By Cynthia Grau/WJEZ News

There is a lot of work to be done in Springfield and State Representative Tom Bennett is looking ahead into 2017.

Bennett was a guest on a recent Community Forum described why the State has the problems it has.

“Twelve thousand students, or so, a year are leaving for school. We have $11 billion of unpaid bills. Forty thousand vouchers or thereabouts, or in other words, bills that people submit. Pensions is a very serious issue, where we let things go down the road so much that it’s about 25 percent of the general revenue fund. We bring in about $32 billion a year of that, and about 25 percent, or $7 billion plus, and that goes into pensions, where if we would have kept the payments up every year, we could use that difference in money for education, social services, etc, and now we really have ourselves in a bind,” Bennett said.

Bennett’s Forum continues tomorrow morning at 6:45, where he gives listeners a thorough update on what they’re currently working on in Springfield.