Legislative Action
By DIANE ROSS

The Illinois House - too much accountability?

IT CAUGHT Dan Walker off guard for once. Speaking at Sangamon State University's "Crossroads '80" conference on Illinois government and politics, the former governor had, among other things, just panned the media as "almost totally preoccupied with the legislature." No less than other politicians in or out of office, Walker relishes the chance to take the media to task. "Nothing is calculated to make the [politician's] juices run faster than the mention of the media," he said, almost smacking his lips.

Still the confrontationist, Walker expected a bristling defense from co-panelist Paul Davis, news director for WGN television in Chicago and formerly for WCIA in Champaign. They were both on the Crossroads '80 panel discussion of the media's effect on policies. But no one fought back, least of all Davis, who charmingly disarmed Walker by admitting that he agreed with most of what the former governor had said.

Their agreement is not that surprising. The media is preoccupied with the legislature. In fact, the 34-year-old organization of newspaper, radio, television and magazine reporters covering state government from the capital city is known as the Illinois Legislative Correspondents Association. But if the media is preoccupied with the legislature, so is the public, whether as voters, constitutents, taxpayers, citizens, or lately, as teabag protesters turned cutback petition signers. Why?

Why does the General Assembly appear to dominate Illinois government and politics, as Walker suggested? Has the issue of accountability, which was raised by the "Cutback Amendment," endangered the standing of the Illinois legislature as one of three equal branches of state government?

Crossroads '80 subjected the constitutional Cutback Amendment to the utmost scrutiny in early October. Yet of all those who had their say on the cutback, only one seemed to go beyond the facts and figures to an analysis of the accountability issue. That speaker was House Parliamentarian Dave Epstein, one of five panelists in a discussion of legislative self-reform over the last decade or so. It is Epstein's opinion that the Illinois House is already too accountable. If that's an outrageously unorthodox viewpoint, it's one that bears repeating because if it's true, the Cutback Amendment won't really solve the problem.

At 37, Epstein has been House parliamentarian for five years; he is an attorney and maintains a civil practice in Chicago when the legislature is not in session.

Epstein on the House: 'whenever a constituent writes in and says, "There ought to be a law . . ." there's a bill'

'Overly democratic'

Epstein said the General Assembly has become too accountable. "If the General Assembly is guilty of one thing, it is guilty of being overly democratic, of doing everything for everybody, of being overly responsive to the public," he said.

In the House, at least, much of the pressure is felt because of the two-year terms. Representatives are elected one November only to find they must begin the process of seeking reelection the next. Two-year terms, in effect, force House members to face the voters every other year. As a result they feel almost constant pressure to be accessible — and accountable. "The reps are always running scared," Epstein said. "So whenever a constituent writes in and says, 'There ought to be a law . . .' there's a bill." "What you have in the House is that

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Legislative Action

peculiarly American disease which has taken over. It's called rampant democracy," he said. "We've got one house that overdoes it and one that underdoes it." (Presumably, senators with the four-year terms, feel the pressure to perform far less. But, it should be pointed out that under the state Constitution, a senator serves a two-year term once every decade.)

But it's more than just the short terms, Epstein said later. The dramatic turnover in the membership of the House during the 1970's, as compared to previous decades, produced a constant influx of first-term reps. It's the first-termers, Epstein suggests, who are the most apt to succumb to the there-ought-to-be-a-law syndrome, since they may lack the perspective necessary to identify the problems that can be solved by legislation.

The rise in the political consciousness of constitutents is perhaps the reason behind Epstein's theory of too much accountability. Generally, constituents have learned that they get better results by taking their problems directly to their elected legislators rather than the faceless bureaucracy of the executive branch.

It was once the political parties which set a legislator's priorities, but it now appears that it is often the local constituency which controls the legislator's agenda. Individuals and single-issue groups go directly to legislators with or without a political party's blessing. This new-found public lobbying power, Epstein says, has created a new breed of legislators caught up in their own accountability.

Individual accountability

Epstein finds that some legislators are no longer concerned with the General Assembly's prerogatives as an equal partner with the executive and judicial branches, a situation he feels endangers the balance of power. He recalls that concern for legislative prerogatives reached a peak during the Walker administration "when everybody [both sides of the legislative aisle] hated the governor." The best example Epstein sees of the balance of power issue is the continuing fight over control of all federal funds received by state government. The issue is whether these funds must be appropriated by the General Assembly in order to be spent. Each year the General Assembly passes a bill granting the power to the legislature. Each year the governor promptly vetoes the bill. And each year the General Assembly falls only a few votes short of the three-fifths majority needed to override. The explanation, as Epstein sees it, is that some legislators are so caught up in their individual accountability, or the governor's, that they cannot afford to consider the General Assembly's accountability.

From Epstein's perspective, the image of the House as an institution is blurred by the 177 individuals who compromise it. It is no longer possible to tell where the individuals leave off and the institution begins. Without that distinct line, he says, it is impossible

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to judge the legislature's effectiveness. Epstein suggests that it is the public's determination to hold the House accountable as individuals that has endangered its accountability as an institution.

This determination to hold the House accountable can also be explained by the fact that it is the General Assembly which holds the state's pursestrings — except for appropriating all federal funds.

Take the notorious 1978 pay raises, for example. It was no accident the General Assembly was the victim of voter retaliation. But why was the House singled out for a cutback? Perhaps because its unique system of election by cumulative voting prevents the public from voting against incumbents.

Stratton argues that the state is not a business. It is not supposed to show a profit. It should produce the most in services for each dollar it spends

The heat Gov. James R. Thompson (took for his complicity in orchestrating the pay raise veto override faded once he apologized publicly at his second-term inauguration. It's curious that his call for catch-up pay raises for his cabinet failed to stir up anti-Republican sentiment this fall at the polls. Then there's the judicial branch. Evidently the public has forgotten that the lion's share of those 1978 pay raises went to judges, not legislators. Joseph H. Goldenhersh, chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, is now calling for cost-of-living catch-up pay raises for all 700 of the state's judges. Who will take the heat if Thompson's cabinet gets pay raises and Goldenhersh gets the pay raises for all 700 judges? The General Assembly, of course, because only the legislative branch has the power to appropriate the funds.

But as former Gov. William G. Stratton pointed out at Crossroads '80, the cutback retaliation for the pay raises is only one expression of the public's underlying demand that the General Assembly run state government on a more businesslike basis. Stratton argues, however, that the state is not a business. It is not supposed to show a profit; instead, it should produce the most in services for each dollar it spends.

Legislative reaction

Ironically, the General Assembly's grip on the state's pursestrings has loosened during the last decade. By the early 1970's the executive branch had wrested the budget-planning power away from the legislature. Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie created the Bureau of the Budget as an executive branch support agency, closing the doors of its planning process to representatives and senators. Consequently, the state budget proposed by the governor in March, has little legislative input, yet the General Assembly must act by July. The governor generally gets the headlines on budget day, but the legislature then has to grind through four months of hearings, debates and votes to set each amount for all appropriations of state funds. The legislature tends to react to the governor's budget priorities rather than to act on its own. The governor's budget is never introduced as one or a few appropriations bills. Hundreds of separate, often overlapping, bills are introduced.

The governor's budget tends to be the yardstick by which the legislature's final appropriations are measured. And yet the governor can still use his veto powers to challenge the legislature. Some would say the veto powers granted under the 1970 Constitution are too strong and infringe on the General Assembly's powers.

Aside from the preoccupation with budget bills, Walker accused the media of failing to pick up where the legislature leaves off — of failing to dig deep enough into the governor's cabinet agencies whose regulatory powers are more potent, he says, than 95 percent of the laws passed by the legislature. And perhaps the public's preoccupation with the legislature is reinforced by the media's. Or vice versa. But as Epstein suggests, the problem with accountability, if it is to be used as a standard for judging the legislature, is agreeing on what it means.

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