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Illinois Issues
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State of the State: Lame Ducks May be Less Cautious with Votes

Jamey Dunn
WUIS/Illinois Issues

Soon after the general election, lawmakers will return to Springfield to vote on bills vetoed by Gov. Pat Quinn and perhaps to take up unresolved issues from the spring legislative session.

 

While legislators were cautious with their votes during the regular session — for fear of creating wedge issues or giving their opponents fodder for mailers in the upcoming campaign — the lame duck veto session may be another story. 

The prospect of the governor’s office and legislative seats possibly changing hands in January has some Democratic lawmakers weighing the odds of passing controversial bills while the numbers are still in their favor. 

Rep. Lou Lang, a Democrat from Skokie, says that more than 90 House members have privately voiced support for Senate Bill 1381, which would create a pilot program to allow people with serious illnesses access to marijuana for medicinal use. However, he says he still lacks the 60 votes he needs to pass the measure in the House. The measure passed in the Senate with the 30 votes needed last year, and Lang says he hopes more House members will be able to vote their conscience after the election is over. 

The Illinois State Police dropped their opposition to SB 1381, and Lang says that makes it easier for lawmakers to back his bill. But, he adds, it is the personal stories of people struggling with chronic illnesses that do the most to persuade his colleagues on the issue. 

Lang says if Republican state Sen. Bill Brady, who opposes medical marijuana, is elected governor, it might “force his hand” on calling the bill. However, he says he does not want to ask legislators to go on record with a vote unless the measure has a solid chance of winning.

Rep. Greg Harris, a Chicago Demo-crat, says the same thing about Senate Bill 1716, which would allow civil unions for same-sex couples. “I am not doing this to showboat. … I am not doing this for any other reason than to win.” 

Harris says if legislators record a “no” vote on his bill, it will be very difficult to persuade them to backtrack. But he acknowledges that waiting to call the bill for a vote could mean waiting through at least four years under a governor who would veto it. Soon after winning the Republican nomination for governor, Brady proposed amending the Illinois Constitution to ban same-sex unions.

Quinn, who supports Harris’ bill, told the Daily Herald that he thinks it could become law by the end of the year. 

“This is an issue where, I think if nothing else, time is on my side,”?Harris says. “As each month passes, the idea of relationship recognition continues to build public support. … If you look at the polling around the state of Illinois — I don’t care where it is — it’s a trend that is moving in the right direction.” According to a poll by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, 65 percent of Illinoisans are in favor of allowing civil unions or same-sex marriages. However, the same poll said only 45 percent of voters in southern Illinois support same-sex unions. 

He adds that ideally, same-sex couples should not have to wait for equal protection under the law. “If it were in my power, we would already have it, but I need to have 60 votes in the House and 30 in the Senate.”

Harris is not the only one feeling the winds of public opinion at his back. 

Jeremy Schroeder, executive director of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, told the Springfield State Journal-Register that opponents of the death penalty intend to push to repeal it during the veto session. Schroeder said a survey conducted by his organization found that 60 percent of registered voters preferred other penalties for murder. 

Illinois has had a moratorium on the death penalty for 10 years. Both Gov. Pat Quinn and Brady support the use of the death penalty. Quinn has said, however, that he would keep the moratorium in place, while Brady has said he would repeal it. 

Schroeder said he is trying to persuade lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. “In these times when we’re cutting police on the streets and we have a broken system that, frankly, we don’t use, it’s time to make the commonsense choice for repealing the death penalty,” Schroeder told the State Journal-Register.

Local governments hope to resolve one issue in the works last session that could help their bottom lines. After pushing for money-saving changes to state pension systems, legislators were working to reform the pension system for police officers and firefighters. 

Sen. Terry Link says negotiations fell apart in the spring session after local governments walked away from the table. While he says he hopes to pass a bill during the veto session, he adds, “The legislature may not be as willing to be as kind.”

The General Assembly also will take up Quinn’s vetoes. Several of the amendatory vetoes correct minor problems with bills or change the effective dates, but a few could prove to be controversial. Quinn changed HB 5154, which sealed state employee evaluations. The governor’s rewrite would make all employee evaluations open to the public except for those working in law enforcement. 

Advocates for transparency say Illinois’ new Freedom of Information Act provision, passed last year need to be given time to work. “This is poor public policy on so many levels. The new FOIA law needs to be given time to work before being assaulted with attempts to make changes and exemptions. We urged the governor to veto the entire bill and still believe that was the best action to take,” Dennis DeRossett, executive director of the Illinois Press Association, said in a written statement.

Union officials, on the other hand, say that managers need protection from prying eyes to be able to evaluate their employees honestly. “We had urged the governor to sign the bill. It was commonsense legislation to preserve the confidentiality of private records containing personal info ... not just for reasons of personal privacy but in order to ensure that managers at all levels of government know that their evaluations will serve their intended purpose,” says Anders Lindall, spokesman for Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, state government’s largest union. 

Quinn tacked on entirely new provisions to two bills relating to elections without changing the original content of the bills. House Bill 4842, which called for the State Board of Elections to post information on its website about primary election candidates, now also contains language calling for Illinois to have an open primary system, which would not require voters to declare a party to participate in a primary. Voters would still only be allowed to vote for one party’s ticket, but they would make that choice privately in the voting booth. 

Good government organizations nationwide — and Quinn’s own Illinois Reform Commission — back this practice.

The other veto adds a provision that would allow voters to submit their ideas on ethics to the General Assembly. Quinn tacked that onto a bill that originally allowed election officials to clear the names of dead residents off voting rolls electronically.

Under the new version of HB 5206, proposals that receive 100,000 petition signatures would be drafted into a bill and voted on by the General Assembly. If the legislation failed to become law, it would go onto the ballot as an advisory referendum, which does not have any binding legal power.

That change, however, seemingly appropriates legislative power into the hands of citizens in a way that is not allowed under the Illinois Constitution. 

Kent Redfield, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois Springfield and director of the Sunshine Project, a nonprofit campaign contribution database connected to the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, says the framers of the state Constitution directly rejected the idea. “The [1970 Constitutional Convention] delegates considered initiative. They knew about the California model … and they consciously rejected it. They crafted a limited citizens’ initiative process. … This [amendatory veto] attempts to essentially amend the Constitution by statute, and you can’t do that.”

Neither of those changes is likely to make it to questions of constitutionality because there is a strong chance the legislature will override them. While the changes do fall in line with reforms Quinn has backed throughout his political career, they amount to little more than a feel-good campaign move. 

Since lawmakers passed a budget that Quinn then trimmed with his line item and reduction veto powers, legislators also will have to approve his changes when they return to Springfield. Lang says there will likely be some votes on supplemental appropriations to funnel more funds in one direction or another. 

The biggest elephant in the room during veto session will be the prospect of an income tax increase. Lang says legislators are more likely to take up the issue — if they do at all — in January before the new General Assembly is inaugurated. Then it would only require a simple majority vote to go into effect immediately. But interest groups will start heavily lobbying lawmakers for and against an increase right after the election, and the results of the governor’s race will have a big effect on whether a tax increase is on the table. 

A Quinn victory could energize Democrats to pass an increase, especially after getting past a difficult election. Quinn, however, has vowed to veto any tax plan, including one that passed in the Senate last year, other than the 1 percentage-point “surcharge for education” he pitched during his budget address this year. If the General Assembly manages to approve another version of a tax increase, Quinn will be hard-pressed to default on that campaign promise. 

If Illinois voters choose Brady as their next governor, Democrats in the legislature will be unlikely to vote on new revenue that would help Brady tackle the catastrophic budget deficit after he ran on an anti-tax platform.

However the election pans out, Lang says Statehouse watchers should expect surprises and be ready for what could prove to be a compelling veto session. 

 

The biggest elephant in the room during the veto session will be the prospect of an income tax increase.

Illinois Issues, November 2010

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