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* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
“The legislature is going to be a check on the executive branch,” newly elected House Speaker Chris Welch flatly declared to me in an interview the other day.
Welch was responding to a question I posed to him about his Jan. 13 inaugural address, when he asked not-so-rhetorically, “Why is it difficult to ensure that families’ unemployment checks continue unabated and arrive on time so struggling families can feed their children? Why is that hard to grasp?”
Welch’s predecessor as House speaker, Michael J. Madigan, stayed completely mum about Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis and resulting mass unemployment, though the governor occasionally took verbal shots at Madigan and called on him to resign if he refused to answer questions about the ComEd investigation.
Not a single House committee hearing has been held about the backlog of unemployment checks at the Illinois Department of Employment Security or, for that matter, all the other migraine headaches legislators have been dealing with as desperate constituents turn to them for assistance when they can’t get through to a state agency. That could very well change.
Rep. Fred Crespo, D-Hoffman Estates, warned the governor last week via the publication Center Square that the House could “hold up some of these funds, even federal dollars” to IDES if members don’t start getting answers to their questions. Crespo was instrumental in corralling votes for Welch and has been the chair of the House General Services Appropriations Committee.
“It’s not a threat, I think it’s more, I think it’s an education,” Crespo told Center Square. “They’re new, and make sure they understand the process.”
“I’m going to have an open and ongoing relationship with the governor to express what I’m hearing from our members,” Welch told me.
Welch didn’t come right out and say it, but what he is hearing from his members about the governor ain’t all that great these days, as Rep. Crespo could attest.
In the just-concluded lame-duck session of the Legislature, in which both of Pritzker’s top priorities failed to pass, the governor’s administration appears to have gotten a taste of what may come later this year.
A bill to decouple the state from federal business tax breaks (depending on whom you talk to) worth $400 million to $1 billion to the state coffers received just 50 votes in the wee hours of last Wednesday morning. Nine Black Caucus members did not vote for the bill. Most voted either “present” or took a walk, but Rep. Debbie Meyers-Martin, D-Olympia Fields, voted “No.”
Black Caucus members are usually reliable votes for revenue increases. Not that day.
Welch didn’t vote on the decoupling bill, either. He explained early on Wednesday morning that he was “distracted” (though the roll call was held open for quite a long while) and would vote for the bill again when the time came, but that time never came.
The Senate played games with the governor’s must-have cannabis cleanup bill, waiting until almost 2 a.m. on Wednesday to pass it pretty much as the governor wanted. But by then it was too late for the House to act.
The Senate seemed to many to be deliberately slow-walking important bills for the governor and for others during the last couple days of session. “I’m pretty sure this bill that we’re debating right now was sent to us about six hours ago from the House,” grumbled one senator at 5:37 a.m. on Wednesday.
The House Democrats were heavily distracted by their election of a new speaker, and some white north suburban Democrats were prepared to go “on strike” if the cannabis bill was passed without allowing their dispensaries to move to better locations, which was a deal-killer for the Black Caucus.
In the end, the lame-duck session was a significant failure for the Pritzker administration. Yes, there were tons of extenuating circumstances. But the administration knew ever since the veto session was canceled in November that a lame-duck session was a distinct probability. They had two months to prepare and now have precious little to show for it except for the Black Caucus agenda that they weren’t in charge of.
Pritzker’s huge legislative success in 2019 was an aberration. It was a legislative expression of joy and relief at having a governor who wanted to work with them to get big things done after 12 years of gubernatorial ineptitude and outright hostility toward the General Assembly. But if they don’t address whatever issues there are with Senate President Don Harmon, woo the new House speaker and start tending to member egos, they’re in for a very rough spring.
Subscribers have the rest of my interview with Speaker Welch.
* Related…
* Which Illinois bills failed to pass during the lame duck session? Here are several
posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 8:55 am
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Yep, have to placate the children in the GA or they’ll throw a fit.
I’m half joking there. I’m sure Pritzker’s team could and should improve. But I’m pretty much immune to legislators’ petty complaints and pearl clutching.
Comment by Perrid Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 9:08 am
I will say, yes, the governor needs to work better with the legislature. But I will also give him a half pass considering this last year has been the most difficult year to govern for any Illinois governor probably ever. The IDES debacle and the veterans’ home tragedy have been his biggest failings. He needs to right that ship.
Comment by Ducky LaMoore Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 9:18 am
I’m interesting in this new uncharted era with a new Democrat state house Speaker. It’ll be different but interesting.
Comment by Levois J Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 9:22 am
== have to placate the children in the GA ==
It’s an annoying but necessary part of the job — and it’s not that hard to do. I get it, they’re bogged down by a-once-century pandemic, but they’ve missed a lot of layups. Andy Manar should help a bunch.
Comment by Roman Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 9:49 am
The legislature and Gov seem to be working well together on not doing anything to fix structural financial problems lol. Maybe he means “work together” on different things.
Comment by California Guy Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 9:53 am
===“The legislature is going to be a check on the executive branch,”===
This has a real cost associated with it — as in it will require spending to do so but I imagine there will be no effort to adequately fund anything designed to create accountability because our state government hasn’t adequately funded any agency.
Program implementation, program evaluation, and program design is supposed to be an ongoing cycle that repeats and it requires an investment in the staff to oversee implementation, to oversee evaluation, and to make changes in order to hit those goals. This requires not only having adequate staff to perform those functions, but also training the people responsible for carrying out the programs in the first place.
What Speaker Welch is discussing would require real structural reform in how the State of Illinois’ public bureaucracy functions if it is intended to be a sincere goal.
Having hearings isn’t going to create accountability, because I can already tell you why IDES struggled with processing hundreds of thousands simultaneous unemployment applications and had difficulty successfully processing checks and difficulty successfully preventing fraud: Those things require funding and the State of Illinois categorically failed to adequately fund the agency to be able to put in place a system that could be scaled that quickly.
Having a hearing might find a scapegoat, and it might also identify that some leadership at the agency is grossly incompetent, but completely rebuilding the IT infrastructure of that agency would have taken hundreds of millions of dollars — no about of skill and ability is going to cause an administration to be able to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars in order to do that, and even if they did they still wouldn’t have the appropriation to authorize that spending.
The buck might stop at the Governor’s desk, but someone has to send it there.
Comment by Candy Dogood Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 10:07 am
JB has gotten used to the legislative branch not being around, and he seems to have liked it. Time to get back to the basics.
Comment by SSL Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 10:07 am
Brutal lame duck for Pritzker, but disappointing how many reps and senators just keep ignoring the state’s fiscal issues.
Comment by Chicagonk Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 10:08 am
Why is anyone surprised that not much was accomplished? That is the MO for the legislature. They would rather play political games than do anything to help the people they represent.
Comment by Really Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 10:18 am
The bottom line is he needs his Deputy Governors to do a better job plain and simple. I have heard from numerous elected officials that both Christian Mitchell and Dan Hynes forgot where they came from. Not returning calls and not responsive to what other elected officials thought was important for them and their constituents.
Comment by Hard D Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 10:23 am
==They would rather play political games==
Such as the old traditional game of “kicking the can down the road.”
Comment by Essential State Employee Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 11:34 am
===the House could “hold up some of these funds, even federal dollars” to IDES===
So the solution to IDES not processing fast enough is to take away their funding?
Comment by thechampaignlife Tuesday, Jan 19, 21 @ 12:42 pm