Scott, D-Ottawa.

Gordon also discussed the challenges of being a legislator.

For example, she said, there was a movement to make it a felony crime to abuse animals.

"I have pets and I'm sympathetic. But you know what, it's not a felony to commit domestic battery, so to me that's somewhat disproportionate, so I killed the bill on that in committee a year ago. The result was I got just horrible e-mails from the animal lovers telling me that I was just awful and probably killed puppies and everything else.

"But you can only do so much, because you're only allowed by the system to do so much."