As the 96th Illinois General Assembly returns to Springfield early this month for its final days, an unusually crowded agenda could await lawmakers: gambling expansion, abolition of the death penalty, approval of medical marijuana, clean coal, maybe even a vote on higher taxes.
Even if none of these high-profile issues come to a vote before the new legislature takes over at noon on January 12, the outgoing General Assembly already ranks as one of the more productive in recent memory.
Sure, lawmakers largely punted on the state’s No. 1 problem: a budget deficit that could reach $15 billion or more for the incoming legislators as they try to craft a spending plan for FY 2012, which begins next July 1.
But on a number of other major issues, majority Democrats and minority Republicans placed the public interest above partisan gain to enact significant legislation. Consider the record in just three critical areas:
Pension reform. By votes of 92-17 in the House and 48-6 in the Senate, legislators last March approved the most far-reaching changes ever to the five state-funded pension systems. From now on, all new state employees, university professors, legislators, judges, downstate public school teachers and local government workers except police and firefighters will have to stay on the job longer and will receive smaller pensions in retirement. Creating two-tiered retirement systems, one for existing workers and a less generous plan for new hires, should save the state more than $71 billion over the next 35 years, according to actuarial estimates by the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.
Lawmakers last month endorsed similar changes for local police and firefighters, along with provisions to ensure sound funding by local governments. That measure awaits Gov. Pat Quinn’s action at this writing.
The changes did not go as far as some wished, for example, by substituting a 401(k)-type retirement plan for the traditional defined benefit plan or cutting benefits for current workers and retirees. But switching to 401(k)s would carry significant upfront costs, studies showed, and reducing current employees’ benefits might run afoul of a constitutional provision safeguarding pension rights and most certainly would trigger a protracted court battle over the guarantee’s exact meaning.
Instead, legislators seem to have found a happy medium, given that public employee unions decried creating “second-class” citizenship for new workers, while some leaders in the business community complained the reforms did not go far enough to place state workers on equal footing with employees in the private sector, for whom pensions are much more tenuous.
Education reform. As part of an ultimately unsuccessful effort to win federal Race to the Top funds, the legislature rewrote key provisions of the state School Code to track individual student achievement more accurately and to link student growth more closely to teacher and principal evaluations.
Under the new longitudinal data system being implemented by the Illinois State Board of Education, individual measures such as test scores, grade advancement and graduation rates will be maintained for every public school student from kindergarten through college to assess how well each student is progressing. And for the first time, individual students’ progress must be “a significant factor in” rating teaching performance as part of educators’ overall evaluations.
Teachers’ unions opposed the idea that a teacher’s grades should be tied to those of his or her students but had to settle for exempting the evaluations from the state’s Freedom of Information law.
Lawmakers also doubled, to 120, the cap on charter schools — up to 75 permitted in Chicago and 45 elsewhere — and eased the regulations under which would-be teachers may be certified without following the traditional education school route.
Although Illinois missed out on the $4.4 billion in federal education grants, the reforms remain on the books, potentially yielding solid improvements in Illinois schools.
Notes state Superintendent Christopher Koch: “We still intend to develop new rigorous teacher and principal evaluation systems, as required by state law. ... We are still committed to developing a comprehensive longitudinal data system to assist us in better preparing students for college and careers.”
Ethics reform. Responding almost allegation-by-allegation to the federal indictment of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the legislature outlawed pay-to-play practices, tightened disclosure and conflict-of-interest regulations for appointees to a host of powerful boards and commissions, toughened state purchasing requirements, strengthened the state’s Open Records Law and imposed the first-ever limits on campaign contributions.
While some reformers groused that more should be done, in particular, limiting legislative leaders’ ability to pump unlimited cash into competitive state Senate and House races, other long-time legislative watchers were impressed that any limits were coming to Illinois, long known as the “Wild West” of campaign finance, where anybody could give anything to anyone.
Pensions, education and ethics. In each area, outgoing lawmakers and Quinn enacted ground-breaking reform after years of failed efforts in prior sessions. Add to the trio the state’s first major construction program in nine years — the $31 billion Illinois Jobs Now public works initiative — and the historic House and Senate votes last month to authorize civil unions in Illinois — a bipartisan recognition that all the state’s citizens are worthy of equal treatment under the law — and the result is an impressive two-year scorecard for the 96th General Assembly.
And that’s not even counting arguably this legislative crop’s finest hour, the impeachment and removal of Blagojevich, the most corrupt and least competent chief executive in memory. Blago’s ouster, accomplished within the first month of the legislature’s two-year session, was a tough act to follow, but as the record shows, it also served as a harbinger of accomplishments to come.
May the women and men who take their oath of office on January 12 — the 97th General Assembly — do as well.
On a number of other major issues, majority Democrats and minority Republicans placed the public interest above partisan gain to enact significant legislation.
Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois Springfield.
Illinois Issues, January 2011
