There are 21 million reasons to question the accountability of Illinois paying its dues.

According to the Sept. 30 article in The Daily Eastern News, Illinois owes Eastern $21 million for FY11, which is about 42 percent of our total appropriations.

This is no small chunk of change we are talking about here. It is the equivalent of buying a $3 cup of coffee from Starbucks every day for around the next 20,000 years.

It seems like you can count on the state being behind on payments as much as you can count on there being air to breathe on Earth.

However, the aspect of this situation that seems most questionable is the fact that the state has changed the way it is making its payments.

According to the article, when the state was behind on FY10 payments, they didn’t begin paying FY11 until FY10 was paid off. The state is implementing a different strategy that is making us nervous.

The state has decided to pay FY12 on time, in the amount of about $7 million, and we have not received FY11 payments for nearly three months.

On the surface, it seems like a good thing that the state is taking the initiative to make timely payments for FY12. However, we hope that the state does not think that it can sweep $21 million under the rug.

“We are not digging a hole further but it is still an awful lot of money from last year’s budget that they still owe us,” Treasurer Paul McCann said in the article.

The fact that the state is behind on such a large amount deters Eastern from buying supplies, doing construction and hiring faculty and staff members as others leave the university.

“Unfortunately, I think it makes it difficult for a lot of the faculty who are not getting all of the supplies they might need,” McCann said in the article. “We play a balancing game trying to keep enough money going into that process, but we do not always succeed.”

Eastern has been staying afloat by making these expense cuts and being conservative with funds, but doing so is a band-aid to the problem, not a solution.

Playing the waiting game is putting us on edge and $21 million is not going to be forgotten easily.

Hopefully the state will try to pay for FY11 and FY12, but right now the state seems to be freezing its payments for FY11.

The state should be more clear as to why they are not paying FY10 so Eastern can better plan its own budget.