Facing a midnight Sunday deadline to adjourn the spring session of the 87th General Assembly, lawmakers are getting down to the political grit of linkage-the intertwining of personal political needs and the greater needs of the state.
It is legislative self-preservation that dictates why the $987 million plan to expand Chicago`s McCormick Place exhibition center becomes the political equivalent of a $15,000 plan to improve the water treatment system in the central Illinois community of Toulon.
No one wants to return home from Springfield empty-handed. And in one of the most lean state-spending years in decades, the pickings are slim and legislators try to find any means to leverage even meager returns.
But the ties that bind lawmakers of different parties from different re-
gions aren`t as simple as your-project-for-mine.
Instead, they become one more factor in the complex dealing needed to resolve the fate of the state`s 20 percent income surcharge and to make the cuts required to eliminate a $1.85 billion budget gap facing the state in the new fiscal year that starts Monday.
”I don`t think you can separate all those issues,” said Republican Gov. Jim Edgar. ”I have certain priorities. The legislators have certain priorities. We`re going to have to mesh those priorities together.”
But with looming budget cuts likely to affect social services and education, and the uncertainty of what their new legislative districts will look like after a lengthy redistricting process, one major lobbyist concludes: ”No one is really focused yet.” The near-unanimous consensus is the session will run well past Sunday.
On Friday, House lawmakers were able to move ahead with almost $400 million in agreed-to spending cuts as Comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch warned the state will begin fiscal 1992 with $829 million in overdue bills and $100 million in the bank.
But Edgar and the legislative leadership failed to agree on further cuts. And while they all support extending the income-tax surcharge, which also expires at midnight Sunday, no agreement was reached on whether it should be permanent or temporary, or even how its revenues should be distributed.
As lawmakers await the outcome of continued talks between Edgar and the leadership, wish lists are exchanged between Democrats and Republicans and among Chicagoans, suburbanites and Downstaters.
Those lists often include issues that previously had been rejected, but which find new life in the restorative powers of the conference committee report-a document designed to resolve differences between the House and Senate, but one that often contains the fruits of unrelated dealmaking.
”Nothing is ever dead here until the legislature goes home,” Edgar said.
Foremost on the bargaining table between the Republican governor and the leaders of the Democratic-controlled General Assembly are the fate of the surcharge, the resolution of the state`s recession-caused budget problems, and the expansion of McCormick Place, which has become linked to a host of Downstate and Republican public-works requests.
Placing added pressure to resolve those issues is the looming midnight Sunday deadline. After midnight, it takes a three-fifths majority, rather than simple majority, of lawmakers in each chamber to approve legislation that is to take effect this year. Waiting until after midnight makes Republicans-a minority in each chamber-major players and increases the number of deals that must be cut.
While the House and Senate Democratic and Republican leaders can dictate conditions of a deal, they can only do so much.
”They are only as good as the votes in their caucuses,” Edgar said.
Take the Chicago Democrats operating on behalf of Mayor Richard Daley, for example. Their first assignment is to try to protect the $90 million the city currently receives and builds into its budget from the surcharge.
Edgar, as part of his call to extend the surcharge, has proposed cutting by half the municipal share of the surtax revenues. That would allow him to increase the share of surcharge dollars to education and help him boost the state`s bank balance.
House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) has said the distribution of surcharge funds is negotiable, but he advocates the existing formula. Such a plan, extending the surtax for two more years, is now before the Senate. Edgar has said he could back a two-year extension, but not with Madigan`s formula.
The city also is pushing for the expansion of McCormick Place-a major economic development and jobs-creation tool for Daley-along with the mix of Chicago and Cook County taxes on meals, car rentals, hotels and airport livery services that are proposed to fund it.
Senators already have defeated such a plan, however, linked to $400 million in Downstate bond-funded water, school, dredging and marina improvements, and a suburban GOP-backed property tax break for Arlington International Racecourse.
Indeed, McCormick Place and any spinoff projects may end up being the linchpin for agreements ranging from the surcharge to the budget.
Daley forces are also seeking help in the development of a downtown circulator trolley system and may also try to gain legislative assistance in the city`s negotiations with Commonwealth Edison over a new utility franchise agreement and, possibly, direct appointment of the Chicago Board of Education. Legislation involving a constitutional fix of Chicago school reform is also a bargaining chip for suburban and Downstate votes. The schools need a new system to elect local school councils and some fine-tuning of the reform law. And they also need some cash assistance to make up for an ever-changing deficit.
Cook County Board President Richard Phelan also has an agenda, seeking an extensive increase in some county fees to make some government operations more self-sustaining. And the county is pushing for a special cost-assessment program at County Hospital to gain more federal funds for treating the poor.
But those Democratic-backed initiatives invite the inevitable bartering of Republicans who have a suburban agenda highlighted by the imposition of limits on skyrocketing property tax increases-something Madigan opposes. GOP suburbanites also are pushing the continuation of the double deduction of property taxes from state income taxes against a Democratic assault.
Transportation improvements in the suburbs are also highly valued by Republicans. Senators have already backed a southern extension of the North-South Tollway to Interstate Highway 80 near Joliet and Republicans may want to use that plan to extend the route north or authorize the construction of the Fox Valley Tollway. Madigan, however, has raised his repeated condition that any new tollway construction also include the toll highway authority`s takeover of the Chicago Skyway.
Northwest suburban Republicans also are pressing for legislative approval of $20 million in civic center funding for an International Civic Center-a plan Edgar opposes and one that would need Democratic backing.
Collar-county legislators also would like to obtain the old E.J.& E. right-of-way in the western suburbs for a possible north-south rail commuter line.
That all leaves Downstate lawmakers looking at their traditional list of local public works projects, with McCormick Place the motivating force.
”We`re not arguing with McCormick Place on its merits,” said Sen. Vince Demuzio, the architect of the Downstate projects counteroffer.
”To describe what we`re doing as pork-I just object to that.”
