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For several weeks now, the Illinois General
Assembly’s spring session has been a slow-motion train wreck. Those
of us who work at the Statehouse are moving around in real time, watching
it happen all around us and saying to ourselves, “Oh, this is gonna
hurt.”
The state’s top Democrats — Gov. Rod
Blagojevich, Senate President Emil Jones, and House Speaker Michael Madigan
— can’t seem to get along with each other. The governor’s
$7 billion gross-receipts tax has proved so politically toxic that it has
virtually no support in either legislative chamber. Blagojevich has
threatened to veto any alternative that increases income or sales taxes,
which is making a negotiated deal almost impossible. The financial problems
facing the state, however, are very real and need to be addressed. There are at least three possible outcomes to this
circus of a session, although things have a way of changing fast around
here:
• The three leaders finally put their animosity
aside and sit down and cut a deal on a scaled-back version of the
gross-receipts tax and add in such things as gaming expansion, a lottery
lease, and a few other magic tricks to boost the total revenue package. • Failing a deal, Madigan sends the Senate some
sort of income/sales-tax increase to boost education spending and provide
property-tax relief and Jones has to decide whether he wants to abandon the
governor, with whom he’s been allied all year, and then risk a
summer-long fight with Blagojevich after the governor vetoes the tax hike. • Lawmakers adopt a maintenance budget. The
governor warned last week that a “do-nothing” budget would
result in a billion dollars in spending cuts, but this option is starting
to look good to some Democratic legislators who would rather be on the
anti-tax increase side of a summer argument. The governor didn’t
convince many legislators that this was a bad move by warning that some
high-school football teams wouldn’t be able to afford new jerseys if
legislators tried to leave town without a tax hike. First of all, the vast
majority of high schools don’t use taxpayer dollars for things such
as jerseys (that’s why they sell candy), and, second, if that’s
the worst thing that could happen, why bother raising taxes and freaking
out the voters? The one thing that could prevent the General Assembly
from passing a bare-bones budget and walking out the door is the
electric-rate situation. Something has to be done about this, because
downstaters absolutely don’t want to go home without any significant
progress on rolling back Ameren’s gigantic rate hikes. To get that
accomplished, Madigan will have to either back off from his demand that the
Chicago-based utility ComEd be included in deep rate cuts or Jones will
have to throw his close pals at ComEd (who contribute big bucks to his
campaign fund and whose parent company has a contract with his stepson)
over the side. It is the single issue that could prevent a total meltdown
and keep everyone talking. Fear — specifically the fear of voters’
wrath — is always an overriding emotion in politics. Electric-utility
rate hikes, talk of gigantic tax increases, the legislative pay raise, and
other hot-button issues have energized the electorate in a highly negative
way. Candidate filing begins in August this year because of the early 2008
primary, so the session will still be fresh in many minds then. Heck,
it’s even possible that the spring session will still be going on
when filing starts — not a good thing for those worried about running
in the midterm elections next year. There’s also a slowly dawning realization at
the Statehouse that voters will cast their ballots next year on whether to
hold a state constitutional convention. Failure, whether it’s defined
as the passage of a highly unpopular tax hike or as doing nothing to
address the very serious problems facing the state, could spark passage of
the referendum, and that could lead to all sorts of unexpected
consequences. It’s still within the realm of possibility that
cooler heads will prevail, personal grudges will be set aside, reality will
sink in, or whatever, and the Democratic leaders will remember that
they’re all in the same party and decide to craft a reasonable
compromise. But the daunting nature of the problems, combined with the real
pain that any solution (or lack thereof) would cause, requires that any
détente take place pretty darned soon. As always in situations like this, don’t get
your hopes up too high.
Rich Miller publishes Capitol
Fax, a daily political newsletter, and
thecapitolfaxblog.com.
This article appears in May 10-16, 2007.
