Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the four legislative leaders agreed Thursday to pass a stopgap budget that would keep state government running through July while they try to break the gridlock over a full-year spending plan.
Details of the one-month budget proposal are to be worked out over the weekend, with a potential vote next week. The idea follows the pattern used to pay state workers’ salaries during nearly eight weeks of record overtime in 2004.
The Democratic governor called the effort a “new beginning” after fruitless negotiations that have kept the legislature in overtime since May 31. Blagojevich and Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago) have pressed for major increases in education spending and for launching a far-reaching state-subsidized health-care system. Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) has urged the Senate to approve a smaller budget that has already passed the House.
House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego raised the idea of a stopgap budget during talks Thursday, drawing support from the Democrats and Senate Republican leader Frank Watson of Greenville.
Blagojevich, who has rarely made public comments during nearly three weeks of budget negotiations, underscored the rancorous tone of the power struggle between Democrats that led to the overtime session.The governor assailed the budget plan Madigan passed in the House, declaring: “Speaker Madigan’s budget is dead. We’re back to Square One.
“And this is, in many ways, not unlike what Winston Churchill said, after England and Britain were able to sustain the first wave of the Nazi bombing, that this is ‘not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning.'”
Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said “it certainly was an unfortunate choice of words to invoke the invasion of the Nazi forces in comparison to the budget” negotiations. Deputy Gov. Sheila Nix said Blagojevich was citing Churchill’s words and giving context to when they were said but not “in any way” comparing the budget negotiations to the Nazi bombings.
“He’s just saying when Churchill said it,” Nix said.
But the governor got the context of Churchill’s declaration wrong. The British prime minister made the remarks after an Allied victory over German forces in North Africa in 1942, two years after the German bombing attacks in the Battle of Britain.
The stopgap budget plans were revealed on a day that officials from the Regional Transportation Authority, Metra and Pace made their pitch for $226 million in additional state funding to meet operating needs.
Republicans feared the Democrats would use the transit negotiations to try to shift the balance of power over the RTA to Cook County rather than the current split that shares power with the collar counties.
Cross said he hoped Democrats were not trying a “city power grab.”
RTA Executive Director Steve Schlickman confirmed the RTA governance issue was raised as part of the discussion, but he said it was a policy issue for legislators and that he did not know if it would figure into funding negotiations.
The transit agencies restated their warnings that service cuts and fare hikes will be needed starting this fall unless the legislature addresses their budget shortfalls. The agencies are pushing for an increase in the RTA’s six-county sales tax. But Blagojevich again said he would veto a sales-tax increase.
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rlong@tribune.com
