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Nothing ended last week

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Illinois

* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…

After years of ugly gridlock and weeks of groups and political leaders whipping up an already-disgusted populace over a 1.2 percentage point income tax increase, lots of legislators were understandably on edge last week.

Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, tweeted ahead of the votes to override Gov. Bruce Rauner’s vetoes of a budget package that it was “hard not to think about the (recent Virginia) congressional shooting showing up to work today.”

And so people were naturally a bit rattled when a woman triggered a more than two-hour delay of those override votes as police and a hazardous materials team frantically combed the Statehouse.

The woman, described by a friend as a “wonderful” person and “beloved” by many, threw some sort of substance at or into a few offices, including the governor’s. A couple of her friends said she might have been attempting to perform a “good luck” ritual.

Depending on your outlook, her possible good luck ritual either worked or failed. We now have a tax increase and a sort of balanced budget, and everyone can take a breather for a while. On the other hand, we now have a tax increase and a sort of balanced budget that are fabulously unpopular and will require more work to fix.

Next fiscal year’s budget is really not going to be pretty, but trouble will start even before then. Moody’s already has declared that it could downgrade the state to junk bond status even with the tax increase. If that happens, it will damage the government’s ability to borrow to pay off some of the $15 billion in debt that has been piling up during the two-year impasse.

And even if Illinois isn’t immediately downgraded, the state will hover on the precipice of junk status for the foreseeable future, perhaps for years. There just isn’t enough money on the revenue side of this plan and too much on the spending side to ensure balanced budgets into the future and to pay off that mountain of backlogged bills.

What lawmakers did was fix the state government’s immediate problem. A broader deal would have been preferable, but that obviously wasn’t possible. And there isn’t a person around Rauner who doesn’t think that he now has a dual political advantage of new state revenues to spend along with his popular opposition to the tax increase.

So, now what? There’s a belief by some that House Speaker Michael Madigan has the very thing he has wanted for more than two years: A working bipartisan super-majority to override the governor at will.

But that, I think, is a misinterpretation of what happened. Madigan didn’t create that super-majority, his members did. If it had been left up to Madigan alone, the tax increase probably would have failed. His members were the ones who reached out to their Republican colleagues to negotiate a budget and a tax increase. And when Madigan tried to send them home for a few days, they insisted he keep the House in session and call the votes.

When Republicans started dropping off the roll call last week after taking tremendous heat, Madigan could have let the override fail and made Rauner be forever tagged as “Gov. Junk.” But his members wanted it to pass, so he rounded up more Democratic votes, including a couple of his own targets — something that never happens in that caucus.

Madigan’s members will be hugely important to any further veto overrides, but those breakaway House Republicans will be even more crucial.

And that leads us to the education funding reform bill. As I write this, the Senate has not sent the bill to the governor, who has vowed to veto what he calls a “Chicago bailout.” While that bill helps more truly needy districts in the long run than the governor’s plan, it does contain more money for Chicago Public Schools.

After taking unimaginable heat for voting for a tax increase, it seems doubtful that those same 10 Republicans will then turn around and vote for a “Chicago bailout” that will be portrayed as stealing money from their own students. Without those votes, a veto can’t be overridden.

Both the Democratic and Republican school funding plans require state aid to be distributed via a new formula. No new formula, no school funding. No school funding, lots of schools don’t open after summer vacation. And just like that, we’re in another full-blown crisis.

Maybe that woman could be brought back to the Statehouse for another good luck ceremony, only without the haz-mat teams this time.

This column was written last week before the governor hired the Illinois Policy Institute’s chief operating officer to be his new chief of staff. As such, I’m now much more on the fence about what will happen with SB 1.

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 9:49 am

Comments

Well, that was bracing–like the polar bear club of columns.

Comment by JPC Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 10:11 am
=After taking unimaginable heat for voting for a tax increase, it seems doubtful that those same 10 Republicans will then turn around and vote for a “Chicago bailout” that will be portrayed as stealing money from their own students. =

Depends on local awareness–often brought to the fore by local superintendents–that the bill provides money to 268 downstate school districts that is greater (on a per pupil basis) than what Chicago receives.

If SB 1 is a Chicago bailout, then it’s a bailout to 268 other Illinois school districts first.

Many GOP reps, including those who opposed the income tax hikes, will be voting against their own districts if they oppose SB 1 override. That may not be more politically powerful than the governor’s demagoguery, but perhaps.

Comment by Chicago Guy Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 10:13 am
I don’t know if Rauner is ready to begin another crisis, this time with school funding. He needs to find his line-item veto pen and hope for the best. If he vetoes the Senate Bill outright, he will be the cause of schools not opening.

Comment by Ducky LaMoore Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 10:16 am
=If SB 1 is a Chicago bailout, then it’s a bailout to 268 other Illinois school districts first==

No. The other school districts would get the money without manipulation of the formula (in the last amendment to SB 1, Chicago moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1 so it gets more of the new money, the extra $250 million that CPS receives in the Block Grants were built into the base funding minimum, and CPS receives $200 million for pension cost).

Comment by winners and losers Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 10:33 am
“Chicago bailout”- Confusing term.

Used by ILGOP, it suggests taxpayers are somehow being required to provide more funds to CPS than the State should be required to provide under any fair method of distributing education funds Statewide.

Looking at Gross State Product, Chicago is the primary economic force creating the bulk of State revenue and could be thought of as “bailing out” the areas of Illinois outside of metro Chicago.

Comment by Markus Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 11:59 am
As written, the bill, SB1, give Chicago money prior to other districts 1st, irregardless of the tier the school is qualified under and SB1 also includes CPS pensions, where the schools/districts do/does not.
Is how the SB1 is written folks..

Comment by sharkette Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 2:00 pm
sharkette-

It’s not how the bill is written. But it is how you and the rest of the ILGOP are spinning it to conform to your “Chicago bailout” talking point.

What constitutes “hold harmless” is the point of contention. Opinions vary on what that means, the Dems take it literally, that no district gets less funding than last year; the GOP first takes base funding money away from CPS then holds them harmless.

Comment by Markus Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 2:51 pm
Truly the untold story. The rest of the media seemingly doesn’t have a clue that the deals were bipartisan and member-driven.

You know, the way an elected representative body is supposed to work in goo-goo land.

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 3:10 pm
- Markus - Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 11:59 am:

Looking at Gross State Product, Chicago is the primary economic force creating the bulk of State revenue and could be thought of as “bailing out” the areas of Illinois outside of metro Chicago.

Amazing how other mostly rural states survive more successfully than us. Could be the policies being set don’t work statewide. I mean, has anyone noticed our neighbors are doing better as a whole without a Chicago?

Comment by Shemp Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 4:16 pm
===”I mean, has anyone noticed our neighbors are doing better as a whole without a Chicago?”===

By what measure? Illinois is ranked Top 20 in the World by GDP. We have our issues but save for a few resort areas, rural America is struggling to survive.

Comment by Markus Tuesday, Jul 11, 17 @ 5:17 pm
@Shemp–

Where do you live?

Almost every rural county in Illinois is losing population.

Whole bunch of other indicators that show that things aren’t going well for our rural brethern, either.

Wanna see something real fun? Go through the state report cards for school districts, and see how many of the rural ones have kids failing at math, english, etc.

And when the robots take over, and the farmers don’t need laborers to drive the tractors, combines, semis that haul grain, along with the automated animal feeding systems…and the warehouses are staffed with robots assisted by humans…and the restaurants have ordering kiosks and automated kitchens, meaning fewer employees…rural Illinois is going to get an even harder kick in the teeth.

P.S. How many of our neighbors have higher tax rates, and how many of our neighbors tax retirement income? Which midwestern state has the highest per-capita income? Are you certain racing to the bottom truly is the best way to improve our state?

Comment by Lynn S. Wednesday, Jul 12, 17 @ 3:41 pm