States can learn a lot about what not to do by watching Illinois’ legislature scramble to fill fiscal deficits by pulling back on investments to fix crumbling roads, bridges and transit.

Recently, the Illinois General Assembly trumpeted a somber but triumphant proclamation about a budget resolution passed but it was accompanied with a list of “cutbacks”— raids on other state funds collected for a wide range of purposes for the purposes of filling a fiscal hole. Fully half of the $1.3 billion raided was originally intended for infrastructure—roads, transit, renewable energy—and local government.

Filling a hole in your fiscal backyard is not wise governing, and cutting back transit, roads and renewable energy investments just means we’re digging a deeper hole to fill this one.

The money allocated to transit helps people avoid the high cost of automobile ownership; the funds collected for energy efficiency and renewable energy help avoid the high costs of new power plants and stabilize rates and customer bills. Maintaining the quality of roads, water, stormwater, bridges and environmental assets is an investment in a functioning economy, which we're counting on to (guess what) have a large enough base to tax so that we can get out of the mess we're in.

At some point, elected leaders have to face the reality that to avoid crumbling infrastructure may mean asking for voter approved tax increases.

Studies by the Pew Center on the States, the Nelson Rockefeller Institute of Government and Governing magazine show that taxpayers respond better to a clear choice rather than to arbitrary promises, particularly when it involves getting a return on investment. Cities' and states' referendums where citizens vote to tax themselves for very tangible outcomes, such as roads, transit and better environmental assets, averaged a 73.6 percent success rate over the past three years, according to the Center for Transportation Excellence. Such measures have raised as much as or more than the federal transit program.

Illinois must find the revenue to maintain basic infrastructure if the state wants to remain a place worth living and doing business in.

The complete version of this post originally appeared in Crain's Chicago Business.