POLITICS

Judges put lawmakers
on notice: Follow the rules

by Charles N. Wheeler III

Imagine the consequences if the Illinois State Police really enforced the 55 mph speed limit on Chicago area expressways. Or envision the impact on the NBA's slamdunkers if the refs ever started calling traveling the way Dr. Naismith intended.

Interesting notions, right?

But neither Dan Ryan leadfoots nor the likes of Patrick Ewing and Shaquille O'Neal are likely to face . as serious a threat to their modus operand! as the one now confronting Illinois lawmakers.

As the General Assembly prepares for its deadline dash to a planned Memorial Day adjournment, its venerable tradition of last-minute deal-making (with attendant cutting of some constitutional corners) has been challenged by a judiciary that seems ready to require lawmakers to hew more closely to the rules.

The latest evidence of increased bench vigilance came just a few weeks ago, when a Fourth District Appellate Court panel threw out the state's truth- in-sentencing law, not because of problems with the underlying concept, but rather because of the manner in which the legislation was packaged.

Like most other states, Illinois has a constitutional requirement that bills — with certain limited exceptions — be confined to a single subject. The stricter sentencing requirements, though, were just one part of a

As the General Assembly prepares/or its planned adjournment, its tradition of last-minute deal-making has been challenged by a more vigilant judiciary,

catchall measure that lawmakers pushed through in the closing days of the spring 1995 session. Nine of the bill's 10 sections "concern some aspect of the criminal justice system" and so "comply with the single subject rule when liberally construed," wrote Justice Robert J. Steigmann. The 10th, though, provided a way for some hospitals to tap into patients' insurance claims and lawsuit awards to cover treatment costs — clearly outside the purview of criminal justice.

The law's defenders did not claim the hospital portion was related to criminal justice, arguing instead that the bill's overall title, "An Act in relation to governmental matters," was broad enough to cover all 10 sections. The appellate court disagreed. "The State proposes an exception to the single subject rule that would effectively swallow the rule," Steigmann wrote. "If we accepted the State's argument, nothing would be left of the single subject rule beyond the creativity of legislative drafters to make titles of acts as broad as possible."

The ruling is being appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, while lawmakers rush to enact a new truth- in-sentencing law unencumbered by extraneous provisions, which Gov. Jim Edgar no doubt will sign as soon as it hits his desk. Still, if the appellate ruling stands, prison terms will be reduced substantially — in some cases by decades — for scores of defendants sentenced since the new rules took effect almost three years ago.

The ruling infuriated many legislators, but they can't say they weren't warned. Just last May the Illinois Supreme Court invalidated a similar everything-but-the-kitchen-sink proposal that tried to package subjects as disparate as child sex offender notification, leaking underground gasoline storage tanks, juvenile carjackers and business eavesdropping under the bow of "An Act in relation to public safety." In that opinion, Justice Michael A. Bilandic noted that "the Legislature must indeed go very far to cross the line" to run afoul of the single subject rule. But "no matter how liberally the single subject rule is construed," Bilandic wrote, lawmakers "clearly crossed that line" with the sex offender-gasoline storage tank bill.

Both stricken measures are products of a legislative tradition in which leaders and powerful interests shape last-minute deals, often behind closed doors, and then see to it that rank-and- file lawmakers approve them virtually sight unseen.

Controlling the excesses of that process is precisely why drafters place into constitutions procedural mandates like the single subject rule or a requirement that a title must accurately describe a bill's contents. In fact, some analysts believe the impetus for such requirements came from a 1795 Georgia law depicted in the title as a measure to provide funds to compensate the state's Revolution-

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ary War veterans and to pay for the defense of its western frontier. Tucked into the fine print, however, was approval for the sale of about a third of present-day Alabama and Mississippi to a small group of land speculators for pennies an acre, a provision critics at the time alleged was secured by bribery of key lawmakers.

Here in Illinois, both the 1848 and 1870 Constitutions contained single subject and accurate title provisions. The purpose, according to one delegate to the convention that drafted the 1870 charter, was "to prevent the people who notice the proceedings here from being deceived, and to prevent the members who may vote upon propositions from being deceived, and to prevent log-rolling by which separate propositions,

The reasons for rules are valid. Legislators and the general public are entitled to know up front what's in a bill. There should he no after-the-fact surprises.

independent in their nature, are coupled together."

Echoed by the courts through the years, those reasons are as valid today as they were in the state's infancy. Both legislators and the general public are entitled to know up front what's in a bill; there should be no after-the-fact surprises. And popular concepts should not become pack mules for ideas that could not win stand-alone approval. (Indeed, Republican leaders tied the gasoline tank cleanup plan to the politically popular sex offender notification measure to make sure the votes were there for the tax increase included to fund the cleanup.)

Paying closer attention to the rules might cramp the legislature's style, especially in a session's closing days. Then again, a more open process would spare them the embarrassment of having the courts point out obvious violations. It might even improve the legislature's image among the citizenry — a not unpleasant prospect in an election year. 

Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

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