After the Republicans lost full control of the Illinois General Assembly eight
years ago, they rushed through several bills in January 1997, just before giving
the House gavel to the Democrats.
The state Constitution requires that lame-duck General Assemblies muster a three-fifths majority to pass any bills that take effect after the next May 31. The intent was to encourage on-time adjournments and prevent postelection General Assemblies from focusing on much more than veto overrides. But there’s a little-known constitutional loophole: The clock automatically restarts on Jan. 1, when simple-majority votes again are all that are needed to approve bills. Back in January 1997, Republican lawmakers used that loophole to pass a controversial legislative package with simple majority votes.
Now rumors are flying that a riverboat-gaming expansion, a tax hike for the Chicago Transit Authority, and a public-works bill are all possibilities for this coming January’s two-day session.
The governor, who was in Rockford last week, said that he was open to the possibility of putting a riverboat there. Blagojevich also met briefly with Rockford’s GOP state Sen. Dave Syverson, who said later that he was optimistic about a gaming bill’s emerging in January.
The governor has denied twice before that he has told legislators in private that he would support more gaming after they told reporters what he said, and there’s no reason to suspect that he won’t repeat himself here.
Still, the governor’s people have been floating the idea of a mega January for the past few weeks, so Syverson’s comments fit the pattern.
On the other hand, the governor has publicly hedged and flip-flopped so much on the gaming issue that there’s no guarantee he won’t deny saying that he’s “open to limited expansion of gambling to help ease state budget woes,” as the Rockford Register-Star put it. In the past, the governor has said the state shouldn’t use easy money from new gaming revenues to avoid making hard budget decisions.
Some of the revenue generated by a gaming expansion would most likely be used to fund a new round of public-works projects, as well as the long list of the governor’s pet projects that he announced last year with much fanfare, then had to abandon when he realized he didn’t have any money to pay for them.
Meanwhile, Chicago’s WBBM-TV (Channel 2) is reporting that legislators will consider a bill in January to raise $300 million to bail out the Chicago Transit Authority. CTA faces a financial shortfall and is threatening to cut services and raise fares.
Most of this talk about a busy January seems to be coming from the governor and his Senate Democratic allies. House Speaker Michael Madigan has yet to sign off on anything, particularly a gaming-expansion bill, and his spokesman has tried to dump cold water on much of the January-frenzy speculation. It’s probably safe to say that unless the governor publicly gets out front of the casino and CTA bills, it’s doubtful that Madigan will let Democratic House members vote for something the governor might not really support — not to mention that the CTA idea faces stiff opposition from suburban and downstate Republicans and will not be viewed kindly by noncity Democrats.
Then there’s the governor himself. Blagojevich has proved that he can kill a bill when he wants to, but passing something big has eluded him since his first year in office. His style is to confront, not to conciliate — a necessary skill in passing any major new initiative, particularly anything so controversial as a tax hike and a gaming-expansion bill. The goodies he’d have to give Republicans to pass that CTA tax hike would be beyond anything he’s done to date. And the Senate Democratic leadership has never shown much of an interest in working with Republican members, making the CTA prospect’s that much more remote.
If Madigan gets on board, then maybe it’s a hot January. If not, all this
talk is just that: talk.
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2004.
