This is exactly the sort of thing taxpayers can easily get their minds around…

The Illinois Department on Aging plans to move from two state-owned locations in Springfield where it pays no rent into a private office building where it will lease space for more than $530,000 a year.

The department said the move was in the works before the state’s financial problems hit and that it will enable all department employees to be in one location.

OK, hold it right there. “Before the state’s financial problems hit”? When was that? August of 2001?

Let’s continue…

Beginning July 1, Aging will lease space in the Jefferson Terrace office building in the 300 block of West Jefferson Street in Springfield. Information posted on the state’s procurement Web site said the state will lease 49,214 square feet of space for five years at a total cost of $3.3 million. That comes to about $662,000 a year, or $13.45 a square foot.

$13 billion budget deficit? Difficult, if not impossible to conjure by your average voter. But this goofy plan? Real easy to digest. Well, not so easy to digest, but you get the picture.

Isn’t there a lot of open space in IDOT’s building out by I-55? And is it really so all-important that the department be put in one building while the state is literally scrounging around for every dime to pay vendors, universities and schools?

Stupid. Just stupid. They richly deserve whatever ridicule is coming their way.

Read more at the Capital Fax