STATE OF THE STATE

Lawmakers might complain,
but an executive budget works

by Jennifer Davis

State agencies used to go directly to lawmakers for funds, and reform meant moving budget-making powers to the governor. It is progress that there are no longer dozens of political interests doling out taxpayer dollars.

Acomplicated financial document the size of War and Peace and Moby Dick combined is plopped onto your desk. You're tired because it's near midnight on the last day of the session and you've already spent long hours analyzing other important measures. Anyway, you have little time — last spring about 20 minutes in the state Senate — to decide whether the spending plan is a good one.

That's how Illinois passes its budget every year. As Chicago Democratic Sen. Donne Trotter noted before he voted for the $35 billion fiscal 1998 budget: "The system sucks."

Well, that process is about to start all over again. Gov. Jim Edgar is scheduled to deliver his annual budget address February 18, two weeks earlier than usual. And the pushed-up date gives lawmakers a little more much- needed time with the numbers. Despite the stepped-up schedule, though, rank- and-file lawmakers have less say over state spending than in years past. That's because the governor and the four legislative leaders have become the true budget-makers. And because the nitty-gritty negotiations have moved behind closed doors.

Secret deliberations — fairly recent in Illinois history — may not serve the state well. Still, Illinois budget-making has become increasingly professional over the decades.

Prior to 1915, for instance, state agencies pleaded directly to lawmakers for funds, an inefficient and unpopular system, according to Raymond Coyne's The Legislative Appropriations Process:

Selective Use of Authority and Tools.

That system, writes Coyne, a former executive director of the nonpartisan Economic and Fiscal Commission, led to "the rapid proliferation of state agencies and the near doubling of appropriations." In other words, left solely in the hands of lawmakers, state government was wasteful and full of graft. It wasn't long, Coyne adds, before "the public's suspicions about duplication and inefficiency in government — corroborated by the Economy and Efficiency Committee — paved the way to reform."

Reform meant moving from a "legislative" budget to an "executive" budget. Which brings us to the present. Nowadays, state agencies present their so-called "wish lists" to the governor's Bureau of the Budget, which was created in 1969. The bureau, staffed by professional numbers crunchers, analyzes agency requests and revenue projections and, in light of the governor's policy priorities, drafts the proposed spending plan.

Sen. Steven Rauschenberger, that chamber's appropriations chairman, argues this places too much power in the hands of people who are not accountable to voters: the budget officers for each state agency.

Yet, while lawmakers may complain they're left out, it is progress that there are no longer dozens of political interests trying to dole out taxpayer dollars.

And if lawmakersf role in budget-making has been diminished, it's their own doing. For one thing, they themselves have moved to shorten debate over spending priorities. Instead of voting on dozens of agency bills, lawmakers now vote on one mammoth budget bill. This year it was 954 pages.

"It's easier to skim through a bill that's 20 pages rather than 800 pages," says Charles Wheeler III, director of the public affairs reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Wheeler, a former Statehouse reporter who covered 22 years' worth of state budgets, adds: "It also takes longer to deal with individual bills. But, if you want to have more input, that's what you do."

And that's what lawmakers could do. As Rauschenberger admits, legislators have "the constitutional authority to pass our own budget." They don't have to accept the governor's numbers. If three months isn't enough time, the General Assembly could start budget hearings in the fall rather than wait until the spring session.

So why don't they?

Because lawmakers know they can affect only a small part of the budget anyway, somewhere, Rauschenberger estimates, between 3 percent and 6 percent. After all, contracts for years- long capital projects and programs

6 / February 1998 Illinois Issues

serving millions just can't be ignored. Adds Robert Mandeville, state budget director from 1975 to 1990: "You can't shut down the schools or our mental health centers or our prisons. After you consider those things, you're probably at 90 percent of the budget."

Further, as Rauschenberger explains, "the powers that be are relatively happy with the status quo." The powers that be are the four party leaders in the General Assembly. If those leaders know they can't make big changes in the budget, they also know they can make minor changes that could have big impacts in individual legislative districts. This year, for example, the Chicago Sun-Times uncovered $136 million in so-called pork projects, much of it benefiting chief budget negotiators or freshman lawmakers who may be politically vulnerable. Republican freshman Sen. Christine Radogno of LaGrange, for one, took home $2.75 million, most of it funding a new indoor pool in Bridgeview. Radogno was one of two candidates whose election helped Republicans keep their slim majority in the Senate. It's easier to slip such projects into one 954-page bill that gets little scrutiny from the media or the public.

Or from rank-and-file lawmakers.

"The entire exercise is a leap of faith," says freshman Sen. Barack Obama about passing the state budget. This Chicago Democrat was one of only a handful of senators who voted against this year's budget, saying, "In good conscience, I couldn't come back to my district and say I represented them well when I don't know how their tax dollars were spent."

Obama, who is not on the appropriations committee, says he had "little idea" throughout the session what the budget would look like.

"In the later part of the session, probably sometime in the last two weeks, we had one caucus briefing where the broad outlines were put forward. And then on the last day of the session, throughout the day, we heard talk that they were completing the budget."

Still, it wasn't until 11:30 p.m. on May 31, half an hour before their

Legislative leaders know they can affect only a small part of the budget. But they can make minor changes that could have big impacts in individual districts, and that's easier behind closed doors,

scheduled adjournment, that Obama's caucus met to discuss the final product. That meeting should have been lawmakers' chance to get the nitty-gritty details.

In reality, says Obama, "individual members were able to identify certain projects, but what we didn't know was the overall shape of the budget: what it looked like and where a whole bunch of discretionary funding was going to be going." He adds that there were "fairly substantial and structural parts of the budget" even Rauschenberger, the senate's chief budget negotiator, couldn't recall.

Not that Obama blames either side for withholding information. "I believe they did their best," he says.

If anything, he shoulders some of the blame himself. "We, as individual legislators, need to be willing to pressure our leadership into making the process more open."

Senate Minority Leader Emil Jones echoed Obama's sentiments minutes before he voted for the budget, saying, "I intend to vote for the bill because I trust that 99 percent of it is correct. But it's the wrong way to do business. And I hope in the future that we would not continue this particular practice."

But, in truth, Jones is not likely to push for major change, especially if his party regains control of the Senate and the governor's mansion in the upcoming election. Indeed, the legislative leaders enjoy the system that allows them to make deals away from the public's eye. Then, as Jones did, they walk out on the floor to complain about how "wrong" the system is.

Such caterwauling, even Rauschenberger admits, is "mostly rhetorical." After all, as he has said, lawmakers could move to change the process.

Last year, when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate, House Democrats were happy on budget night to supply reporters with a long list of so-called Republican pork projects. This year, with the Democrats back in control of the House and back at the budget table, it's not surprising no such lists were forthcoming.

"The notion of an agreed budget is new under [Gov.] Edgar," says Wheeler, describing how the governor and the four leaders sign off on the budget beforehand, almost "line by line." He can't remember a time during former Gov. James Thompson's 14-year reign when the governor didn't veto some changes the legislature made.

Indeed, times were different then in other ways. The General Assembly was still using dozens of bills to break the budget down into pieces. Agencies discussed their spending proposals before legislative committees and the public had a bird's-eye view. Today, Rauschenberger's appropriations committee still questions each department, but sometimes only for mere minutes.

"I think the shortest time we ever spent with one agency was three minutes," he says. "People talk about the legislature molding the budget. We accept over 95 percent of what the governor proposes. We might make some small policy changes, but what passes is pretty much what he asked for."

And, Coyne likely would argue, that's a good thing.

We don't want to return to the days when lawmakers, each with their individual agendas, determined state spending. Today, we have one person — the governor — to hold accountable.

It may not be the best system. And, indeed, the rank-and-file lawmakers now left out of the process would argue it surely isn't. But, as Joan Walters, a former Bureau of the Budget director, explains: It works for Illinois. 

Illinois Issues February 1998 / 7