September 12, 2008

This Week’s House Action

The House completed its work this week in one day rather than the two that were scheduled.  As advertised, the House took up and passed a capital funding plan, but no actual capital budget. 

In addition, the House passed legislation to sweep more than $200 million from a long list of dedicated funds and appropriated the money to programs and facilities hit especially hard by the Governor’s budget cuts, primarily social services, state parks and historic sites.  The funds sweeps were originally very harmful for many in the business community, but their negative impact was diminished when the sponsor, Rep. Gary Hannig, made substantial changes to the funds to be swept.

The capital funding bill is a re-worked version of a lottery lease passed by the Senate at the end of spring session.  The premise is the same - a private vendor will pay at least $10 billion to the State up front in exchange for right to run and profit from the lottery for decades to come – but the House made several changes to the Senate version.  The most notable improvements are provisions that are intended to ensure the integrity of the bidding process and the ongoing oversight of the contract.  Also, new provisions were added to help ensure that the funds will actually be spent on projects specified by the legislature and not on the Governor’s pet projects.

While the Illinois Chamber believes a lottery lease has the potential to help fund a much needed capital program, the piecemeal approach of passing funding separate from the spending side is problematic.  In addition, the spending plan envisioned by the House would lease the lottery for decades, but fund only a three-year pay-as-you-go capital plan. 

Prospects for the plan are uncertain in the Senate and are not likely to be known for some weeks.  The Senate President announced that he does not plan to convene the Senate again until after the November election.

Fate of “Pay-to-Play” Bill Up in the Air

As expected, the House overwhelmingly override the Governor’s amendatory veto to HB 824, legislation intended to reign-in the Governor’s fundraising from state contractors.  The Governor had described his veto as an “improvement” of the bill, but most believe provisions he added were intended as poison pills meant to kill the legislation.

The action now turns to the Illinois Senate and to the Illinois Constitution.  The Constitution requires the Senate to act on the House override within 15 days or the entire bill will die.  However, the Senate President declared yesterday that his interpretation of the requirement is that the 15 day deadline does not begin until the Senate returns for Veto Session in November.

Chamber Releases ’07-’08 Legislative Rating, Champions of Free Enterprise

The Illinois Chamber has released its legislative ratings for the 95th General Assembly.  In addition, the Chamber has named its 2008 Champions of Free Enterprise, the award given to legislators with the very best records over the last two General Assemblies.

As with any year, this year’s ratings are an important tool, though only one tool, to judge legislators’ support for employers and the economy.  In ’08 and ‘07, the unprecedented nature of the legislative action made compilation of the ratings especially challenging.  Our goal is to present the best representation of legislators’ records possible to our members and the public.  However, the fact remains that we cannot rate issues if a representative roll call vote was not taken.

For this reason, some of the very biggest issues are not included in this year’s ratings.  For example:

• Gross Receipts Tax – The Governor’s $8 billion tax on employers never received a formal up or down vote in the House or Senate.  The Chamber was left to consider a recorded vote on a non-binding resolution in the House.  The vote was rendered almost meaningless when the Governor urged his supporters to vote for the resolution, even though many were actively working for its passage.
• Structural Work Act – A late surprise in the session, the Structural Work Act passed out of House committee, awaiting a vote by the full House.  The vote was never taken due to the opposition of all Republicans, and many House Democrats.
• 7% Assessment Cap – This issue didn’t have too few votes, it had too many.  Over many months, multiple rollcalls on several different versions of the bill were taken in both House and Senate.  Chamber staff deemed none of the votes defensible as truly representative.

A review of the ratings will show that, in general, Republicans score better than Democrats.  We thank our Republican supporters and continue to work hard to narrow that gap among Democrats.  However, it is important to note that many Democratic Senators, and an especially large number of House Democrats, were very supportive of the business community’s efforts to defeat the Governor’s agenda.  That support is not reflected in their overall scores.