CHICAGO (WBBM) – Illinois lawmakers warn that reality is catching up with them as they grapple with the state’s budget problems this Spring.

At a forum put on by the Center for Budget and Tax Accountability, State Rep. John Bradley, and State Sen. Toi Hutchinson said Illinois must make some fundamental changes in budget and taxation, or else.

Bradley, a Democrat from Marion, said he and his colleague are trying to get the discussion going.

“We have an antiquated unfair taxing system in the state on all levels whether it be income tax, property tax, or sales tax, and Sen. Hutchinson is leading the charge and trying to come up with a more fair system.”

“If you have an eight cylinder car, and it’s only running on five cylinders, you’re not going to go very fast, and I think it would be safe to say that the State of Illinois taxing policy is not running on all cylinders,” Bradley said.

Hutchinson, an Olympia Fields Democrat, said that another problem is with school funding.

“We don’t have a normal funding mechanism for schools in this state. We are seriously over-reliant on property taxes and all of the conversations that happened over the last fifteen, twenty years about whether there should be a property tax, income tax squat to make sure that we can get more funds to schools, which is something that I think a lot of people on both sides of the isle understood the merits of. We have never accomplished that,” Hutchinson said.

And, neither taxes nor school funding have proven easy to reform.