House lawmakers played put up or shut up on the state`s tax-and-budget impasse Thursday but moved no closer to an agreement, virtually assuring that thousands of state workers will not get paid on time next week.
Republican Gov. Jim Edgar said he hoped state employees would show up for work Monday, promising that they will eventually be paid. Many indicated Thursday they would go to work, making a disruption of state services less likely.
As the budget impasse pushed the legislature into its latest overtime session in 17 years, House members played political gamesmanship with a motion to vote on Edgar`s plan to make the income-tax surcharge permanent and cap property taxes.
Democrats, who maintain a commanding 72-46 majority, offered Republicans a chance to vote on Edgar`s major budget initiative of this session. But Republicans, knowing they didn`t have the votes to pass the plan, refused to let it come up for a vote and accused Democrats of a sham.
The partisan wrangling left Republicans and Democrats even more entrenched in their positions over the fate of renewing the 20 percent surcharge, completing $1.85 billion in budget cuts and meeting GOP demands that property-tax relief be part of any session-ending deal.
The procedural roll-call vote orchestrated by House Speaker Michael Madigan to force the Edgar plan to the floor for a final vote fell a vote shy of approval, with Republicans either voting against it or voting ”present.” ”My message to the governor and to the Republican leaders is that they ought to move off the dime” on demands for property-tax relief, said Madigan (D-Chicago). ”That`s the message we`ve been attempting to deliver over several days of negotiations.”
But House Republican Leader Lee Daniels of Elmhurst said ”putting it up there (for a vote) was a sham. I saw no reason to participate in it.”
But the failure of Madigan to deliver the three-fifths vote needed to force Edgar`s plan for a final vote also indicated further political gamesmanship. The procedural vote provided some cover for suburban Democrats, who were able to vote for the motion and thus divert criticism that they are uninterested in property-tax relief.
In the Senate, meanwhile, an expected vote on a plan, offered by Democratic Senate President Philip Rock of Oak Park, also aimed at killing the property-tax relief issue never materialized.
Rock adjourned the chamber after Republicans refused to vote for another bill, previously agreed to by both parties, to gain increased federal payments for treating the medically indigent through a tax on health-care providers to the poor.
Republican lawmakers objected because they first wanted a vote on another agreed-to bill that would cut $385 million from the fiscal 1992 budget.
But Democrats said that Republicans failed to prepare it for a vote.
Democrats have worked throughout the extended session to blame Edgar and Republican lawmakers for holding up a statewide budget over the largely regional issue of skyrocketing property taxes. Democratic leaders have said that no support exists among their members for capping local real estate taxes and that the matter is a local, not a state, issue.
Republicans, meanwhile, have said property-tax relief is among a host of unresolved issues still facing the General Assembly, including the duration of a renewed income-tax surcharge and how its roughly $700 million in annual revenues should be distributed.
Even before the partisan volleying, Edgar warned that the effort by Democrats to discredit Republican calls for property-tax relief would only serve to lengthen the latest spring session since 1974.
”What I fear is you do these votes and you just have people dig in deeper and deeper and make it that much more diffciult to find some common ground on all these issues,” the governor said. ”We haven`t found much common ground yet.”
Meanwhile, Edgar sought to encourage state employees to show up for work next week even though lawmakers missed a noon Thursday deadline that would have ensured that 10,346 workers due to be paid Monday would receive their checks.
At least some of those workers could be paid on time if action is taken before noon Friday, but that appeared highly unlikely.
”I am hopeful that state employees on Monday will come to work and continue to work because I will assure them that eventually we`re going to pay them,” Edgar said. ”I can`t say the date because I don`t know how long this is going to drag on.”
The governor previously said the state was looking at options for shutting down some state services, but he backtracked from that posture and said it will be up to state employees to decide what services will be disrupted by whether or not they show up for work.
Edgar`s latest decision on the fate of state services comes after the governors of Connecticut and Maine suffered severe political backlash from a shutdown of services in those states.
In a hearing Friday, the Illinois Appellate Court will decide on a lawsuit demanding that the state continue to pay its workers. A lower court dismissed the suit this week.
In Chicago, a federal judge Thursday extended a temporary order requiring the state to continue issuing welfare checks.
After the legislature had adjourned for the day, state police in Springfield arrested six homeless activists who had held a sit-in vigil outside the governor`s office throughout the day to protest the budget impasse and proposed cuts in social services.
They were charged with criminal trespass.
Police had arrested a seventh protester earlier in the day after he left the vigil on the second floor of the Capitol and then tried to return.
