Legislative Action By Nora Newman Jurgens

BY MAY 27, legislative observers were afraid the whole income tax question would come down to one massive compromise worked out between the Democratic and Republican leadership in conference committee, and tossed onto the desks of the lawmakers at 11:59 p.m. on June 30.

Conference committees have been called the "wildcard in the legislative deck." Usually appointed during the last hectic days, or even the last hours of the session, the conference committee is the mechanism used by the leadership for compromise.

The House speaker and Senate president have enormous power over the fate of a disputed bill by virtue of their appointments to the committees: Conference committees have been known to rewrite an entire bill, presenting it to the House and Senate for their consideration only minutes before the deadline for passage. Technically, a conference committee is composed of five members from each house, but often the actual work is done by a couple of members — or by their staffs.

Conference committees are strongly criticized by those who advocate "good" government. According to Harold Katz of Glencoe, who represented the old 1st District in the House for 18 years, conference committee are "little legislative bodies, which receive little public attention, little media coverage," yet wield tremendous power. Katz was chairman of the legislature's Commission on the Organization of the General Assembly (COOGA), a group created in 1965 to streamline the process of lawmaking. Although COOGA made no specific recommendations for reforming conference committees, Katz said he believes they are a "serious threat to due process, as there are no limitations on what they can do."

A conference committee, unlike a standing legislative committee, does not hold public hearings on a bill. Although, technically, there is opportunity to debate a committee report on the floor, usually there is little or no time to do so since they are submitted to the members during the last harried hours of the session. Sometimes, as Katz said, rank-and-file legislators may not even understand what they are voting for. Katz pointed out an example: Last year, Chicago's police commissioner pushed for a bill dealing with scofflaws who ignore traffic fines; that provision was tacked onto a conference committee report dealing with an unrelated subject. Under the bill, which was not discovered by the media — or by Chicago motorists — until months after it was signed into law, the Chicago police department collects traffic fines by "dunning" the offenders.

A sardonic protest against the conference committee process has been undertaken in recent years by the "Loya Order of Mushrooms." Made up of rank-and-file legislators, the order complains of being left in the dark, like mushrooms, not knowing what the leadership will dump on them at the last moment via the conference committees.

Once the report is issued by a conference committee, it usually must be voted "up" or "down." This puts legislators in a bind, for they may be forced to accept unwanted provisions in order to support the main thrust of the legislation.

In the 1983 session the House made one change in its rules affecting conference committees. In an attempt to ease the traditional logjam of committee reports at the end of the session, the House changed the deadline for final consideration of the reports from June 30 to the "adjournment of the session." This rule change eliminates one step, namely voting to remove all bills not yet considered from the table, where they would have ended up at midnight June 30. The new rule is designed to give representatives a little more time to deal with the sometimes controversial and complicated legislation that comes out of the conference committees. (The Senate, by the way, never got around to adopting permanent rules this session and still operates under last session's rules.)

Conference committees are 'little legislative bodies, which receive little public attention, little media coverage,' yet wield tremendous power

Mushrooms aside, there were the usual number of minority party complaints about "ghost voting" and other procedural errors by June 1. In the House, the incidents usually occurred when someone other than Speaker Michael J. Madigan was in the chair. On one particular vote, the minority complained loudly when the electronic vote tally showed 119 members casting votes (there are, of course, only 118 in the House). As a result, Madigan instituted the unusual procedure of removing the keys of absent House members from their voting switches.

Whatever happens in June, it should be noted that the General Assembly was proceeding in a fairly orderly fashion in May. By the May 27 deadline for passing bills in their house of origin, each chamber had moved through the work on their calendars rather efficiently. The House put a larger-than-usual number of bills on its consent and short debate calendars. The Senate also passed numerous bills via an agreed list, voting on dozens of bills at one time.

Outside the chambers, legislators were subjected to constituent pressures of a different sort this session. Although there were no fasters, "chain gangs" or other demonstrators in connection with the Equal Rights Amendment, a group of citizens completed a "Crisis March to Springfield." About 50 who had marched on foot from East St. Louis, Chicago and Peoria converged on Springfield, where they were joined by about 2,000 who rode on buses. They urged their legislators to "Declare Illinois a State of Emergency." Pushing for more money for jobs and human services, "marchers" vowed to maintain a "crisis count-down" to the end of the session, lobbying for the passage of tax hike bills and other emergency money measures.

Meanwhile, legislators took action in May on a number of issues apart from taxes and the budget.

July 1983 | Illinois Issues | 25