Focusing on children; feuding over committees

Lawmakers will spend plenty of time fashioning programs for children this spring. Gov. James R. Thompson proposed rebuilding the infrastructure for children at his January inaugural. House Speaker Michael J. Madigan (D-30, Chicago) responded by building the infrastructure of the House a bit, adding the new Select Committee on Children. And while the increasing attention to children enjoys bipartisan support, the increasing number of House committees does not. Republicans claim there are already too many committees and that Democrats are hiking numbers simply to get more chairmanships for their members. To head the newest committee, the House Select Committee on Children, Madigan tapped Rep. Lee Preston (D-3, Chicago). Preston, who sponsored a package of child protection bills last year, says the committee will handle bills on early childhood education, child welfare and child protection. Without the new committee those bills would be funneled to committees on criminal law, education and state government administration, and Preston says he hopes the committee can bring focus to the question.

A new committee will not necessarily mean more legislation, Preston says, but could mean better legislation. "There's going to be some direction to the legislation. There won't be a hodge podge." Confusion ensued last year when competing bills addressed the issue of videotaping the testimony of young victims of sexual abuse, Preston says.

The chairman says he does not yet know what the committee will do in the area of early childhood education. He says he has prepared bills that will add programs to prevent problems. He will propose adding programs on drug and alcohol abuse to the elementary school curriculum and programs teaching parenting and family relationships at the high school level. And he will try again with some legislation he could not get approved last year.

Topping his list is a bill requiring criminal background checks of school district employees to spot convicted child abusers. Required checks of teachers, administrators and maintenance personnel would involve fingerprint matches. This draws criticism from teachers, but is the only way to track previous convictions, Preston says. His latest revision, which he hopes will ease concerns of the teachers' unions, requires the background checks for new employees only. Although Preston says he sees immediate need for the checks, he says he can live with the prospective nature of his bill because it will eventually mean all are checked. Preston acknowledges that the instances of abuse by school personnel are rare, but says those that occur draw much attention. He notes a Skokie coach with two convictions the district was unaware of.

One of the groups with which the select committee will work is the Citizens Assembly on Children, of which Preston is also a member. The co-chair of that body, Sen. Kenneth Hall (D-57, East St. Louis) sees plenty of work to be done and lots of interest. Proof of that interest are hearings on teenage suicide that drew 700 to Chicago and 500 to Springfield, Hall says. And he has no problem with a new house committee: "If we can get better cooperation, I'm all for it." The Citizen's Assembly's other co-chair, Rep. Virginia Frederick (R-59, Lake Forest), also supports the new select committee. "I think it will be a pipeline from the Citizens' Assembly to the actual legislation," Frederick says. She believes the void created by the old Commission on Children has yet to be filled, and hopes that between the House select committee and the Citiziens Assembly on Children the services can be provided.

However, the new Select Committee on Children is only the latest addition to a growing list of House committees. While children's issues draw bipartisan support, the growth in the number of committees draws near universal criticism from the minority party. Republicans complain that it drains legislators' and staff time and hikes costs.

That growth has been substantial in the House. When the 83rd General Assembly convened in 1983 under then new Speaker Madigan, there were 20 standing and six select committees. Two years later the number of standing committees had increased to 24 as Speaker Madigan added a committee on state government administration and regulatory review and another on consumer protection, split the judiciary committee into separate civil and criminal panels and upgraded urban redevelopment from select to standing status. The number of select committees remained at six with the addition of one on the 1992 World's Fair.

No new standing committees were added for the 85th General Assembly, which convened in January, but five more select committees were created. Besides Preston's children's committee, new panels added since the 84th General Assembly deal with horse racing, aeronautics, housing and coal development. The World's Fair Select Committee passed from the scene.

Even more imposing is the total number of committee slots. The 20 standing and six select committees in place in 1983 offered 26 chairmanships and a total of 402 slots for members of both parties. The current setup provides 33 chairmanships and vice chairmanships for Democrats and 603 slots for members of both parties, an increase of 50 percent.

That has Republicans fuming. "This year it really is unmanageable," says Chris Freveletti, chief of staff for Minority Leader Lee A. Daniels (R-46, Elmhurst). She has members assigned to eight or nine different committees and staff people responsible for three or four. Madigan has created the new committees to pass out chairmanships to his members, she charges. "They will use it to showcase issues. We're not down here to become media stars." And, Freveletti says, the increased number of committees "allows them to do administration bashing in a more spotlighted manner."

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For House Republicans the extra committees, along with new standing subcommittees, make planning difficult. It is hard for Freveletti's legislators to know to which panel a bill will be assigned and where he or she must go to line up support to move the bill out of committee. A Republican lawmaker, she says, may have support in one committee only to find the bill assigned to a different committee. "It really allows the speaker to control the legislature."

Freveletti's counterpart on the other side of the aisle, Gary J. LaPaille, chief of staff for Speaker Madigan, counters that the voters gave the Democrats that control in November when they returned a 67 to 51 majority in the lower chamber. He suggests that if Republicans feel there are too many titles, they should forego naming minority spokesmen. "We could do very well without minority spokesman titles," LaPaille says. He claims to have no trouble finding staff to man the new committees. He says that some senior staff members volunteer for places on the select committees because the work tends to be more innovative than the bill analysis — often of the same bills introduced the year before — on the standing committees.

According to LaPaille, the growth of the select committees reflects government's response to the increasing complexity of society: "You come up with more issues that have to be targeted." Although some review bills, LaPaille says that select committees tend to do studies, hold hearings and solicit public opinion more than the standing committees. Some are picking up slack left by the abolition of the old commissions, he concedes. "They tend to be initiators, innovators instead of reactive," LaPaille says.

He believes the narrower focus of the short-term, single issue select committees offers advantages for the sponsors of legislation. The new children's committee, for instance, will look at bills that would previously have had to compete for attention with others before the Human Services Committee. Creation of the Coal Development and Marketing Select Committee has allowed those issues to be considered separately from bills involving other energy and environmental issues. The Aeronautics Select Committee will keep an eye on issues like a third Chicago airport, the city/suburban fight over O'Hare and issues involving the DuPage County Airport. The Select Committee on Horse Racing was left in place for oversight of the reforms included in the package approved last fall, LaPaille says.

The select committees come and go as issues rise and fade. It was the World's Fair Select Committee that developed the cost benefit data that convinced legislators to scrap the World's Fair proposal, LaPaille notes. And, the Democratic partisan suggests, the failure of the Thompson administration to turn the state's economy around necessitates continuation of the Economic Development Select Committee — originally founded as the Economic Recovery Committee. "The bottom line. I don't think it's harmful — the number of committees you have," LaPaille says.

Although he acknowledges the big issues are settled not in committee but by leaders, LaPaille argues that there is a place for the committees. On what he calls "small-to-medium-sized issues" they craft the legislation. On bigger ones the committees do the preliminary work for the leaders. He cites the example of Madigan's March 4 charge to the Revenue Committee to review the state's tax system. In June, LaPaille says, Madigan will sit in the governor's office to hammer out a tax package and rely upon information gathered by the committee.

The House is in good company with its ever-growing number of committees. Jack Van der Slik, professor of political science at Sangamon State University, says that in Congress both the number of seats and the number of subcommittees has been growing. That, he says, "has let more people have the title." There are plenty of titles in the Illinois House, and the continuing concern over children's issues has added a couple more.

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