Senate Week in Review: Oct. 12-16
SPRINGFIELD — During the first week of the fall Veto Session, lawmakers approved funding for a college scholarship program and advanced a recall measure that would give the public the power to remove governors from office, according to state Sen. Dale Risinger, R-Peoria.
The Senate also sent to the House of Representatives a measure to eliminate a little-noticed new tax on small businesses that had been buried in a state budget bill.
Prior to veto session, members of the Senate Redistricting Committee traveled to Carbondale Oct. 13 for the fourth in a series of hearings on redistricting reform in Illinois. The Committee received testimony from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, which has been researching the issue of redistricting reform in Illinois for years.
On Oct. 15, students from colleges and universities throughout Illinois gathered in Springfield to lobby for reinstatement of funding to the state’s Monetary Assistance Program (MAP), which was recently cut by Gov. Pat Quinn.
Lawmakers responded by advancing Senate Bill 1180, which appropriates $205 million to the Illinois Student Assistance Commission’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget. The intent is to fully fund MAP for the remainder of the year.
Although a funding stream has not yet been identified, lawmakers feel confident that one will be located and say that students can breathe a little easier knowing that the MAP assistance they rely on will likely be available for the spring 2010 semester. It is estimated that as many as 138,000 students would have been affected if lawmakers had not approved the funding.
Risinger joined other lawmakers in pointing out that Gov. Quinn has the ability to fully finance MAP. Quinn was allocated $1.2 billion in discretionary funding, which he could use to finance MAP; however, to date he has opted not to use that revenue to finance MAP scholarships.
Also on Oct. 15, the Senate approved a Constitutional amendment that would give Illinois voters the power to boot future governors who aren’t doing their job.
House Joint Resolution Constitutional Amendment 31 has been approved by both legislative chambers and will now be presented to voters on the November 2010 ballot. If voters approve recall, it could then be initiated in the future.
To begin the recall process, a small number of state legislators would have to advance the initiative. Petitions in support of recall would then have to be signed by 15 percent of voters who participated in the last gubernatorial election. If the required number of signatures is collected, then an election would be held to determine the governor’s fate, which would then possibly be followed by an election for a successor governor.
In other business, the tax repeal — contained in House Bill 2239 — would correct a provision that was slipped into legislation last summer by the Senate President, who said he had been trying to close a tax “loophole.” In reality, the provision would have significantly increased taxes on partnerships in Illinois. Risinger said the last-minute inclusion of a major tax law change represents just one more example of why GOP senators have consistently pushed to open up the budget process and provide more opportunity for public scrutiny and debate before a state budget is approved.
During an Oct. 13 redistricting hearing in Carbondale, representatives from the Paul Simon Institute offered suggestions for changing the state’s process of drawing legislative districts. They noted that Illinois’ districts are seriously influenced by partisan political manipulation, which has led to what some critics say is “politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.”
Lawmakers also allowed public testimony, during which citizens described the state’s redistricting process as “arcane,” “corrupt,” and “intended to protect incumbents.” The public response reflected testimony from Paul Simon Institute experts, who said that one significant consequence of Illinois’ system of redistricting is the loss of voter confidence in their government. Expert witnesses were less direct in their criticism of the system, but presented compelling arguments for replacing the current system with a more open and equitable process for drawing legislative and congressional district boundaries.
The Paul Simon Institute is advocating for Illinois to “de-nest” legislative districts, so state representative districts are no longer contained within a state senate district. Experts from the institute are also pushing for an end to the state’s “luck-of-the-draw” system of determining who wins control of the redistricting process.
