Politics
"You can't tell the players without a scorecard!" That time-honored cry of the ballpark vendor seems appropriate as well for the 88th Illinois General Assembly, scheduled to take office on January 13. Almost one out of every three lawmakers in the incoming legislature is a newcomer, the largest infusion of new blood in two decades. Moreover, the top leadership will see its first changes in a decade, with retiring Senate President Philip J. Rock (D-Oak Park) expected to be succeeded by current Senate Minority Leader James "Pate" Philip (R-Wood Dale) after the GOP won a 32-27 majority in November. The turnover also will be marked in lesser leadership ranks: 14 of the 32 lawmakers named assistants or deputies at the start of the 87th General Assembly won't be back. In addition, a whole new corps of committee chairs will emerge in the Senate as control shifts to Republicans, while in the House 15 Democrats who chaired substantive committees last spring are not returning. Change was the watchword of Campaign 1992, of course. Many of the rookie legislators promised to bring fresh ideas and new insights to Springfield; most will arrive with lots of energy, eager to tackle the tough questions. Their enthusiasm quickly will run smack-dab into a host of nettlesome problems that would tax the most experienced and ingenious policymaker. Consider, for example, this sampling: • School funding. While voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to require the state to pay at least half the tab for elementary and secondary education, the serious flaws which prompted the amendment still remain. Are form package proposed by a school finance task force would go a long way toward assuring all Illinois kids the opportunity for an adequate education, but its $1.8 billion price tag will test lawmakers who like to brag that education is their top priority. • Prison overcrowding. Despite spending more than $500 million over the last decade to add beds to the corrections system, Illinois prisons are more overcrowded as the new year dawns than they were 10 years ago. Lawmakers face the task of finding some middle ground between building enough new prisons to handle the relentless influx of offenders — which probably would require a tax increase — and easing sentencing laws to stem the tide — which could lead to soft-on-crime criticism. • Medicaid assessments. The so-called "granny tax" levied on hospitals and nursing homes to underwrite health care services for the poor has come under heavy fire from some lawmakers and providers. Finding a suitable replacement will be difficult, given the governor's aversion to a general tax hike, while loss of the assessment revenues would create a $1.5 billion hole in the budget. • The child welfare crisis. A tight-fisted budget and questionable management have impeded efforts by the Department of Children and Family Services to live up to reforms officials promised to implement as part of a court agreement. Finding the dollars to pay for such reforms as hiring extra caseworkers will be difficult, yet failure to live up to the court decree could invite a judicial takeover of the troubled agency. • The 1994 budget. Money is a common thread running through many of the problems facing the state, so perhaps the most difficult challenge awaiting the new legislature is fashioning a spending blueprint for the new fiscal year. Hard choices face lawmakers as they attempt to fund essential services and pay old bills from revenues constrained by anemic economic growth. One critical question: Should the temporary income tax surcharge now earmarked for local government grants and state coffers be extended beyond its scheduled July 1 expiration? Weighty public policy questions are not
6/January 1993/Illinois Issues the only matters that should occupy the attention of the incoming legislature. The dramatic turnover also provides an excellent opportunity for lawmakers to upgrade the legislative process itself. Already, one significant reform has been embraced by House Speaker Michael J. Madigan (D-Chicago) and Philip, who have proposed a session schedule that calls for adjournment at the end of May. Other areas that merit attention include: • Conference committees. All too often, innocuous bills meander their way along the parliamentary path until they end up in conference, only to emerge as controversial blockbusters in a session's waning moments, a practice that thwarts the opportunity for thoughtful analysis or public comment. Indeed, the Illinois Supreme Court recently warned the legislature that its tolerance for conference committee excesses was nearly exhausted. While the new legislature's partisan split should check the worst abuses, the rules need to be tightened to prevent conference committees from producing entirely new legislation or Christmas-tree measures that bundle together several unrelated proposals. • Lobbyist disclosure. Underscoring the sorry fact that current regulations are more loophole than law, Common Cause consistently reports more lobbying expenses than most clout-heavy groups. Disclosure requirements need to be strengthened so that the public has an accurate picture of how much is being spent, and on whom, by special interest groups to influence public policy. • A later primary. Illinois' March primary — one of the earliest in the nation for state and local candidates — results in a campaign season that's far too long, almost a year from the December filing date to the November general election. Moving the primary date to September, as Rock long advocated, should give both legislators and voters a welcome breather from election-year politics. How well incoming lawmakers deal with these and a host of other questions, both of public policy and of legislative process, is likely to determine whether the 88th General Assembly remains a bunch of no-names or acquires star status.
Charles N. Wheeler III is a correspondent sin the Springfield Bureau of the Chicago Sun-Times.
January 1993/Illinois Issues/7
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