The
Illinois Senate was poised for a vote late Thursday on a $50.6 billion
state spending plan — an altered version of what Gov. J.B. Pritzker and
the state legislature’s Democratic leaders had presented as a done deal a
day earlier.The
process for approving the budget has been slowed as Democrats, who
control the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature, face
economic uncertainty after a couple of years of record revenues thanks
to a strong job market and spending stimulated in part by pandemic
relief money.
“In
the past two years we’ve had money, like, coming out of our ears,” said
Rep. Margaret Croke, a Chicago Democrat who is part of the House’s
moderate caucus. “We’ve been very flush with cash, and this is the first
year we’ve had to take a hard look at the budget and make some tough
decisions where there are both winners and losers, and unfortunately
there are always going to be some people who don’t get what they need.”
Late
Thursday afternoon, Senate Democrats introduced a tweaked version of
the spending plan unveiled the previous day. The Senate adjourned late
Wednesday night without taking an expected vote on that deal.
Lawmakers
in the House met privately Thursday afternoon to discuss the initial
plan, which had not been shared with rank-and-file lawmakers in full
before Pritzker stood before reporters with Senate President Don Harmon
of Oak Park and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch of Hillside to
announce they’d reached an agreement. They indicated that they expected
the budget to pass through both chambers without significant changes.
Having
already blown a self-imposed deadline to pass a budget last week,
Senate Democrats were hoping to move the plan Thursday, while House
Democrats planned to work into the weekend to send it to Pritzker ahead
of a deadline next Wednesday to pass a budget with a simple majority.
Asked
about the delayed movement on a deal Pritzker seemed so confident about
a day earlier, the governor’s office on Thursday put the onus on
lawmakers. “The legislative schedule is set by the respective chambers,”
Pritzker spokesman Alex Gough said.
House
Democrats have acknowledged that caucuses representing different racial
and ethnic groups and political ideologies within their record
78-member supermajority each have priorities they’re trying to get
addressed in the budget, and the challenge has been balancing those
requests with the need to stay within the overall spending level agreed
upon by Pritzker, Welch and Harmon.
Democrats
also have had to grapple with skyrocketing costs in a program that
provides Medicaid-style health benefits for immigrants who are in the
country without legal permission or otherwise don’t qualify for the
traditional insurance program for the poor.
“There’s
also been the issue of federal funding getting cut and organizations
looking to the state to fund that, and unfortunately we can’t make up
all those gaps,” Croke said. “And I’m sure, for a lot of people, they’re
hearing that from their constituents that they want those gaps
covered.”
While
Croke said dissension within the Democratic ranks has eased over the
weeks, other party members privately acknowledged a lively debate over
competing budget priorities, particularly after the announced budget
deal increased spending for the immigrant health care program by more
than $300 million from Pritzker’s initial budget proposal, which had
pegged the price tag at $220 million.
There
also have been differences over whether to extend a $75 million tax
credit program for private school scholarship donors, which was left out
of the agreement among the top Democrats.
On
Wednesday, the Pritzker administration highlighted elements of the
budget including an additional $100 million for Monetary Award Program
grant funding for college students; an increase of $100 million in
higher education funding; and an increase of $85 million to support
homelessness prevention, affordable housing and other programs related
to a vision of “ending homelessness in the state.”
The
proposal also includes an additional $200 million to the state’s
underfunded pension plans on top of the $9.8 billion required under
state law.
The
governor’s office also emphasized a $20 million investment in a new
Illinois Grocery Initiative to expand grocery access to urban
neighborhoods and rural towns.
The
more-than-3,400-page budget plan, filed by Sen. Elgie Sims, a Chicago
Democrat and the Senate’s chief budget negotiator, also included $15
million for the state’s violent crime witness protection program, which is half of the $30 million that Pritzker proposed for the program in February.
The
program is the result of 2013 legislation that called for the state to
provide aid to law enforcement agencies to relocate witnesses of violent
crimes if they are at risk of danger, but it didn’t get funded until
Pritzker allocated $30 million for it last year. On Thursday, a
spokesperson for the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority,
which administers the fund, said the program was still being organized.
Also
in the budget was a $30 million appropriation for a fund that
distributes money to police departments for body cameras and squad car
dashboard camera systems. Another $10 million goes to departments to
hire and retain police officers, and $4 million was set aside for their
firearm ballistics technology.
Another
$15 million was also set aside for grants associated with a youth
summer jobs program, geared toward especially benefiting young people in
Chicago and other urban areas.
The
budget also includes a roughly $112 million increase in the share of
state income tax revenue distributed to local governments, partially
satisfying a request from municipal leaders, including new Chicago Mayor
Brandon Johnson.
In
response to another request from Johnson, the budget would provide
$42.5 million to aid migrants arriving from the country’s southern
border. The rejiggered plan that came out Thursday, however, would make
that money available to counties and towns statewide rather than just
Chicago and other parts of Cook County.
A
day after the Senate failed to vote on the budget as anticipated on
Wednesday, Sims sought to downplay any disconnect between Democrats in
the Senate and the House.
“Just
like with any budget, it’s 3,000-page document, so everybody wants to
go through to make sure that the terms of the agreement are actually on
the paper,” Sims said.
Senate
Republicans have been less critical than usual in their comments on
this year’s budget talks, in part a reflection of their greater
involvement under new GOP leader John Curran of Downers Grove.
But
during a committee hearing Thursday morning, GOP Sen. Chapin Rose of
Mahomet raised concerns about the lack of wiggle room within the
Democrats’ plan, which calls spending nearly all of the $50.7 billion in
revenue the state expects to collect for its general fund for the
budget year that begins July 1.
“You’ve
only got about $100 million in give between revenue and spend,” Rose
said, questioning whether state agencies would come back to the
legislature looking for more money later in the year.
Republican
Sen. Jil Tracy of Quincy said it was “perhaps ... a tactical error” for
Pritzker and the Democratic leaders to announce a deal before it was
finalized.
“It should have been done after the budget was passed,” Tracy said.
Still
on the legislative agenda were district maps for Chicago’s new elected
school board, which by law is supposed to be done before July 1.
Separately,
the House voted 69-35 to send Pritzker a measure that would require
lawsuits challenging laws under the state constitution to be filed in
either Cook County or Sangamon County, home to Springfield.
Democrats
who supported the measure said it was necessary to prevent people who
sue the state from trying to get their cases heard before judges who
they believe will rule in the favor, while also conserving resources for
the attorney general’s office, which represents the state in court.
Since
the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state has been hit with a
barrage of legal challenges to Pritzker’s executive orders as well as
new state laws abolishing cash bail and banning certain high-powered
semi-automatic weapons.
“One
attorney was charging people $200 to have their names added as
plaintiffs to the lawsuit,” said state Democratic Rep. Jay Hoffman of
Swansea, a reference to the numerous lawsuits filed by failed Republican
attorney general candidate Thomas DeVore.
Republicans,
including Rep. Dan Caulkins of Decatur, who has sued the state over the
sweeping gun ban approved in January, called the measure a power grab
by the Democratic majority.
“They
pass unconstitutional laws to make law-abiding citizens criminals, and
then they make those same citizens travel hundreds of miles to a
kangaroo court that they control,” said Caulkins, whose gun ban lawsuit
is awaiting a ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court. “Tyrants are always
the same, whether kings or lawless Chicago politicians.”
Hoffman,
who is from the Metro East area outside St. Louis, noted that the
circuit courts in Sangamon County are dominated by GOP judges.
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