When members of the Illinois House return to the capitol this week, a stack of more than 1,000 bills will be sitting on their desks.
When the state`s 59 senators arrive at their desks Tuesday, they`ll find a list of 36 active bills to consider.
The numbers tell exactly where the General Assembly stands as it heads into its last eight scheduled weeks. As work proceeds in the House, a partisan fight over control has sent many Senate bills to parliamentary purgatory.
For weeks, House lawmakers have sat in committees listening to testimony in an effort to whittle the 2,817 pieces of legislation introduced since January. Despite some signs that the Senate deadlock may be easing, some in the House are wondering if the weeding-out process has been an exercise in futility.
”You still have to go through the paces,” said Rep. Robert Regan (R., Crete), the sponsor of six bills that survived the committee process, somewhat of a rarity for a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic-controlled House. ”I`m just hoping that something over there (in the Senate) will come together.”
So far, 28 Republicans and 2 conservative Southwest Side Democrats have come together in a coalition that has challenged the narrow Democratic control of the Senate and has brought about a weeks-long stalemate.
Most legislators seemed confident of a settlement when the spring session was new. But Friday marked the passage of the first of several deadlines that lawmakers had to meet if they wanted to make their bills state law. Panels had until that day to advance bills from committees to the entire House and Senate.
Though the House is likely to vote on most of the committee-passed bills, sending some to an uncertain fate in the Senate, senators have shown no sign of reciprocating. In fact, most Senate Republicans boycotted committee meetings and placed bills approved by Democratic panel members into cold storage.
”I think one thing that is absolutely blowing my mind here is that we have had virtually no outcry from our own (Republican) membership to proceed with their legislation,” said Sen. Aldo DeAngelis (R., Olympia Fields). ”We may have, by accident, found out that all these bills we were sponsoring don`t mean that much and how the process can survive without them.”
Although the committee deadline is somewhat meaningless, because bills are at the amendment stage where once-dormant legislative proposals can resurface, individual senators may face a critical test of self-restraint on May 26, when Senate-sponsored bills must be advanced to the House.
But the true deadline comes at 12:01 a.m. July 1, when a three-fifths vote, rather than a simple majority, is required to approve legislation that would go into law immediately. At that point, the 36 Senate votes needed to approve a bill will be more than either the Republican coalition or Democrats have. And the 71 House votes that would be needed exceed the 67 votes held by the House Democrat majority.
”I don`t think we`re at the point where we have to push a panic button, but we would hope they resolve their differences. I don`t know when you reach the point of no return,” said House Speaker Michael J. Madigan (D., Chicago). ”But there`s nothing magic about July 1. We have worked beyond July 1 in the past, and we can do it again if we feel there`s a need to stay here to consider legislation. At times, the imposition of the extraordinary vote requirement makes for better legislation.”
For better or for worse, the issues still being considered by legislators include:
– Several measures dealing with the deadly AIDS virus, including proposals that would eliminate the premarital testing requirement, but mandate tests for inmates being released from prison and those facing sexual assault charges.
Other measures would require public health clinics to routinely test their clients for AIDS and allow doctors to tell unknowing spouses of patients who test positive. Prospective parents trying to adopt from the state also could have a child tested for the AIDS virus. Another measure would make it a felony to knowingly try to infect someone else with the disease.
– An attempt to legalize casino gambling on riverboats traveling on Illinois rivers. The bill is before the House, as is a measure that would make legal the sports-betting pools found in many neighborhood taverns.
– A bill that had not been expected to reach the House floor, but did in a surprise committee vote, that would give parents a state payment to help send their child to any public or private school in Illinois.
– House and Senate measures that would require doctors to determine if a fetus the mother wishes to abort is viable after 20 weeks and, if it is viable, to perform an abortion in a hospital with life-support equipment available. But efforts to give unmarried fathers the right to seek a court injunction to block a woman`s abortion failed.
– Legislation requiring an automatic 15 percent rollback of auto insurance rates. It was sent to the House floor, as was a measure that would create an elected Department of Insurance director and require insurance companies to get state approval for 15 percent increases in premiums.
– Separate measures backed by legislative panels under which voters would elect the members of the Illinois Commerce Commission and the Illinois State Board of Education.
– A proposal under which the state`s March primary date would be moved back to September, closer to the November general election. The Democratic-sponsored bills advanced to the Senate despite concerns that the change could help Republican Gov. James Thompson if he decides to seek a fifth term. – Measures that would force certain employers to grant workers mandatory time off from work for birth, adoption and family illnesses, and force companies with five or more employees would to provide workers with health insurance under legislation approved by the House and Senate panels.
– Tougher restrictions on handgun ownership and a ban on the possession of assault rifles under a package of measures endorsed by a Senate committee. – Traffic safety legislation that advanced from committees to lower to .08 percent from .10 percent the blood-alcohol level needed to prove a motorist was intoxicated, and require 16- and 17-year-old motorcyclists, as well as motorcycle passengers under the age of 18, to wear a helmet.
– House committee-endorsed legislation once again to ban smoking in most public and private places. Similar measures have been introduced in the past but have never gone to the governor.
Other measures would allow banks to sell insurance, take away the drivers` licenses of school dropouts, ban telephone paging devices in schools to help prevent drug trafficking, abolish the Du Page Water Commission and create a tax on computer software. House members want the $25 million software tax used to help fund civic centers, while senators want the money earmarked for heating assistance to low-income families.
Other taxes have been talked about, but little effort toward advancing any tax-increase legislation has been made.
The Thompson administration is backing a 6-cents-a-gallon increase in motor fuel taxes, but the plan has not made its way into legislation. And an administration-proposed cigarette tax to help fund schools failed to advance from committee.
If a tax-increase plan has a chance of succeeding, it would likely find its way onto a bill near June 30.
Though June 30 is still more than a month away, DeAngelis said legislators in the House and Senate may have learned something from the Senate`s inaction.
”We may have learned a lesson, a lesson that there`s too much stuff put in and a lot of it doesn`t mean anything; that a lot of it is designed just to make people feel a little more important about what they`re doing, and that it`s always good to introduce bills for a press release,” he said.
