The drive to place a constitutional amendment before voters in November to limit the state's ability to pass unfunded mandates on to local governments has been stopped dead in its tracks.

Officials of the Illinois Municipal League, the main proponents of the amendment, are blaming House Republican leadership for killing the amendment.

The House did pass the measure yesterday, but it had been amended, effectively killing the proposal because there is not enough time to take it back to the Senate, work out the details, and have it pass by the May 5 deadline to get it on the ballot.

Mike Cys, spokesman for House Speaker Lee Daniels, R-Elmhurst, however, blamed the Senate for keeping the measure off the November ballot.

"We sent it back to the Senate, but they took no action," Cys said. "The amendment was in the Senate when they adjourned yesterday."

Cys said House Republicans have been fighting to end unfunded mandates for years.

"The constitutional amendment is dead," said Ken Alderson, executive director of the Municipal League. "Everyone will say they voted for the amendment, but there is nothing on the ballot."

DeKalb Mayor Greg Sparrow, Municipal League president, said Daniels removed executive committee members Wednesday and replaced them with supporters of the amendments to the measure, which killed it.

The Republican leadership added amendments excluding school districts and unemployed workers' benefits.

The original constitutional amendment would have required the state to provide funding for mandates on local governments, or pass the mandates with super-majority of both houses of the legislature. Criminal laws and federal mandates would have been exempt under the amendment.

"What the Republican leadership did was circumvent the rules," Alderson said. "The House Republican leadership decided the only way to kill the resolution was to amend it and run the clock out so it could not be passed."

Cys said, however, the House leadership had told the Senate it did not want schools or workers benefits included in the amendment.

"Unfortunately, with this issue we were handed an amendment with a couple of days to consider it," Cys said.

State Sen. Brad Burzynski, R-Sycamore, disagrees with Cys about the Senate holding up the amendment.

"The House sponsor of the amendment had a motion to strip the amendments to the bill, but it was not allowed because it would have passed," Burzynski said.

"There was no way to deal with a constitutional amendment (in the Senate) by Sunday. I don't believe it would have passed the Senate without the schools included. We passed a good amendment out of the Senate."

State Rep. David Wirsing, R-Sycamore, believes political motives, rather than practical considerations, led to the demise of the amendment.

"I think some individuals have their own agendas at work," Wirsing said. "To be frank, I'm more than a little upset by this, especially since the president of the Municipal League comes from my home area.

"I would have hoped we would have been allowed to debate the amendment as it was presented in the Senate. I'm not happy that it was amended in committee," Wirsing said.

Sparrow has said the changes were a political move to kill the amendment.

"To take schools out of the equation, when they make 65 percent of the property tax bill, is ludicrous," Sparrow said. "They (legislators) just don't want to give up that power. It's easy to pass new laws and regulations when you don't have to pay for them."

Municipal League officials have called unfunded mandates a "back door property tax," saying local governments have to increase taxes on property owners to meet Springfield's demands. Alderson said the impact of unfunded mandates on property taxpayers is about $1.5 billion.

In 1992, an advisory referendum on limiting the General Assembly's ability to impose unfunded mandates won more than 80 percent of the vote.

"This last turn of events is very unfortunate and means the voters will not have a chance to vote on an unfunded state mandates constitutional amendment," Alderson said. "The citizens of Illinois are the ones who got the raw deal." •

May 1996 / Illinois Municipal Review / Page 7