CHIP and other issues left hanging

MICHAEL D. KLEMENS

Gov. James R. Thompson prowled the Republican side of the Senate; Atty. Gen. Neil F. Hartigan patrolled the Democratic side. At issue on December 1, the final day of the fall veto session, was funding for a program that would offer state subsidized health insurance for persons uninsurable because of diseases like cancer, muscular dystrophy or diabetes. Republicans one day before had stood behind a Thompson veto and blocked, by a single vote, an override of $10 million for the Comprehensive Health Insurance Program (CHIP). They instead wanted to pass a new spending bill (a supplemental) authorizing $5 million for the program. Democrats argued that there should be no supplemental spending. And the disabled were pressing, claiming that promises had been broken when the override went down.

On this late afternoon, either override or supplemental was possible. Sen. Howard Carroll (D-1, Chicago) had filed a motion for a second attempt at an override of CHIP funding. Republicans had notified Senate President Philip J. Rock (D-8, Chicago) that they wanted to move a supplemental spending bill that would include CHIP. Hartigan, a supporter of the program, and Thompson appeared to bolster their allies. The Senate moved through its calendar and toward a showdown. Then Carroll stood to ask that the Senate be adjourned. Republicans protested, Rock called a voice vote and the Senate went home.

When lawmakers left town, their accomplishments were dwarfed by what was still to be done. Besides CHIP, legislators left unresolved $43 million in new (supplemental) general funds spending sought by various agencies, clean up of the new sales tax reform bill and pension reform. They (or their leaders) discussed but did not act on measures that would have allowed DuPage County to impose a 4 cent per gallon gasoline tax and that would have permitted seven counties — DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will (the Chicago collar counties) and Madison and St. Clair (the counties east of St. Louis) — to enact a new .25 percent sales tax. On the other hand, lawmakers did pass a bill to decentralize power in the Chicago schools. And lawmakers overrode a Thompson amendatory veto that would have postponed for a year establishment of a fund to speed payment of personal income tax refunds.

Chicago schools and CHIP got most of the time and attention, but the ongoing tussle between the executive and legislative branches pervaded the session. The House moved to counter Thompson's use of the amendatory veto. And lawmakers refused to approve supplemental spending which would have cost money and made it harder to resist Thompson's promised 1989 tax hike effort.

Lawmakers took new spending seriously. On November 30 the four appropriations committees, two from the House and two from the Senate, convened in joint session on the House floor. The back of the chambers was filled with agency directors, their budget chiefs and lobbyists. Lawmakers meant business. Robert L. Mandeville, director of the governor's Bureau of the Budget, was a "no show." While waiting to see if Mandeville would appear, House Majority Leader Jim McPike (D-112, Alton) urged,"If they refuse to send someone, I would suggest we recess." Mandeville arrived shortly. He estimated the general funds revenues at $11.963 billion, unchanged from June and about $100 million below those of the legislative forecasters. He defended the decision to award salary increases to nonunion employees ("merit comp" increases in appropriations' parlance), saying that it was important that those workers get salary hikes. Rep. Woody Bowman (D-4, Evanston) disputed the decision: "In my opinion it was a deliberate attempt to frustrate the intent of the legislature."

Lawmakers were no mellower with agency directors. First up was Janet Otwell, director of the Department on Aging, who wanted $1.7 million to cover increased caseloads and reimbursement rates in her department's programs. Bowman queried Otwell on her staffs ability to make projections. McPike grilled her on merit comp raises. He said the House had told her when it passed the budget in June that it understood her request for the money but could not afford the merit comp increases. Otwell countered that her supplemental requests were not in the personnel lines and that the money for those raises would me made up internally. Bowman responded that without the merit comp increases there would have been $415,000 available for transfer.

With that kind of detailed scrutiny there was too little time to review all requests. Bowman asked each agency to submit, by the end of the day, rationale for each increase that specified why the money had not been sought last spring and why it could not wait until next spring. Lawmakers then decided that none of the supplementals was critical and scheduled further appropriations hearings for mid-December in Chicago. The plan is to consider any necessary supplemental when the 85th General Assembly returns to Springfield on January 9 for its final two days of work.

Sen. Carroll claimed that supplementals had become common only in recent years: "We're going to stop these mini

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budgets. Every time you have a quorum, you have a new budget." Bowman sees the refusal this fall as a return to more sane budgeting practices. His interpretation: "There is $42 million in new revenue. What he [Thompson] is trying to do is soak it up now and put it in the base so there'll be that much less flexibility for the General Assembly next spring. So we're saying, wait a minute, we've got a budget cycle and the spring is the proper time to take up these matters."

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But there was more at work than fiscal responsibility — or even a struggle over budget control. Lack of a supplemental spending bill put Senate Republicans and Thompson on the spot over CHIP. That bothered Carroll and others not at all.

The legislation creating CHIP had been passed two years before. The money to run the program has never been approved. As originally conceived CHIP would allow persons who are refused health insurance to purchase coverage through a state-subsidized program. The insured would pay 135 percent of the average premium or more than $2,000 per year.

The original appropriation was vetoed as part of Thompson's 1987 budget cuts. Last spring the General Assembly scaled back the program and gave the board that oversees CHIP the authority to limit enrollment, slash benefits and raise premiums. Thompson signed that into law but again vetoed the money. Thompson acknowleged that signing the original bill was a mistake. But the issue, he said, was not $10 million now, but whether Illinois can afford a full year costs and subsequent pressures to expand benefits. "Inexorably it will go from $10 million to $25 to $40 to $100," Thompson said.

When 11 Republican senators stood with their governor and and voted present, the CHIP measure fell a single vote short of 136 needed to override the veto. Carroll charged, "Today we have seen a defeat for dignity in Illinois." He immediately filed a second motion to override. The disabled met to decide whether to push the override or the $5 million supplemental, which would cover this fiscal year's spending. They chose a renewed push on the override. Carroll said they had been assured by some Republicans that if there were no supplemental appropriation, the senators would vote for an override. The action brought Thompson and Hartigan to the Senate floor, but the disabled lost either chance of funding when senators adjourned.

Controversy also flared this fall on a familiar front, the amendatory veto. House Speaker Michael J. Madigan (D-30, Chicago) has long opposed the way Thompson uses (Madigan says abuses) the amendatory veto to rewrite legislation. Madigan claims that because of his power, Thompson does not become involved when bills are being considered, but steps in only as a superlegislator after bills have been passed by both chambers.

Unable to effect change otherwise, Madigan changed the rules — the House Rules — on a party line vote. Now all amendatory vetoes are reviewed by the House Rules Committee. The committee decides by majority vote — and like every other House committee Democrats are in the majority — whether an amendatory veto meets the constitutional stricture that such vetoes not alter the fundamental purpose or legislative intent of the original bill. Those that pass the test are placed on the calendar under "amendatory vetoes — gubernatorial compliance." Those that fail the Rules Committee test are listed under "amendatory vetoes — gubernatorial non-compliance." No bill listed as being in noncompliance was passed this fall.

When it came time to consider pension reform, lawmakers rejected a bill that they had passed with a single "nay" vote in the spring. The Illinois House refused to accept Thompson's amendatory veto of a bill that would have required that pensions be funded as the benefits are earned, increasing costs now but avoiding still higher costs later. Thompson had delayed the date for compliance from the 1989 until the 1990 fiscal year. Estimates of increased costs run about $130 million per year. Some suggested that Thompson had signed the measure to soak up some of the available cash kicking around. So, by not passing it, lawmakers left themselves some short-run fiscal breathing space.

But there were other reasons for rejecting the bill. Also kicking around the General Assembly was an omnibus pension bill that would have increased pensions for Chicago firefighters, teachers and constitutional officers. The defeated reform bill was to be amended to the omnibus pension bill, perhaps bringing a few more supporters aboard. It was, but the amended bill was not acted upon.

The fall session also proved that even the support of Madigan and Thompson does not guarantee a tax increase. (The previous spring had demonstrated that Madigan's opposition would kill one.) DuPage County Board Chairman Jack Kneupfer sought approval to impose a 4 cent a gallon gasoline tax in his county. And representatives from DuPage and other counties wanted authority to increase their local sales tax by one-quarter percent. Both Madigan and Thompson said they would support the right of those entities to impose such taxes. It was not to be. The question got tangled up with a salary increase for state's attorneys and property taxes for Chicago schools. And, rank-and-file lawmakers were unenthusiastic to hostile. Douglas L. Whitley, president of the Taxpayers' Federation of Illinois, found irony in the request coming from heavily Republican DuPage County three weeks after George Bush's election. "Thank goodness for the rank and file for a change,'' said Whitley.

On the undone list was a bill correcting oversights and omissions in the sales tax reform measure passed and signed into law last summer. The reform eliminated the local taxes of 1.25 percent, correspondingly increased the state rate from 5 to 6.25 percent, and provided that the state return the extra money it collected to local governments. When cities discovered that the new law required that the General Assembly vote each year to give them their increased share, they cried foul. A bill that would have made the transfer automatic cleared the Senate this fall but was not considered in the House. There was talk, too, of eliminating the new photoprocessing tax for professional photographers, but that never surfaced in bill form.

Six days after adjournment, Madigan again flexed legislative muscle. The speaker announced his intention to dispatch his appropriations committee chairmen as observers to contract negotiating sessions between the executive branch and the state's largest union. The collective bargaining agreement with the 40,000-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees expires June 30.

Madigan noted that the 1986 contract was approved before the November election and just before AFSCME's endorsement of Thompson. The 1986 contract's raises of 4, 4.5 and 5 percent, successively, cost the state $120 million. "Clearly when such extraordinary spending decisions are being made, the legislature should be involved," Madigan said. If rebuffed, the General Assembly's recourse would be to refuse to fund raises lawmakers found excessive, Madigan said.

Lawmakers may have left much undone during the veto session. One of the things they did not do was commit themselves to new spending. That could help them get by another year without raising taxes.□

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