A tale of two garbage bills

Photo courtesy by House Democrats Rep. Peg McDonnell Breslin

Landfills in Illinois are nearly full, and few new ones have opened in recent years. The General Assembly tried in 1986 to help local governments find alternatives to landfills, but the court struck down the law's funding provisions to tax garbage. Rep. Peg McDonnell Breslin (D-75, Ottawa) introduced legislation this session to put the Illinois Solid Waste Management Act back in place. Meanwhile Sens. Laura Kent Donahue (R-45, Quincy) and Jerome J. Joyce (D-43, Reddick) were asked for help by constituents who felt they had been wronged by the siting of landfills near their communities. The senators worked on legislation to alleviate those concerns. This story is about how those two legislative proposals went through the process, one through normal procedures, and the other failing after several different tries.

Rep. Peg McDonnell Breslin (D-75, Ottawa) drafted her legislation, H.B. 3100, hoping to revive the judicially sidetracked Illinois Solid Waste Management Act. It had taxed landfill waste to provide money to local governments for programs that would help extend the life of landfills. To overcome the court's objections to specific exemptions to the tax for certain wastes, Breslin drafted her bill to apply any exemptions to all wastes.

Breslin introduced H.B. 3100 on February 25; it was read into the record (first reading) and immediately assigned to the House Rules Committee. Since this was the second year of the biennium, only appropriation and emergency legislation could be considered, and each chamber's rules committee decides if legislation falls into one of those categories. On March 23 the House Rules Committee decided H.B. 3100 was of an emergency nature and sent it to the Committee on Assignment. That committee assigned it to the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

Breslin had now cleared the first two hurdles. At the committee's hearing April 21, Breslin offered an amendment that set restrictions on fees that special government districts might charge on garbage disposed of in their landfills. DuPage County and Chicago were engaged in negotiating how much the city would pay to dump its garbage in the DuPage County Forest Preserve District's landfill. Rep. James R. Stange (R-44, Oak Brook) argued that Breslin's was a hostage bill to force a compromise between Chicago and DuPage County. "It was always understood that a compromise needed to be reached on the fee schedule," Breslin recalled after the session. The bill went over the hurdle: It passed the committee on a 9-2 vote.

The next hurdle was second reading in the House, when amendments can be proposed by any member. Rep. Thomas J. McCracken (R-81, Downers Grove) tried to remove the fee restrictions, and when his amendment failed, he tried another tactic. McCracken, hoping to delay action on the bill, said a fiscal note had to be filed on the bill. These notes estimate the cost of implementing legislation. On a recorded vote the House decided that a fiscal note was not required.

When the bill was called May 10 for third reading, the last hurdle before going to the second chamber, an embarrassed Breslin admitted that the bill did need a fiscal note and filed one. DuPage County representatives again urged defeat of the bill since no compromise on the tax had been reached, but the bill passed the House 75-34.

Now in the Senate, H.B. 3100 repeated the process of going through rules and assignment committees and was sent to the Senate Energy and Environment Committee. At that committee's June 10 meeting Sen. Patrick D. Welch (D-38, Peru), sponsor in the upper chamber, pushed through an amendment by voice vote that eliminated the effective date of the bill. The date was not the issue. Welch said he wanted to change the bill so it would differ in form from the House version and would qualify for a conference committee between the House and Senate.

On June 14 the bill reached second reading in the Senate, where unlike the House, committee amendments must be approved by the entire body. There were no floor amendments offered, so the bill moved to third reading. At that stage debate is open on the floor, and the next day Senate Minority Leader James "Pate" Philip (R-23, Wood Dale) argued that the bill was unfair to DuPage County. Sen. Aldo A. DeAngelis (R-40, Olympia Fields) did not want the House to concur with the amendment, which would have sent the bill to the governor's desk, and promised he would urge the governor to remove the fee restriction with an amendatory veto. The bill passed 31-14, forcing it back to the House to agree or disagree with the amended bill.

Everyone had agreed the bill was destined to go to conference committee, but the House had to go through the required procedural steps: The House passed Breslin's motion not to accept the Senate amendment; then the Senate voted to refuse to recede from its amendment.

The conference committee was appointed. These committees consist of three Democrats and two Republicans from each chamber for a total of 10 members. Upon signature of six members of the conference committee, their report becomes the bill which goes to both chambers for a vote.

On June 28, two days before the scheduled end of the session, the conference committee report on H.B. 3100 was submitted to each chamber. A compromise on the fee that local units of government could charge had been reached and was added to the bill via the report. Breslin's bill had cleared the final hurdle, but in what has become a typical practice, the conference committee used her bill to pass separate legislation negotiated outside the regular process. In this case, the legislative leaders had agreed on licensing procedures for crane operators and added them to Breslin's bill in conference committee. H.B. 3100 still included Breslin's proposal but was now known as the Hazardous Waste Crane and Hoisting Equipment Operators Licensing Act, establishing a board to

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oversee licensing procedures for crane operators.

Because legislation approved after June 30 requires an extraordinary majority vote to become effective immediately, controversial bills are voted on first. Since H.B. 3100 was no longer controversial, it was July 1 when H.B. 3100's conference committee report came up for a vote: 49 votes in the Senate and 91 votes in the House. It had passed with the extraordinary majority needed to become effective immediately, and Rep. Breslin had accomplished her objective of reactivating the solid waste management fund.

Gov. James R. Thompson signed H.B. 3100 (P.A. 85-1195) on August 23 at a ceremony at the Reynolds Aluminum Recycling Center in Maywood.

Although proposed legislation often follows the complicated process just described, usually the process is routine and the main provisions remain on the same bill. But when a bill is defeated at some point in the process, the idea rarely dies. It may be reintroduced the next session or be resurrected during the same session by grafting it onto other bills.

This was the case with a change in landfill siting laws. Under the strict siting process in current law, local governments must consent before landfills are sited in their community. Municipalities control sites in their boundaries; county boards make the decision if the proposed site is in an unincorporated area.

The village of Fairview in Fulton County and the city of Marseilles in LaSalle County annexed unincorporated land and voted to allow landfills in those areas. This angered rural residents in both counties. They lived near the sites but had no elected representives making the decisions.

In response to those citizens' complaints, Sen. Jerome J. Joyce (D-43, Reddick) introduced S.B. 1621, which would require a countywide referendum to accept a landfill if the proposed site had been annexed by a municipality within the previous five years. The same day, in the House, Rep. Thomas J. Homer (D-91, Canton) introduced H.B. 3064, an identical bill. Homer said he introduced the legislation because the residents of Fulton County were denied a referendum on whether to accept the landfill, even though they had enough signatures on petitions. Since post office box numbers were used with many signatures instead of legally required street addresses, their petition was denied by the court.

Joyce's bill was blocked by the Senate Rules Committee, so on May 6 he offered the same provisions as an amendment to S.B. 1915, a bill he had introduced to exempt composting plants from the siting process. The amendment was approved on leave of the committee, a courtesy extended when a legislator seeks to amend his own bill. When the bill came up on third reading in the Senate May 19, Sen. John A. Davidson (R-50, Springfield) asked if the bill would make it harder to site landfills. Joyce said it only affected cases like Fairview's, where landfill developers attempt to circumvent current law. The bill passed with 30 votes, the bare minimum, despite a verfication of the vote by Sen. Roger A. Keats (R-29, Glencoe), owner of the company wanting to build the landfill in Fairview. If a roll call is verified and a member is not present in the chamber, his or her vote is struck from the record. Although legislators are supposed to be present to vote, their colleagues often vote for them if they are outside the chamber.

Meanwhile, Homer's bill passed the House 79-32 on May 20 as amended in committee to exempt home-rule units of government.

With nearly identical provisions having passed both chambers, the legislation seemed sure to pass. But then opposition developed. "The longer a bill sits, it becomes like flypaper," Homer said. "More flies catch." The city of Chicago, the Illinois Municipal League and the National Solid Waste Mangagement Association filed objections to the bills. With these heavy-hitting lobbyists involved, legislative support quickly dwindled.

On the morning of June 8 the Senate Energy and Environment Committee was scheduled to hear Homer's bill. Sen. Laura Kent Donahue (R-48, Quincy) was sponsoring the bill in the upper chamber, and about 50 residents of Fulton County were present. Donahue explained that these residents would be affected by the landfill but had no voice in the decision. Sen. Greg Zito (D-26, Melrose Park) voiced support for the idea but was concerned with the provision requiring a countywide referendum. There are unincorporated areas in his district in Cook County, but since Cook County contains roughly half the state's population, he was concerned that the issue would not get enough attention. He asked to become a co-sponsor so he could help formulate a separate provision for Cook County. Donahue agreed and suggested townshipwide referenda in suburban Cook County. Nevertheless the bill failed by a 5-4 vote.

That afternoon the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee met and heard Joyce's S.B. 1915. Since this was the only bill still alive containing the idea, Homer, Joyce and Donahue worked out a compromise. Enthusiasm had dwindled as it became evident that the governor would likely veto the idea. He said the bill would "change the rules in the middle of the game," a refrain the legislators had heard Thompson sing before. Yet they still proposed a very specific compromise and amended the bill to include it. The "new" bill would not apply to garbage transfer stations, expansion of current landfills, incinerators, home-rule units of government or municipalities with populations greater than 5,000. Also since it became evident that the General Assembly would not approve the referendum process on an issue of this sort, the new proposal enabled a county board to become involved in the municipality's decision. By a simple majority vote of the county board, the municipality would have to reconsider acceptance of a landfill, this time by an extraordinary majority. This provision would likely have blocked the projects in Fairview and Marsailles, while the added exemptions were enough to get the opponents to back down. But after Homer explained the legislation to the committee, assuming it was an agreed bill (meaning no interest groups object), the two landfill operators affected testified against the bill. The committee vote was split 5-5. Since passage requires the vote of a majority of the committee members, the idea died again.

Joyce made a final attempt to have his legislation passed by proposing it be added to the conference committee report of S.B. 1615, another bill dealing with landfills. But Joyce could not convince six members of the conference committee to add the proposal to its report.

He had failed — this session anyway.

Donahue pledges to introduce similiar legislation when the 86th General Assembly convenes in 1989.□

Brett D. Johnson

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