Illinois House Floor Debate — May 3, 2006

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Let the record reflect that Representative Churchill, Coulson, Jenisch, and Mathias are excused today.”

“Mr. Speaker, in the interest of trying to speed up the process and be as… as civil as we can in what might be a contentious day, the Republicans will let you move all of the budget Bills from Second to Third on a voice vote. We would like the record to reflect that we should be counted as ‘no’, but we will acquiesce. Move all of your Bills: budget, ‘bimp’, whatever, from Second to Third and we plan to debate them aggressively on Third Reading. Thank you.”

“Mr. Speaker, thank you. Just one point of clarification. We would request unlimited debate on the budget. Is that possible that we have opportunity to ask questions and voice our… our points?”

“We don’t plan on doing that.”

“And… and I don’t know if you’re gonna use the timer, Mr. Speaker. I might go a little over 5 minutes, if they would… you would indulge us to do that. I’d appreciate that.”

“I see us as a very reasonable caucus today, Mr. Speaker.”

“Today and I… and probably Friday, when we’re out of here.”

“A lot more. And I… and also, Mr. Speaker, perhaps if we could have a little order in the House. I… this is, I… some might say, the biggest Bill of the Session. All right.” 09400127.doc 7  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Thank… thank you, Mr. Speaker. I… I’m gonna, with all due respect to the Sponsor, I don’t have any questions. I have some observations about this particular budget and some points I’d like to make. I… This budget, today, reminds me a little bit of last year and the budget that all of you on the other side of the aisle voted for except I think, this year’s budget is perhaps worse than last year’s budget and I really didn’t think that would happen. Some of the things that are factual that are not spin, and that, I know, goes on on both sides of the aisle, but the harsh reality is the pension raid that all of you voted and implemented last year where we shorted the pension system last year of a billion two, none of that money is restored in this year’s budget. You’ve done absolutely nothing in this year’s budget to restore the raid from last year of a billion two, to the worst funded pension system in the country. And then on top of that you have decided to raid the worst funded pension system in the country again to the tune of a billion one. So, last year we raided the pension system or you raided the pension system and this year again, you along with the Governor of the State of Illinois have raided the worst funded pension system in the country by a billion one. I find that incredibly hard to believe. On top of that, where I didn’t think it could get worse, you spent last year an additional a billion one of new spending, a billion one. Last year’s budget was predicated entirely on borrowing as is this year’s budget, but the difference between this year’s budget and last year’s budget is you have decided to 09400127.doc 8  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 increase spending by a billion four. You’ve actually gone over the Governor’s introduced level. You are spending the people of the State of Illinois’s money to the tune of a billion four when we don’t have any money to increase spending, but you’ve decided to increase spending by a billion four. And you’re doing that with a straight face. Now, if anybody has any questions about whether or not this is an election year, all they have to do is look at the fact that we’re increasing spending by a billion four. Oh, we’re giving more money to this and we’re giving more money to that, all based on borrowing. The next part of this budget that I find hard to believe is that last year we left here having a billion six due in Medicaid bills, a billion six. Now, unlike previous Governor’s and previous General Assemblies, when we’ve had new money, new revenue growth, we take a little bit of that and paid on our Medicaid bills. Not you. Let’s ignore those Medicaid bills and we’re doin’ it again this year. We now owe $2 billion or we’ll soon owe $2 billion in Medicaid bills to our providers. And what’s cruel about that is we tell those providers to provide services. We sit here and we brag about providing health care to people that can’t afford health care. We’re gonna do that as a state and we’re gonna ask our hospitals, our nursing homes, our pharmacists, our doctors to provide much needed services but we’re gonna leave Springfield this year owing $2 billion in bills, $2 billion in bills and you are gonna leave here in Spring… leave here in Springfield and say we have a balanced budget. How can you say that we have a balanced budget when we owe $2 billion in Medicaid bills? 09400127.doc 9  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 Two billion dollars. Last year it was a billion six, this year it’s $2 billion. The other thing that wasn’t mentioned in the presentation of this budget was that a billion six of this year’s budget goes to debt service because you have decided to borrow so much money over the last few years under the leadership of this administration. A billion six of this year’s budget goes to debt service. That’s money we could use to pay off Medicaid bills, it’s money we could use to pay education, that’s money we could put into the pension system. But we are, once again, focusing on debt and in this budget, we have a billion six in unpaid bills. Now, what is absolutely incredible on top of all that is the fact with all of these unpaid obligations, the worst funded pension system in the country, Medicaid bills of 2 billion… Medicaid bills owing of $2 billion, debt service of a billion six, you have the audacity, the audacity to sit over there and say we have a balanced budget, we’re not raising income and sales tax, to have in this budget, in this budget, almost $800 million in pork, $800 million in earmarks, $800 million in pork, $800 million in pork. Let’s not pay our Medicaid providers, let’s not get that pension system where it needs to be, let’s not pay off some of the debt we’ve accumulated, let’s make sure in an election year, it’s November, we all wanna run for re-election, let’s put $800 million in this year’s budget in pork. We are ignoring the obligations that we’ve created as a state. Eight hundred million dollars in pork. Now, in this budget we have $577 million in unaccounted for money, lump sums, $577 million in lump sum amounts in this budget for pork. Does 09400127.doc 10  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 anybody tell us in this budget, is there any showing in this budget, are there any line items of this 577? No. We simply put, for instance, Article 96 Section 90, $301 million and ya know what, you guys aren’t too worried about it ‘cause there are three people that cut this deal on the budget in a backroom and just say, don’t worry about a thing. Trust me. We’ll figure out where that $300 million goes. We’ll figure it out. We’ll tell you where it goes. We’ll go back in a backroom and you got your little goodies here, trust us, we’ve got 300 million here, lump sum. We’re not gonna tell the people of the State of Illinois where it goes. Heaven forbid, that’s not the way this process works. Someone told us a few months ago or a few years ago, we’re gonna change the way business is done in Springfield. Well, this is surely a way we’ve changed business in Springfield. Five hundred seventy-seven million dollars of lump sum amounts of money and we’re not tellin’ people where it’s goin’. In an election year, heaven forbid, we’d do that. Five hundred seventy-seven million dollars and we are ignoring the ongoing responsibilities we have and on top of that, we are doing a really nice thing, we’ve got about $200 million of add-ons and we’re gonna tell ya what those are. But the bottom line is we owe… we now have 800 million new dollars of pork, 800 million. Now… we just said forget the Medicaid providers, forget the pension system. What about those 24 school districts in the State of Illinois that we said about 4 years ago, 3 years ago, you go do a con… school construction bond program, you pass a rever… pass a referendum and we will provide funding as a state to make 09400127.doc 11  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 sure you get money toward the construction and improvement of your schools. We owe, as a state, a hundred and forty- eight million dollars to those school districts. School districts funded by property taxpayers, by property taxes. And we said as a state, don’t worry about it, you do it, and we’ll pay ya. Year one came along, we didn’t pay ‘em. Year two came along, we didn’t pay ‘em. Year three came along, we didn’t pay ‘em. We owe ‘em a hundred and forty million dollars, Republican districts, Democrat districts. But because it’s an election year and because we already cut the ribbons on those schools that we owe a hundred and forty million dollars, we’re gonna say to those schools, not this year, we’re not gonna pay ya this year. It’s an election year. We’ll worry about it next year. We’ve gotta create new pork. We gotta find new programs that’ll help us get elected. So, Medicaid providers, we’re not gonna pay you. Pension system, we’re not gonna pay you and school districts, not now. Not now, we’ll talk to you later ‘cause we’ve got 800 million in pork that’s gonna go to different places but not to you. Not to you because that doesn’t do us any good in an election year. But… but trust us, we’ll get to ya next year. This is your budget. This isn’t our budget. Now, there’s been a lot of talk about process about this budget, a lot of talk about process. Republicans didn’t wanna cooperate. Republicans were obstinate. Republicans were obstructionists. Well, let’s set the record straight on Republican involvement in this year’s budget. And I don’t say this whining, I’m not gonna say it to complain. I understand, we’re big. We understand what’s 09400127.doc 12  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 goin’ on. We understand that there were three other people in a backroom cuttin’ the deal. That’s how life goes on in this place ‘cause we’ve changed the way business is done in Springfield, haven’t we. We had one budget meeting, one budget meeting. It was the day of the State of the State. One budget meeting and we talked primarily about capital. Now, that was somewhat of a joke. Nobody knows… everybody knows we’re not gonna do a capital Bill ‘cause we don’t have a revenue stream to pay for a capital Bill. So, we went downstairs and said, this is our Leader’s meeting. That was the only Leader’s meeting that ever took place this Session. Now, Mark Beaubien has been our budgeteer for the last 3 years and does a good job, works with your side of the aisle as much as he can. Was he invited to a budget meeting? Never, not once. Mr. Speaker, could we have a little order in the House. Can we have a little, just a little order, just a little. Thank you. Mark Beaubien didn’t get invited to one budget meeting. Kent Gaffney, our budget person on staff, there’s one meeting about capital, he didn’t go to it. That was it. We had no other meetings. So, if anybody wants to suggest, in this Body, that Republicans were obstructionists, it’s pretty hard to obstruct when there’s no meeting. Now, it gets worse process wise. It gets worse, process wise. Last year we had 20 budget hearings around the State of Illinois to actually get input, to actually get input, to actually get input from people throughout the State of Illinois. This is the most important Bill of the Session and nobody wants to pay attention. Is it easier to act like an ostrich and put your 09400127.doc 13  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 head in the ground on the other side of the aisle ‘cause you know what you’re doing and how bad it is? Is that easier? I hope not. We had 20 hearings around the state. People from all around the state showed up. They said, these are my concerns, these are our communities concerns. This is what’s bothering us as a state. How many hearings this year did we have as a state around the state asking people’s input? We had none. We had zero. No hearings to talk about this year’s budget that equals over $55 billion, none. But we had an appropriation process. Last year the appropriation process took over three months, this year it was condensed to down… down to a little less than a month. If you were an advocate and you wanted to speak at an appropriation hearing, you got 3 minutes, 3 minutes as an advocate in the State of Illinois to voice your concern about this year’s budget. That’s democracy, that’s good government, that’s transparency. And if a Republican Member wanted to ask a question of an agency director in this year’s appropriation process, you know what, there weren’t any agency directors at the appropriation hearings. You couldn’t ask a question of an appropri… agency director ‘cause they didn’t show up. Republicans were there. Where did we have appropriation hearings? We went to the City of Chicago on a vacation week to talk about the appropriation process of a $55 billion budget. We went to the City of Chicago on a vacation week, so no one would show up, let’s not kid ourselves. We know what that was about. Advocates get 3 minutes. We go to the City of Chicago to what… to hide out from being down here where we normally do it. We 09400127.doc 14  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 condense it to a month. Some of our budgets total agencies 12, 13, 15, 16 billion dollars. We gave it an hour debate in an appropriation process. Is that government? Is that really what we wanna be doin’? This has narrowed down to a very, very disturbing process, as we’ve gone into this election year, where we have three people. You oughta be insulted on your side of the aisle. I understand, we’re Republicans; we’re not gonna be part of the process. Now, we should, we represent a hundred thousand people like you do, but this year’s budget was debated, was composed, was drafted, was negotiated, was written, whatever you wanna say, in a backroom by three people. That’s not what government oughta be about. It’s never been this bad and it’s not something that anybody in this chamber should accept. Now, I’ve gone on a little longer, Mr. Speaker and I, unfortunately, for your sake I’m not done and I’m trying to be respectful of your wishes, but I wanna hit on a couple other topics and I wanna go back to the pension a second. And I would like to think that somewhere somebody in this state would have some long-term vision on how to address the financial difficulties facing this state ‘cause we’re gonna have to face reality after November and your side of the aisle is gonna have to face reality along with us as we start focusing on some of these issues. Your pension raid… your pension raid last year and this year will soon equal three and a half billion dollars. To pay that back is gonna cost us $38 billion as a state. That’s $35 hundred million for every man, woman, and child in the State of Illinois. That’s a huge amount of money. And I know what you’re 09400127.doc 15  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 sitting over there saying, well, it’s okay, it’s just a schedule, nobody pays attention, who really cares. I would like to think that somebody cares about $38 billion in interest alone to catch us up. On top of that, if, as a state, we sold all of the assets we had in our pension system today, we would have liabilities of $38 billion. There’s a reason we’re the worst funded pension system in the country. Now, that’s just the House Republican Leader talking. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Who… why should we listen to him? Let’s talk about one of the most respected financial institutions in the state… in the country. The Fitch Ratings came out a couple weeks ago, said we were one of the worst funded pension systems in the country and gave us a very… a negative rating, one of three states that got a negative rating on the pension system, their pension system. There were two that were worse than us: one was Louisiana because of Katrina, two it was because it was the State of Michigan because of the auto industry falling into huge problems because of that industry having problems and then us. We are the worst funded system in the country on top of those two and yet, you, in this budget in an election year, have decided to raid the pension system one more time to the tune of a billion one. I would hope that those of you on this side… on the other side of the aisle, even though, I know you’ve been told and have been promised pork, would reconsider your vote over the next couple of hours. The second area that has become hugely problematic is Medicaid. We will leave here owing $2 billion in Medicaid bills. Because we’re not paying our 09400127.doc 16  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 bills, pharmacists in the State of Illinois, pharmacists in the State of Illinois, over half of ‘em have had to borrow money to pay their bills just to stay in business and not go bankrupt. Pharmacists in the State of Illinois have to go borrow money to pay our… pay their bills. Let me ask any one of you on the Democrat side of the aisle. If the State of Illinois didn’t pay your phone bill or your electric bill in your district office, what would you do? You’d call the SBC representative and say, hey, my bill hasn’t been paid, can ya help me out. You’d call ComEd and say, hey, the state hasn’t paid my bill, can ya help me out, give me a little break. Ya think a pharmacist can do that? Ya think a pharmacist can call a government relations person at SBC and say, hey, the state’s six months behind on my bill, can ya cut me a little slack? No, they can’t. They have to go borrow money because as a state we owe $2 billion in Medicaid bills and instead of taking the $800 million in pork and creating new projects instead of paying off our Medicaid bills and taking care of those pharmacists and those nursing homes and those hospitals and those doctors, we’re just gonna take $800 million in new pork and ignore those responsibilities. We’re not gonna do it. We’re just not gonna pay it. That is disastrous and you are enablers of that today by voting on this punch… pension. Now, there’ll be a lot of talk and I can hear it comin’ right now. You’ve got some great debaters on the other side of the aisle and I haven’t… I’ve talked briefly about the debt service, I’ve talked briefly about the fact that we’re spending a billion four of new money in new projects that we 09400127.doc 17  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 can’t afford and someone over there is gonna say, well, what’s your idea, boy, what… The Republicans don’t have a plan. Someone’s gonna say, I didn’t see it in my mailbox and no one gave it to me in my office. What about the Republican’s plan? Well, and granted it’s tough to put your plan out there or your principles out there when you have a meeting in a backroom. We understand that. But has anybody in this chamber… has anybody in the Democrat Party of the State of Illinois thought about saying ‘no’? Has anybody in this chamber or in the Democrat Party thought about saying we oughta live within our means? How many of you on the Democrat side who are gonna vote for this have been with your kids at Christmas and they take that Toys R Us catalog and ya say, what would you like for Christmas this year, or whatever holiday season? And they circle 25 different items ‘cause they’re kids. That’s the normal thing to do. And very few of us can afford 25 items. We love our kids, we love our kids deeply, we’d like to give them everything they want, but we can’t ‘cause we can’t afford those 25 items. We have obligations that we’ve created. We’ve got mortgage payments. We’ve got car payments. We have credit card payments. And we simply have to say ‘no’ sometimes. Unfortunately, those of you on your side of the aisle that are… got your heads buried in your computers haven’t had the guts or the strength to say ‘no’ to the three people in a backroom cutting this deal. Sometimes we have to say ‘no’. Now, we have said it’s time to say ‘no’, we have said we’re willing to work with you in a bipartisan approach. Three years ago… 2 years ago we had an overtime Session. It 09400127.doc 18  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 wasn’t pleasant, it was a little uncomfortable at times, but we ended up with a good budget. We worked together. We didn’t get everything we wanted; you didn’t get everything you wanted. But when you work together in a bipartisan manner, you can pass a realistic and reasonable budget. The idea of a no growth budget is something that this caucus presented. Let’s look at the existing programs we have and before we start creating new ones, let’s take care of what we have. No growth. We’ve talked about reviewing all current spending. We’ve talked about providing budget fairness. We’ve talked about using new revenues to pay off existing debt. We’ve talked about ending fund raids. So, before anybody on your side of the aisle gets up and says the Republicans didn’t have an idea living within our means, paying off our bills, not borrowing, taking care of our responsibilities we’ve already… already encountered, we’ve talked about. Now, it’s a great quote along the idea of spending from the Aurora Beacon News, an Aurora paper. One of your Members is from Aurora. The Beacon News says, ‘Before you can fill a hole, you have to stop digging,’ in an editorial. ‘Before you have a hole, you have to stop digging.’ Ladies and Gentlemen, today we are seeing huge amounts of digging with absolutely no attempt to fill a hole. So, what does all this mean? What does it mean over the next couple years ‘cause unfortunately we’re not gonna really focus on the truth or the reality of this budget process ‘cause we’re only focused on an election year. It means we here are going to have as a state… and I know, again, I know you’re gonna go home and say, we didn’t raise 09400127.doc 19  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 income taxes, we didn’t raise sales taxes, we are really doin’ the right thing for the people of the State of Illinois. The Fitch Report says, ‘Barring a significant revenue increase or a substantial reduction in expenditures, Illinois will be unable to follow its own plan to contain the $39 billion unfunded pension liability.’ The Civic Federation says, ‘Not only is Illinois not taking care of its current and past spending obligation, it is creating new and potentially larger future obligations. We can… we at the Federation cannot stress enough how important it is for the future of the State of Illinois that current responsibilities be taken care of before shouldering new spending and commitments.’ What we’re talking about is in the next couple years, huge commitments as a state that we have to make, huge commitments as a state that we have to make. In 3 years Medicaid, pension liability and education pressures will grow by five and a half billion dollars. Our natural revenue growth will grow by about two and a half billion dollars. That means as a state we are gonna have to find a way to fill a hole of a minimum… at a minimum of two and a half to three billion dollars. As a state, two and a half to three billion dollars. So, while you’re gonna all go around and brag that we didn’t raise income and sales tax, what are you gonna say to the people of the State of Illinois that understand this and get this? ‘Cause I understand, you’re gonna say nobody cares about budgets, nobody cares about pensions, nobody cares about Medicaid. But what’s insidious about what you’re doing is that you are creating a scenario where we are gonna have a huge tax 09400127.doc 20  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 obligation just to fill a hole or we’re gonna have to make huge cuts. I’m almost done, Mr. Speaker, but I’ll tell ya, our side of the aisle’s got a lot of questions today and we’ll just go down to caucus if no one wants to pay attention. It’s real simple. We’ll just leave. We can vote on this at 5:00 tonight. We’ll leave. This is crazy. We’ll go, we’ll go. All right. Thank you. I think I’ve made most of my points, Mr. Speaker. I think about the fact that as a state, as a state perhaps its pension ideas and obligations are just out there, no one really focuses on ‘em. Medicaid is just out there and no one focuses on ‘em. Debt… debt service is out there and nobody focuses on it. And everybody says we’re just the State of Illinois, we’ll find a way to do it and that nothing bad can happen to us. Five hundred municipalities in this country have filed bankruptcy. Five hundred municipalities have filed bankruptcy. Orange County was the last governmental entity that went bankrupt. San Diego is on the verge of it. This budget today of increased spending, increased borrowing, huge amounts of debt puts us on the path to a real problem financially for the state and it’s a shame. I… would it be easier if we just went to caucus now? I mean, we’re willin’ to do that. No one over there’s listening.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m trying to be reasonable. I have some points I wanna make and this caucus wants to make some points and nobody 09400127.doc 21  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 over there is listening. Now, my request is that we have a little order in the House and we haven’t had it.”

“And I appreciate that, but they’re not listening.”

“That’s fine and we have a right to go to caucus. And if they don’t wanna listen, we’ll go to caucus. We have a right to make our point about the worst funded pension system in the country, the worst Medicaid problem, the worst spending, that this state is on a road to financial… financial harm that we may not be able to recover from. And they don’t wanna listen and I don’t blame ‘em ‘cause they’re being told to vote on this budget. We have a right to make our points and if they don’t like that, we’ll leave. It’s all I’m saying. And we’ll come back when they’re willing to listen. I’m through making my points, but other Members of our caucus wanna make some points about the pork in this budget, about the bills that aren’t paid. Now, I understand that it’s tough to keep everybody quiet, but at least let these people have a little respect today. Or as I said, I’ve made my point, we’ll leave. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Would the Sponsor yield? Representative, I wanna talk a little bit about the pension funds. Illinois was recently given a negative outlook in the April 2006 Fitch Ratings Report, that’s a New York bond 09400127.doc 22  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 rating agency for those of you who may not know what Fitch is, and that report states that barring a significant revenue increase or substantial reduction in expenditures, Illinois will be unable to follow its own plan to contain a $39 billion unfunded pension liability. Knowing that… Representative, knowing… Representative, I’m asking you a question. Knowing that this is what the top analysts in New York are saying about our potential bond rating, do you still intend to balance this year’s budget by short changing our state’s pension system?”

“Well, I wasn’t here during all the time that you have been here, Representative, I fully admit that, but I came in 1993, didn’t like what I saw was happening to the pension system, was part of the plan, as you were, in 1995, we all voted for it to put this state on a payback schedule, a 50- year payback schedule that would bring us to 90 percent funding at the end of that 50-year period. Now, we were 10 years into that payback schedule and on schedule at the point that your side of the aisle chose to pass a budget that stopped paying the proper amount by that schedule so that we could maintain it into the pension system that’s gonna ultimately cost the state $38 billion to make up by 09400127.doc 23  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 the time that that’s all paid back. My question to you again is, is that something that you wish to continue?”

“Well, you’re… that’s a new schedule and according to the 1995 schedule, you’re about a billion point two behind.”

“Well, I think that’s the best pseudo math when you look at the overall expenditure of the state’s gonna be an additional $38 billion. Let me move on here. The Tribune… the Chicago Tribune editorial entitled, ‘No Hiding From the Pension Dangers’ and from a Chicago Tribune editorial in February it stated, ‘Illinois pension crisis is poised to explode, threatening new funding for schools, health care and other purposes. Billions of dollars must be diverted to rescue the woefully underfunded retirement systems for teachers and government workers.’ Well, we seem to be going in the wrong direction, Representative, that’s what I can see. And what exactly is your long-term strategy for putting us back on the correct course?”

“Well, Representative, earlier this year I introduced a Bill. It was not released from Rules, so I introduced an Amendment to one of your Member’s Bills, yesterday that was voted to be left in Rules. And that Amendment and that Bill that I introduced called for a bipartisan committee of one Member from each side of the aisle from the House and the Senate to sit down and to come up with a agreed upon plan that would put us back in… back on schedule for payback of the pension debt and to pay back that which has been borrowed to date, not which you plan to borrow or not contribute by this budget, but that which has been not contributed in previous budgets, it would give us a 10-year period to make that amount up. I think that’s a concrete plan and it wasn’t considered. I’m asking, what is your concrete plan, not that we can make adjustments out in the future, but what is your concrete plan to do… to correct the problem today?” 09400127.doc 25  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Well, I have to admit, this Governor does… is in love with long-term debt. When he took office this state had $7.6 billion worth of long-term debt, it now has $20.3 billion worth of long-term debt. So, I understand your point there. From the St. Louis editorial… the St. Louis paper editorial entitled, ‘Debt, Debt, Debt’, ‘To balance Illinois’s out-of-whack budget Governor Rod Blagojevich and his fellow Democrats in the Legislature decided to divert $2.3 billion intended for state pension plans over the next 2 years. The state pension funds are a black hole that eventually will engulf State Government if not brought under control. Their long-term deficit now stands at $35 billion and growing, probably the worst in the nation. Taking away $2.3 billion in state funding means the hole will grow 09400127.doc 26  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 faster.’ Do you believe that this editorial accurately reflects the State of Illinois?”

“Well, let me go on. Fact sheet versus reality. On a fact sheet distributed to district residents by several of the Members on your side of the aisle, the following was stated as a fact. Additionally, thanks to the new reforms that end egregious abuses within the systems, the systems long-term liabilities will decrease. States one such egregious abuse that was shored up was raising the level of self-contribution from 9 percent to 9.4 percent toward employee… their own employee pension. So, what it’s saying is that an egregious abuse that was shored up was to increase the employees contribution to the pension system by four-tenths of 1 percent. Do you agree that that’s a fact?”

“Well, I’m not quarreling with teachers making payments to the pension system. What I’m asking, is that what your Members feel is an egregious event?”

“Yeah. I said, your… your Members had put out a statement to their constituent that says, ‘Additionally, thanks to the new reforms that end egregious abusions within the systems, the systems’ long-term liabilities will decrease.’ And then it gives as an example, as one of those egregious things that was fixed, was… the abuse was raising the level of self-contributions from 9 percent to 9.4 percent where an employee pays into their own pension system.”

“Well, your Member… your Member said it was an egregious abuse of the system and they fixed it by an additional four- tenths of a percent contribution by the employee.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound like it was real egregious if four-tenths of a percent addition in contribution fixed the problem that they were referring to.”

“And I think the teachers do pay for it. Let me… just one more example then I wanna speak to the Bill for a second. The Chicago Tribune article, ‘Not Good Enough’. 09400127.doc 28  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 From an article in the Chicago Tribune in May of 2005, it stated, ‘In February of 2005 Governor Blagojevich proclaimed, Illinois has the largest unfunded pension liability of any state in the nation. What we owe in pension benefits far outstrips the assets we have to pay for those benefits.’ That was in May 2005. We’re now in May of 2006 and he’s made it worse. According to the record, do you believe that he’s made it worse?”

“Well, I… I would suggest to you… and to the Bill, Ladies and Gentlemen. I… I suggest to you that, folks, we are moving backwards in terms of where we stand with funding our pension systems. Every editorial board that I’ve seen so far that has remarked on that… on that subject has, in fact, stated that as their conclusion also. Now, folks on the other side of the aisle, you can tell me that the king has clothes on, but if the king’s naked, the king is naked and in this case, the king is naked. You are not making the pension system more sound. You are, in fact, deteriorating from it at a considerable rate, $38 billion to pay back which… that which is now being borrowed… being shorted out of the pension system. That doesn’t sound like good economics to me. And I… I believe that it’s incumbent upon all of us that we sit down immediately and come up with a method to pay back this pension shortage over the next 10 09400127.doc 29  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 years, sooner if possible, but certainly on a bipartisan basis that we find a way to come together to put this state back on good financial footing before this state is… ends up in bankruptcy. And I don’t know of any other state that has ever ended up in bankruptcy. The closest is California and folks, I don’t think anybody in this room, I can’t believe anybody in this room, wants to end up in bankruptcy and certainly not be as bad off as California is. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Representative Hannig, I have some questions from the… from the Public Safety Committee, but I’m gonna defer some of those right now and get into some of the points that I thought I’d like to get an answer to this morning, if you have a second.”

“For several years, and I don’t know the exact number, I’ve been on the Public Safety Committee and I think I’ve been spokesman maybe 5, 6, 7 years. At the time, Chairman Morrow and his staff would work together with… with myself and our staff and we would go through each budget item that came before the Public Safety Committee. We’d ask our questions, we’d get answers. We’d make requests, your staff would make requests and your Members would do the same. Starting last spring and continuing on to this spring, that process changed. There was a decision made, and I don’t know by whom or why, but there was a decision made to not include any Member of the Republican side of the aisle in any way, shape or form in the budget process dealing with the chairman of the Budget Committee, dealing with the 09400127.doc 30  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 hearings that we had in Chicago. And I’m curious to know, at what point did working with the other side of the aisle, working with elected Members of this chamber, become a liability? That’s the question. Why was the process shut down? Why didn’t we work with our chairman this year as we have in years past?”

“Mr. Hannig, with all… with all due respect to you and your caucus, we’re getting a lot of questions this morning on what’s in the budget. And the reason we’re getting those questions is because we weren’t part of this process and Monday night at 9:30 p.m., I was able to have the budget on my computer where I was able to go through it line by line by line, 800 and some odd pages… thank you, Mr. Speaker… 09400127.doc 31  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 800-some odd pages to go through and we have to draft questions to ask exactly what’s in the budget. And that’s the point I’m getting at is… is we’re going through this and the Speaker said earlier today, we’re all gonna have a chance to talk on this and we’re asking questions that could have been taken care of in committee had the decision been made to work with our Members on our side of the aisle, had the decision been made that we could have worked with the committee chairman to get the budget. The entire budget dropped on our staff at the… I’d say the wee hours because they had to de-analyze this thing all night long Monday night is unacceptable. And that’s the point I’m trying to get to, Representative Hannig, is that the last 2 years I don’t know what dynamic changed. The first 2 years we worked very well, we… as Leader Cross said a few minutes ago, we worked diligently, unfortunately, it took ‘til July, but we worked diligently together to get… come up with a final product that not everybody was happy with, I understand that, we all… ya know, to get a piece of the pie is to go and work on a compromise to get a better… to get a better Bill. But this morning, ya know, my children call me in the morning before they get ready for school and I always try to make sure their homework was done and they asked me this morning, they were, ‘Dad, you gonna wrap this up?’ They caught some headlines in the newspaper this morning. I told ‘em, ‘I think so. I think we’re gonna be home tomorrow.’ A few minutes later my wife got on the phone. She goes, ‘What’s the deal?’ And I said, ‘We’re supposed to debate a budget on Wednesday and possibly pass this thing 09400127.doc 32  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 out and maybe get home on Thursday.’ And she said, ‘That’s great news. You’ll be home because Thursday night ya got a band concert with the kids, ya got soccer practice.’ Get me right back into the routine at home. But I told her, I said, ‘This is the problem with getting out of here on Thursday. Is that we’re passin’ a budget in this chamber with zero input and zero support from the Republican side of the aisle that’s gonna effect a generation of my family that hasn’t even been born yet.’ That’s the part that disturbs me today. I think it’s appropriate that it’s cloudy outside, that the drapes are pulled, that we’re discussing some of the things that are gonna effect long-term decisions. You’ve heard from other Members regarding borrowing, increased debt, pensions. Those things are issues today that I think we could’ve worked out and resolved. Leader Cross gave a few examples of what we were willing to bring to the table had we even been invited. That’s the part of the process… I’ve been here 8 years. I don’t get up on this floor every day and rail on a Bill. I don’t have the oratory skills that Leader Black has and some Members of your side of the aisle, but every now and then I gotta stand up here and say that this process was a farce and it started last year. I don’t know what changed. I don’t know why it changed. I hope that once this little game is done today with this budget and once we get through this that next year the decision is made on your side of the aisle to, ya know, workin’ with the other elected Members who serve their districts is not a bad thing. It’s not a political liability to come up with a good Bill, to come up 09400127.doc 33  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 with a compromise. It’s a good thing. And I’ve had that luxury on a few Bills to stand up here and say, ‘There’s no opponents’. We’ve all worked on this. It’s taken months and we’ve agreed to it. And I hope from this day forward we can change that next year. To the process and one more point is, today and this morning is painful. It’s… it’s like a little right of passage. We’re standing in the line right now ready to get on the roller coaster. And as you know roller coaster, it’s gonna go up and as it goes up it’s gotta come back down and it’s gonna spiral. I’m here to tell ya, Representative, that I’m not standing in that line today to get on that roller coaster. I’m not even in the park. I’m gonna go back to my district and watch you folks stand in line, get on that roller coaster for the next couple days as it climbs up and for month after month after month, it’s gonna go down and it’s gonna spiral and you folks explain to your constituents your thought process in completely shutting out any form of compromise and debate on the budget. You can discuss with your constituents why it’s a good idea to not fund the pension system as we’re doin’ this year. You can ride that roller coaster alone because frankly, I don’t like heights and I don’t like roller coasters and I think we coulda got on a better ride together. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“I think I’m gonna go a different way with this, Representative. Ya know, we all know and we kind of… it’s 09400127.doc 34  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 kind of become a sad joke around the state that the MOUs are what we’ve had to use since this Governor has come to power. And my question is, on looking over the MOUs from ’06, there were a few things that were in the budget that, ya know, after passing we later found out that were in there and I have some concerns and just some questions. In the ’06 budget and I’ve kind of taken notes and said pork and let me apologize for that because I know the political process. It’s pork if it’s in somebody else’s district. If it’s in your district, it’s Member initiatives. So, I… ya know, I can understand that that’s the way that works. But we’ve gotta make some tough choices when… when the budget is… is in the situation it is. But last year, there was about a million dollars tied with a memorandum of understanding for the Beverly Arts Center in Chicago. Now, being from Southern Illinois, I don’t exactly know what that is, so I had to look it up on the Internet. And… and it read that the Beverly Arts Center was founded in 1967 to provide education and cultural enrichment to the Beverly Hills, Morgan Park, and surrounding neighborhoods. Today the Arts Center welcomes patrons from throughout the… and it says south… but I think it’s probably south and southwest sides of Chicago. I don’t think it has a lot to do with people as far south as I am, but and with that it enhances their study of film and arts and everything like that. And at the same time, the FY ‘06 budget was shorted $2.2 billion from the pension system. And if we read the description of the pension system on the website… Illinois website… it says that the General Assembly created the Teachers’ Retirement 09400127.doc 35  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 System of the State of Illinois, TRS as we know it, in 1939 and TRS administers a… to a multitude of employee public pension plans. All right, and TRS provides its members with retirement and disability and survivors’ benefits. Now, my question is, I’m just wondering if it’s the plan this year again, with what we’re raiding out of the pension funds, to use that towards the Beverly Arts Center as well? Are we going to… are we gonna fund the Beverly Arts Center again this year?”

“Okay. All right. I mean, I’m just checkin’ on these because this… this was in last year’s. Another one and this is something that we do know from the sou… or at least those of us that stand in this General Assembly… are very familiar with McCormick Place. But last year during the raids of our different funds, one of the funds that were raided, it was the Illinois Tourism Tax and it was raided for about $648 thousand and that goes to help tourism around the state. Yet, in last year’s budget, we were able to find $5 million for tourism promotion going specifically to McCormick Place. Now, with the raids that, and the fund sweeps as we call them, that are occurring this year, are we gonna add more… quite a bit more to McCormick Place or exactly how are we gonna do that? Because, I mean, I know a lot of people from my area spend a lot of time at McCormick Place.”

“So, it is… so, it is appropriate to take out of the other funds for tourism around the rest of the state so we all focus on Chicago?”

“Well, let me move on here. We have… we had $1 million, a memorandum of understanding, for… for the Aerospace… in Chicago, Aerospace Initiative. Now, we swept money out, about 2.13 million from the School District Emergency Financial Assistant Fund, which… which quite often helps schools around the state and then we provided the $1 million for the Chicago Aerospace Initiatives giving Chicago students that opportunity to study NASA and all those wonderful things, which is a good thing, at the expense of… of downstate. Was… is that going to occur in this budget Bill?”

“Well, let me just tell ya a few more that I kind of found that were important. Ya know, last year we also swept $100 09400127.doc 37  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 thousand… No, wait, wait, wait. We put $100 thousand into the… and if I mispronounce this, I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with it, but it… Pilsen Athletic Conference and that’s a… that’s a private youth baseball league in the City of Chicago. Now, in my area and you know in yours and others around the state, as we’ve taken money from education and not funded to certain categoricals to levels that we possibly should and certain grants that have been removed and certain school districts in my area are having to figure out which particular athletic program they’re going to have to cut.”

“Yeah. And unfortunately, with what…”

“And… and unfortunately, with what we’ve done over the last couple years that hasn’t kept up with… with the needs. How about… there was $45 million that was appropriated to the Chicago Transit Authority. Now, this is about half of IDOT’s entire budget. Do we plan on bailing out the Chicago Transit Authority even more or where are we at with that in this budget?”

“No, I’m just kinda wondering. Ya know, I mean, we’re… we’re comin’ up with this budget here today and everybody is being asked to vote on it and there’re just a few things that… when we get back to our district, these were things 09400127.doc 38  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 that kept coming out in last year’s budget after we passed it out of here that… that are kinda hidden in there and I understand the process of the way it works.”

“But I think… I think what… what I’m wanting to see is is, ya know, each one of us come to… to this Body and we tell our constituents and we tell those people who… who come to us and talk to us that we have certain priorities. And… and we’ve raided the pensions of the working people of the State of Illinois and we have made decisions not to increase public safety as far as Corrections is concerned and staffing in Corrections and that’s a situation that is tough in my area. And I’m just kinda figuring out where these priorities are. There’s… there’s one more memorandum of understanding that was really amazing to me. It was… there was a hundred thousand dollars for the Chicago International Film Festival. Well, ya know, that… and ya know, we’ve all heard of the International Film Festival. We think that’s wonderful except when you really break it down. Last year some movies that played in that Film Festival, let me see, one was named Pete. It was a delightfully creepy tale of demonic possession craftily exposing the race… the racial exploration of young girls in Thai in the sex industry. Then there was also the Night of the Living Dork. Now, this… this is… this is really something we wanna spend state dollars on, Night of the Living Dork, ‘cause everyone knows 09400127.doc 39  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 the world of high school is fraught with peril, girls, tests, hormones and now they’re adding the pressure of being a teenage zombie. Ya know, as a time when our budget is the way that it is, in such a terrible shape and we’re trying to fund things that are important and we’re trying to put our priorities together, I’m a little concerned that maybe we got lost on what our priorities are. Ya know there’s a time, as good as many of these programs might be, that we need to say enough is enough. Let us focus on what is important. And I don’t know what is important to you, but let me tell ya what’s important to me. We have provided money in education and tried to keep up with that and that’s fine. But the safety of our correctional officers is pretty important to me and as the staffing has slid down and the danger increased, I’m afraid that we’re gonna get to that point that we’re gonna have to… somebody’s gonna have to make a call one of these days about one of our correctional officers being shivved or one of our correctional officers being beaten or as we had earlier this year, raped, because we’re choosing what our priorities are and that’s not one of them. Also, a priority has always been in my household and I think in yours paying our bills on time. All throughout my district and in Southern Illinois, we have hospitals trying to decide whether they can keep their doors open, doctors whether they can stay in practice. Why? Because we’re not paying our bills, we’re not applying the money… we’re applying it to things like this, but we’re not really paying our bills, we’re just kinda rolling that debt back. And of all things, what bills we are paying we are… Welcome 09400127.doc 40  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 back, Representative. But I think we should focus what are priorities are. Taking from our pensions, from those people who have served our state well and putting the worry and the fret in their future, is not the wise thing to do. And I know that on your side of the aisle, you’re gonna have everybody vote for this and that’s the way it’s gonna play out, but as one of the other Representatives said, remember, it is like a roller coaster and you’re gonna have to ride it when you get home. If you would have set down with us, come together with a sensible budget to prioritize those things that truly are important, worked with us, that would have been all that we would have asked, but now you’re responsible. I hope that over the next… well as we debate on here today, that you will pay attention and you will change your mind and join with us and let’s work together to try to find some different answer than the answers that are proposed in this budget.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Gentleman yield?”

“Representative, good morning. How are you today? I have a couple questions about the… the Higher Education budget, if you have a second. Representative, for Higher Education I notice that Chicago State University gets a six and half percent increase. Is that accurate?”

“And the total for Eastern Illinois University that I represent is 1.4 percent. Is that correct?” 09400127.doc 41  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“How ‘bout the University of Illinois?”

“So, Representative, Chicago State and I believe Governor State get a six and a half percent increase while the U of I and Eastern get less than 2 percent, and then Carbondale was right about 2 percent. What was Northern, Representative? Point nine, I…”

“The… and really in this budget there’s sort of an unresolved matter, and that’s this MAP Plus and the additional funding for MAP, because the Bill that’s gonna trail would require the funding to come out of the sale of ISAC student loans. But we have no idea whether or not those loans are gonna be sold at this point, do we?”

“Well, last year the estimate on the sale was 300 to 500 million dollars, but the MAP and the MAP Plus is only $62 million. So, where is the rest of the money gonna go from the sale of the ISAC loans?”

“Last year the Governor’s budget director, John Filan, came to the Higher Ed Appropriations Committee and estimated that selling the ISAC loans would be… would generate anywhere from 300 to 500 million dollars. The appropriation in this budget for MAP and MAP Plus out of the IS… out of any ISAC sale, which there hasn’t been one yet, is only $62 million. Where is the rest of the money going?”

“Where’s that legislation at? I… I don’t remember anything like that, Representative.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker.”

“Is… where…”

“So, wait a minute. You just… that’s two different answers. You said if it’s above 90 million it goes to 09400127.doc 43  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 Higher Ed but if there is additional money it goes… stays at ISAC. Which is it?”

“Is that in the budget?”

“Well, Representative, that’s not what was said in committee yesterday. What was said in committee is that they have no determination as to what to sell, but that whatever would be sold would be enough to equal and only equal the MAP and the MAP Plus.”

“That’s… and that’s my point, Representative. That’s the problem. We don’t know how much money, if there’s gonna be any money at all. The director of ISAC in committee yesterday admitted that he doesn’t know what his break point is yet about whether it’s even a good financial idea to sell anything. He doesn’t know whether or not there’ll be any money. He doesn’t know, if there is money, how much it’ll be. He doesn’t know how to sell it, whether it’s a direct sale, whether it’s a refinance, whether it’s a refunding. And guess what? His consultant isn’t due to return the report ‘til January 1.” 09400127.doc 44  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“We’re all being asked… Go ahead, Representative.”

“But… but you’re…”

“But you’re asking this Body to make a determination in an information vacuum without any idea of how much money you’re gonna get on the sale, and yet you’re already earmarking millions of dollars to that when we have no idea what, if anything, we’re gonna get or if there’ll even be a sale. The director of… of ISAC told us yesterday they had not made any decision on whether there’ll be a sale.”

“Well, let’s… let’s talk about some of these legislative add-ons. Earlier you heard Leader Cross tell you that there’s $800 million in legislative add-ons in this budget, of 577 million we don’t know. But I’d like to focus on two that we do know. In Chicago State there’s $400 thousand for a retention in a graduation rate study. Is that… is that accurate?” 09400127.doc 45  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Isn’t that normally a function that most universities do? I mean, Eastern studies their retention rates every year. They study their graduation rates. The U of I, Carbondale, Northern, everybody studies those things and they pay for it out of their normal operating expenses. Why are we subsidizing something that every other university does in the normal course of business?”

“Usually those are capital for permanent objects not for subsidizing normal operating costs.”

“Well, Representative, let me ask you something about the Chicago State budget here that’s… I see there’s $30 thousand for a permanent exhibit at the university library. What pray tell is that?”

“Well, the Sun-Times says it’s $30 thousand to fund a Chicago State University photo exhibit on the history of the General Assembly. Do we really need to spend $30 thousand of the taxpayers’ money immortalizing ourselves? Mr. Speaker, to the Bill. Let’s talk about this budget and let’s summarize. Here’s what we know. One point four billion in new spending. Eight hundred million dollars in legislative add-ons, of which 577 we have no idea what it’s for. Mysterious. Mystery. At the same time you’re taking 1.1 billion out of the state pension systems to pay for this. You’ve got 2 billion in unpaid Medicaid backlog and the nursing homes and the developmentally disability providers are calling us every day saying, ‘When are we gonna get paid? We haven’t been paid since October.’ You’ve got 200 million in new funds sweeps. You’re gonna pass a Bill here shortly that… that kicks out another 240 million in old fund sweeps. Right there you’re in about a $3.4 billion deficit.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is not a balanced budget. You’re 3.4 at least in the hole, and for what? To pay for 800 million in legislative add-ons. And for goodness sake, to pay for $30 thousand for an exhibit to immortalize 09400127.doc 47  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 yourselves. That’s insane. Chicago State gets a six and a half percent increase, Eastern gets 1.4. You know, I guess… you know what? Maybe someday there’ll be a statue of Representative Black here, Leader Black. Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll lead the private fund drive to pay for that so we don’t use the taxpayers’ money to immortalize Leader Black here in the House of Representatives. And you guys shouldn’t be using the taxpayers’ money to… Leader Cross I see is offering to donate already. Any downstate Legislator that represents a university community that votes for this budget needs to know and needs to be ready to answer to their community why it is their district’s getting a 1.8 percent increase… their university’s getting a 1.8 percent increase when Chicago State’s getting a bust of the General Assembly.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, in the Public Safety Budget under the Department of Corrections there’s 11.75 million in lump sum for the frontline staff at the Department of Corrections. Where are the additional 231 correctional officers and other frontline employees going to be placed?”

“Under the Department of Transportation, 1.65 million new funding for IFly. Why 1.65 million in new funding only provided to Quincy, Decatur, and Williamson County airports for this IFly program?”

“Was Rockford, Bloomington, and Peoria airports asked to participate?”

“Has there been… has the Governor and the Democratic Caucus drafted or executed any memorandums of understanding on this project?”

“What is AFSCME’s stance on the Correctional budget right now?”

“I’ve been told that they’re having a press conference in Sou… Southern Illinois today on this very subject. They feel that the additional staffing is still inadequate.”

“Representative, are you aware in this budget if there is any state facilities that are scheduled to close?”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker.”

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

"Representative, one of the issues that’s of great concern to me in this budget, and I hope it is to the Members on your side of the aisle as well, is the massive backlog of unpaid Medicaid bills to health care providers in our state. Have you been getting any questions on this issue in your office?”

"Okay. Well, I hope to probably think that you’ve had a lot of ‘em. It’s been stated several times today that we’re probably gonna have $2 billion in unpaid Medicaid bills at the end of this fiscal year. And for the sake of debate, we don’t know what’s gonna go on for the rest of the day, but let’s say that… that you vote to override the Treasurer’s objection to the $250 million in fund sweeps. So, we get that out there. What about the 1.5 billion in unpaid bills that are gonna remain and what addresses that in this budget?”

"No, I just said that. Take… for the sake of discussion, let’s say that passes. That’s about 250 million. We get 250 in federal matching, but we’re still gonna be left with 1.5 billion in unpaid Medicaid bills. So, with a billion four in new spending, how much of that is going to go help close this gap?” 09400127.doc 51  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

"But there’s really no serious effort to… out of a $1.4 billion increase in spending there’s really no serious effort or dollars that are gonna go help pay this down at this time right away.”

"Eight million?”

"8-0.”

"Well, I have here, Representative, $19 million in unpaid Medicaid bills that have been called into my office, downright pleas from nursing homes, doctors, pharmacies, and bankers just in the last three weeks in my district. Eight cou… nine counties in southeastern Illinois and a lot of these folks haven’t had payments since November. And…”

“…you know, how can I go home and tell them that, you know, we passed the state budget… and how can your folks go home and tell ‘em, ‘I did all I could to help get your funding re… your reimbursements up to speed.’ Reimbursements that are so far behind that they can’t pay their electric bills, they can’t pay their vendors, they can’t pay their employees and most importantly, they can’t 09400127.doc 52  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 provide the services that they’re assigned to do because we can’t pay our bills. So, how can we go home and tell ‘em that we’re gonna alleviate those problems?”

"But 80 million’s a small portion of the 1.5 billion, and that’s what I’m trying to shed light on.”

"Okay. Let… let’s shed some personal down-home light on a billion dollars in unpaid Medicaid bills. I have nursing homes here owed 767 thousand, 250 thousand, 600 thousand. I met with one on Friday in Mount Carmel and there were six other administrators that showed up because they knew I was gonna be in town. They haven’t had a payment since November. Four hundred and ten thousand, 800 thousand. Ya oughta go down to the hospitals. One point seven million, 900 thousand, 700 thousand. Five point seven million is owed to one hospital. A group of doctors in a clinic that don’t have big, deep pockets are owed 1.3 million. Most of my pharmacies are owed 56 thousand to clear up to 287 thousand. I had a owner of one called up in tears. They had exhausted all their CDs; they’d done everything they can. They had remortgaged their house just to find enough cash to stay afloat. Now, I…”

"But 80 million is… is a drop in the bucket, and you know it, I know it and I don’t know how you’re gonna go home and tell your folks ‘cause 80 million just isn’t gonna do too much. We have one in south… a banker that lives in my district. They’re the largest provi… they’re the only health care provider in this county. They’re owed a half a million dollars. They can’t cross the 85 percent Medicaid threshold to get on expedited payment schedules and there’s 110 residents that might be put out on the street. They’re owed 500 mil… or $500 thousand. So, we want to shed some light on this that this budget does not take care of the Medicaid payment backlog. It’s only a temporary Band-Aid on something that needs a tourniquet. And it’s been made several times that we can vote for a budget that has $577 million in new pork projects, borrows another billion dollars from the pension without going to these concerns. And you know, you say it’s just the Republicans. You know, you’re talking about this; you’re making an issue out of it. What about our editorial boards, many of which are owners or editors of papers in your own districts? A spokesman for the… the Governor’s administration said the delay in payments are necessary because we don’t want to cut benefits, so to contain costs we stretch out the payment cycle. And the reason I brought this personal approach from the individual hospitals is, how many of you could do this on your own? Many of you have been business owners. You can’t just keep borrowing money on the backs of our health care providers that affects their livelihood, that affects the livelihood of the residents that they care for and go 09400127.doc 54  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 home and say we’ve taken care of this. The Chicago Tribune had a story that said let… state lets Medicaid payments pile up and the Governor’s criticized for launching new programs without addressing the slow Medicaid payment cycle. And according to this Tribune story, physicians and pharmacists believe the Governor is balancing the budget on their backs and using unpaid claims as short-term loans to help keep the state’s finan… the state financially aloft, and that was before this new budget came out. So, it’s not just us talking about this, it’s our folks back home, it’s our residents, the family of our residents, many of which their family members have moved away because we don’t have any jobs. So, to the Bill, Mr. Speaker. It’s become obvious that everybody wants to pass this budget and get home quietly, get out of town before anyone realizes that no one addressed the very serious backlog of Medicaid… unpaid Medicaid bills. And you wanna go home and say we did all we could. Tell ‘em that it was the Republicans’ fault, that they didn’t vote to overrule a jorge’s… judge’s court order, which halted all dedicated fund sweeps. So, you do what you want, but the folks back home I don’t think are gonna buy it. They won’t in my district. I think this is a travesty. It’s… it’s fiscally irresponsible. I know there’s philosophical issues that we can all debate and disagree on here, but this isn’t one of them. It should not be one of them. We all have elderly, we all have people with disabilities that we know, and taking care of our most vulnerable citizens of this state should not be a political, Republican or Democratic, issue. These people are providing 09400127.doc 55  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 services. They’re expected to be repaid. Even the reimbursement rate’s too low. We’ll talk about that in another issue but… for another day. But we can’t even repay ‘em and reimburse ‘em for the… the great, great services that they provide. And unfortunately, I’ll mention again, with a $1.4 billion increase in government spending this year we can’t take care of this very serious issue. So, I hope that someone… or the folks on your side, especially your rural downstate colleagues that have these same calls that are comin’ in to your office every day, will say, ‘Look, we haven’t taken care of this problem. Let’s go back and revisit it and let’s get the people who are providing services to the most vulnerable people in our state the money that they… are owed to them.’ Thank you, Mr. Speaker.”

"Thank you, Mr. Sponsor. Will the Sponsor… or Mr. Speaker.”

"Will the Sponsor yield?”

"Gary, one question I had I… the Commission on Government Accountability has stated that we’re gonna receive additional sales tax revenue from the higher gasoline prices that everybody is paying around the state. I believe the increase over last year was about $175 million, if I’m not… if I’m not wrong. The… my question is, was any of that relatively unexpected revenue devoted to paying back our pension shortfall?” 09400127.doc 56  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

"And… as… as I understand it, the statutory requirements to be made were changed in last year’s budget negotiations… or last year’s General Assembly action where we shorted last year 1.2 billion.”

“This year we… over the previous law that was passed in 1995, we were on schedule to… after a 50-year…”

"But… but the point of it is…”

"Right. We… we put off for the future.”

"What we did is we… we agreed under that Bill… I shouldn’t say ‘we’ agreed. I would say that you rammed down our throats last year a shortfall in pension funding of over 1.2 billion, this year it’s 1.1. And by the way, to the public, next year we’re gonna short it another $700 million. The pension shortfall, as other speakers have spoken about this year… or this morning, is now the worst funded in this… in the entire United States. Illinois will have to pay $38 billion in interest payments to make up for the shortfall under last year’s Bill. This year’s budget is based on that. And not only are we going after the employees of the state, the teachers… the downstate teachers, not Chicago 09400127.doc 57  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 teachers, the university employees, but we’re also going after the citizens of this state. They are on the hook. An average family of four will have to pay $14 thousand because of the decision that was carried out in this budget. We have a credit card mentality in this state. At least the Democratic Party oughta be the best friends of the credit card companies because all you know how to do is to borrow. Well, after you’ve borrowed some more money what do you do with it you spend it. Spend. Spend. Spend. This is a fiscal fiasco that is staring our citizens in the face. A fiscal fiasco. In fact, it’s so bad I’ve been accused that my hair is standing on end because I got an advanced look at this budget. Why did we do this? Why do we spend, spend, spend when we can’t even pay for the programs we have now, for the pensions that we have guaranteed to the workers of this state? One point four billion in new spending and we’re not making any kind of attempt to catch up on the pension shortfall. What we’ve done is added new programs, whether it’s assistance to the college students who are trying to make their own way. We finally have agreed that, well, if you earn less than $200 thousand then you qualify if you earn more than 200 thousand… that’s not an average Illinoisan. We’ve added the All Kids. And believe me, it’s not all Illinois kids that we’re gonna be trying to cover for health insurance. It’s all kids. Twenty-four hour residency in this state is all it takes for you to be covered by this state. We’ve added a third program, the preschool universal… the universal preschool programming. But this is only a first-year attempt. We’re gonna have to 09400127.doc 58  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 pay another 45 million next year, another 45 million a third year. How are we gonna pay for this? By shorting the pensions next year and the year after. What we have is a champagne and caviar budget when we cannot afford it. Illinoisans cannot afford the champagne and caviar of the programs that you’re putting in here, and you didn’t even use Illinois grapes to make the champagne. We are not paying down our Medicaid debt, two billion dollars. No wonder our nursing homes are calling us every day, ‘How do I keep my doors open? Do I have to roll the elderly out on the sidewalk and ask their families to come pick ‘em up because I can’t pay my staff, I can’t buy food for ‘em, I can’t cover their medical expenses?’ Another absolutely shameless thing that is in this budget is that for every dollar of new school funding we have identified about one and a half dollars of pork. Four hundred million in round numbers for new school funding and about $600 million that the Democratic Caucus will split up for pork projects in their districts. Let me repeat. We were not involved in the budget negotiations. Our Leader has said he went to one for 45 minutes the day of the Budget Address and that was the last time he or any of our budget negotiators were allowed in the room. It’s not our fault that you guys are bankrupting this state. It’s your budget. You should be ashamed. When you go back to your districts and brag about this budget you should sha… hang your heads. I’m sorry for you because you have to defend an absolutely shameless budget. Shame. Shame on you.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Thank you. Representative Hannig, I’d like to ask you, first of all, is there any new money in the budget for autism?”

“I’m sorry…”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your response.”

“A hundred thousand dollars?”

“I think it was a couple months ago we had the hearings in the Thompson Center with, I think, over eight hours with over 65 different people testifying about services for autism in children in schools especially. And I think all that was brought up was that there was no money given in state funding for education for autism, 700 thousand in federal money. So, is a hundred thousand all that was added?”

“Right. We’re working on that with you, but we were hoping that there would be more money in that Education budget being that that was brought out that it was so important for children.”

“Absolutely. We know. I mean, we’re wanting to get that waiver passed but we had hoped that we were able to go back to the 400 parents who came here this spring to tell them that we had prioritized in Illinois to put that issue because it’s at such epidemic levels in Illinois, as it is throughout the country, that we would put that as one of our number one priorities. I respect the idea of universal preschool. I respect the idea of giving tuition credits to parents with kids going to college. But when we have so many people at epidemic levels right now with autism in our state it’s hard to go back and say the state board is only going to give a hundred thousand dollars in that budget.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there any money for emergency placement for CILAs?”

“So there’s no new money?”

“And was the 3 percent COLA increase in there for DD and MI?”

“Right. I sat through that hearing yesterday and I wanna know what is… how is that money dispersed if that money does come back through the hospital assessment? How can we be assured that the community groups will get that money?”

“Okay. Can we get a record of that after that takes place, if it takes place, as to who gets that funding and how much it is? Well, ‘cause there are a lot of calls that state institutions are getting increases in funding but that 09400127.doc 62  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 the community providers are not. I’ve already received a couple of phone calls regarding that.”

“Right.”

“How will that help them in this next fiscal year? When will that hospital assessment tax… when will know if that money is coming back?”

“I mean…”

“Okay. Thank… I wanted to ask you a couple questions about yesterday in the hearing. A couple of years ago we had a task force throughout the state regarding Medicaid Managed Care, and with the results of that task force we went forward and hired the Lewin Group to do the Lewin Report, of which the State of Illinois paid almost a quarter of a million dollars for that and in that report it said to implement managed care throughout the state in order to save money. So, this year when I thought we were going to go 09400127.doc 63  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 forward and do that with the PCCMs then the administration put forth the All Kids program. Right now, in the State of Illinois, I think we have 1.2 million children being paid for with state insurance between KidCare and Medicaid. What do you think the projection is of the total amount of children in this state that you think are going to be paid for by the state for their health insurance when we implement the All Kids program?”

“It’s 1.2 million right now.”

“Fifty thousand that will be paid for by the state?”

“Can we get the totals on that, the total projection?”

“Okay. Because right now when we had that task force, one out of every three children in this state is being paid for by Medicaid on their health insurance. The same as 50 percent of all births in this state are being paid for by Medicaid. So, do you think this will bring the number down to one out of every two children in Illinois will be on Medicaid?” 09400127.doc 64  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Okay. What is the total cost projection of the All Kids program by the end of next fiscal year?”

“Okay. So going back to what the Lewin Report suggested and putting people into Managed Care to get a savings, do you plan to implement that program, the PCCM program, statewide by July 1?”

“So, it’s not gonna be implemented statewide on July 1.”

“Okay. When will Cook County be phased in?”

“Oh, I guess… the reason I ask that is because I’m trying to figure out, especially through the Human Service Appropriation hearing yesterday, as to how we’re going to get the savings from the PCCM program to underwrite the cost of the All Kids program if it’s gonna be $80 million. Do you know what the projected savings is of the PCCM?”

“Okay. So, 57 million in savings from the PCCM if it goes as planned throughout the first year.” 09400127.doc 65  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Together…”

“…will be 57 million.”

“Right. But the All Kids, you said the projection would be at least 80 million, correct?”

“Do you think we’ll really follow through with that 57 million in that first year? I can’t see how that’s gonna happen if the majority of Cook County that’s on… that’s going to be in that isn’t even gonna start to be implemented until December or January.”

“Well, I think… according to the statistics that we had as of two years ago, I think probably after we get the All Kids plan… and I support the idea of that, but just at this time I don’t think it’s fiscally responsible because I don’t see that those numbers are going to match up within the fiscal year of 2007. But just going back to my concerns on Medicaid, not only of what we’ve talked about today, but the Medicaid payment of bills is so far behind now with two out of every three people in Illinois being in a nursing home on 09400127.doc 66  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 Medicaid, 50 percent of all births in Illinois are paid for by Medicaid, almost one out of every six Illinoisans now is on Medicaid. And I think with this new program probably close to one out of every two people… two children in Illinois will be on Medicaid. The cost is unbelievable and the payment of the bills is unbelievable. But what really is striking is that in the Human Service Appropriation meeting yesterday, only… the numbers of people on TANF had been reduced to 40 thousand people. Thank you.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I do appreciate your attempts to get order in the chamber. I know that it’s a difficult thing to do. Sometimes what we’d like, Mr. Speaker… and I realize there’s only one speaker. But we give you extreme courtesy and always have when you go out to your seat and speak. It is quiet in here. You can hear a pin drop. I think that’s the respect in which you’re held and it’s the respect that many of us on our side of the aisle and obviously on your side of the aisle have for the Office of Speaker. And I know you’ve… you’ve given your best today to try and get order. And I know many of you would like to go home, and that’s probably my wife on the phone right now. But I… I think we show great rudeness sometimes to our colleagues when we just refuse to pay attention. When we have 20 or 25 staff members on the floor who tend to congregate, talk and we have meetings down in the front of the chamber with somebody who left this chamber and went over to the Senate. Perhaps we could ask our friends in the Senate to retire to the end… to the rear of 09400127.doc 67  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 the chamber. And you see how much the Senate pays attention to us in the House as he continues his visit. Hey, Senator Millner, why don’t you do me a favor. I love ya. Why don’t you retire to the rear of the chamber. I wanna paraphrase, if I could, some remarks yesterday made by your esteemed Majority Leader, a person I’ve worked with for years, I’ve cosponsored some very controversial Bills with, and I hold in great respect. Let me paraphrase from what she said yesterday. ‘This discussion shouldn’t be about the substance of the Amendment that is in the Rules Committee, it ought to be about the process and procedure. Anybody in this chamber who cares about the integrity of the institution, the integrity of the rules under which we operate should be voting to sustain the Chair, et cetera. Anybody who votes against sustaining the Chair, in my view, is undercutting the integrity of the procedures under which we have all agreed to work.’ I couldn’t say it anymore eloquently than she. As I’ve said many times on this House Floor, I don’t take myself very seriously but I take this Body, this Legislature, this House of Representatives, and what we do on this floor and the rules under which we are supposed to operate, I take that very seriously. I think perhaps I take it too seriously because I certainly didn’t take blood pressure medicine when I came down here 20 years ago. We often are rude. We often refuse to listen to other people’s views who may not agree with ours. And we sometimes just talk over a roar and a din. I think we owe each other more courtesy and more respect than what we have shown thus far. And I know it’s gonna be a long day and I 09400127.doc 68  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 know we’re all tired, but I think we should keep in the back of our mind that all of us run for election in this chamber and all of us have sworn to uphold the Constitution and all of us I think on most days try to do our very best and we owe a certain measure of respect, whether we be a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent. Having said that, Representative Hannig, if you would simply answer one question for me. I only have one question. Earlier today you said that the pension payment would be made according to the statute. What… what statute are you referring to when you… when you said that?”

“No, I…”

“Was it the statute that you passed…”

“…that you passed last year in Senate Bill 27?”

“Thank you. So, you are putting in a pension payment in accordance with the statute that you amended last year in Senate Bill 27. One simple question. How much money, under your Senate Bill 27, are you putting in the pension for next fiscal year? How much money are you putting in? And then the second part of the question, how much money would you have been required to put in under the 1995 law?” 09400127.doc 69  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Correct.”

“No, I… you said by statute, how much are you putting in under the rule… under the law you passed last year?”

“Okay. How much would you have been required to put in under the 1995 law?”

“Oh, I… I know that, Gary. I know that.”

“You… I…”

“Thank you. Thank you. You’re a… you’re an honorable and decent man. You… you’re doggone right it’s higher. Under the 1995 law, which you amended and changed… not you personally, Representative, but those of you who voted for that… you suspended the 1995 law. And we know what the figure is…”

“…and you know what the figure is.”

“One point two billion dollars. That… that is what you should be putting in over and above what the figure you just gave me.”

“Yeah. And I… let me just add to your sentence. Remains… you know, we will… we will see if we reach the 50- year level. Whether we do that or not, that remains to be seen. And there are financial experts who simply tell us… not casting stones, not blaming anybody, but financial experts have said we do not have the revenues nor have we exhibited the fiscal discipline to meet the pension payment that will come due in 2010, under your plan, that will be 09400127.doc 71  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 over $4 billion. The only point I’m trying to make is this, and we’ll round it off, I’ll round it off. In this fiscal year, under the 1995 law that passed this chamber unanimously, the current Governor was a Member of this Body at that time. He voted for the 1994 pension reform Bill that took effect in 1995. He voted for it and I congratulate him for doing so. But had we not changed that Bill, yes, there would have been pain, but we would be putting in as we stand here today, and I’ll round it off, a billion more dollars into the pension system than what we are doing. And I think it’s disingenuous of us to say that we sold $10 billion in bonds and put it into the pension system. We didn’t put all of the $10 billion in the pension system. We put in approximately 7.4 billion and we spent the rest. And so, when you look your constituents in the eye and say, ‘Oh, oh my goodness. We put almost seven and a half billion dollars in the pension system in 2004,’ would you explain to me, and it’s a rhetorical question, how do you pay off debt by incurring more debt? You don’t think that $10 billion in pension bonds have to be repaid with interest? We didn’t fix any of the problems by putting the money from the pension bond sale. We didn’t fix any problem. We created a… another problem. We created more debt. You’ve all grown up, as I have… or many of you are much younger, obviously. I’m even older than the Speaker. And from what I heard him reply earlier in the day, I think we’re… the Speaker and I are probably in about the same general frame of mind today. But you have learned, as have I, you can’t get every credit card that comes to your house, 09400127.doc 72  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 max it out, get a new credit card in the mail, pay off… transfer your unpaid balance to that credit card, max out that credit card. You know what I’m saying. Eventually that Ponzi scheme will collapse. So, I think it’s disingenuous for us to say we solved the pension problem or… or even temporarily by creating more debt. And that… that’s what I would like to say about this process. Three years ago we worked together. In fact, it was a coalition of Republican and Democrats in the House who took on almost everybody else in Springfield, and we stayed here late, we… we stuck together, and we got the job done. This year… and that’s the way the process should work. This year we were not invited to participate. We were certainly willing to do so and I think it’s very disingenuous to say we refused to participate or that we weren’t wanted there because we would’ve simply been obstructionists. You all know better. When this process works under the rules as best we can follow them it tends to work far better. When we allow ourselves to be put in a position where we establish an artificial deadline of April 7, established primarily so the workers can renovate this chamber, that’s basically the only reason that… you know, what I… I heard them up there drilling yesterday. It sounded like a convention of dentists. And… and I know… I’m not criticizing the renovation of the chamber. This is a beautiful hundred- plus-thirty-year-old building. And as I said last year, what a privilege it is every day to come in here to work, look up and see that rotunda, and realize how special we really are that the people trust us to try to do their job, 09400127.doc 73  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 and I never, ever take that for granted. I go to the electorate every 2 years like you do and I never take that election for granted. But it was an artificial deadline that we didn’t meet even though we sped up the process. Appropriation committees were given 90 minutes to deal with a $16 billion budget. I’d like to see you do your household budget that way. Some of the meetings were held in Chicago. Sobeit. We did not have an opportunity to let proponents and opponents speak. They got 3 minutes if they were lucky enough to be able to travel to a budget meeting. That is not the way the process is supposed to work. We missed the deadline, and we will get a budget done today. And you know, I don’t know why we didn’t… why don’t we take three days to put this budget on display, let all of those who are impacted by this budget have plenty of time to go through it, your staff and our staff time to go through it item by item, and then come back next week and vote on it when it has been out there in the sunshine for at least three or four days. Sunshine’s the greatest disinfectant in the world. When we’re transparent, when we let the public know what we’re doing, they generally will… will feel better about the process. This budget was hatched in secret, released to us late Monday night, and will be voted on within 36 hours. That’s not the way we should do the public’s business. And in closing, let me… let me try to put a personal face on public aid medical care. There was an article in the Springfield Journal-Register (sic-State Journal-Register) yesterday written by an administrator… a nursing administrator of a nursing home. You all saw it. 09400127.doc 74  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 It’s a matter of public record. ‘The state’s idea of timely payment leaves much to be desired.’ Let me just quote very briefly. Very… very quickly. ‘My facility has largely survived,’ this nursing home, ‘because of the determination and generosity of its owner, the hard work of a dedicated staff, the benevolence of an outstanding bank, and the understanding of many of our vendors. However, how can we continue to rely on the determination of our owner when he is pushing his financial means to near bankruptcy? Our benevolence and our vendors’ understanding can’t last forever when the State of Illinois interprets the releasing of our checks in a timely manner as once every 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 weeks or longer. So I ask all of you who represent us in State Government, does your paycheck arrive in this manner?’ Well, come to think of it, per diem’s a little later than it used to be. ‘Do you pay your bills on time? And if you don’t pay your bills on time, do you pay finance charges that will mount up on your utility companies until they threaten you with disconnection? My office personnel inform me today that we received a voucher number from Public Aid. That means we can now get in line to possibly receive our check for November’s care in the near future. November’s care will be paid hopefully in May.’ Let me also quote from an article in the Champaign News- Gazette where they surveyed… and Champaign is a regional health care center. Article in the The News-Gazette, April 30. ‘Legislation backed last year by health care providers around the state would have forced the release of Medicaid claims to the Comptroller’s Office in a timely manner.’ 09400127.doc 75  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 Many of you voted for that. It was vetoed by Governor Blagojevich and no attempt to override was made. There are three hospital clinics in Champaign-Urbana. All of them are owed more than $1 million in back pay for public aid medical care that they provide and are not being paid for in more than 90 days. If you think that’s fair and you think we can continue to pile debt upon debt and ignore, ignore our obligation to Medicaid providers… Twenty-three nursing homes went bankrupt in this state 2 years ago. I know of at least one who has already given a closure notice this year. My mother-in-law is 94 years old and she went into a nursing home about seven months ago. The most difficult decision I have ever watched anybody go through was my wife and my brother-in-law having to make the decision to put their mother in a nursing home. She cried. My mother-in-law cried, my wife cried, my brother-in-law cried. My mother- in-law is confused, often doesn’t know where she is, is very unhappy. It’s a good nursing home. Asks repeatedly when is she going to go home. And she isn’t gonna go home. She’ll live out however many days she has left in that nursing home. Now, how do you think I feel when I go out there and the staff and the administrator… and they’re kind and they’re generous people and they give excellent care in this nursing home… how do you think I feel when they ask me, ‘Representative Black, is there anything you can do to get our check? We’re owed hundreds of thousands of dollars. We have a payroll to meet. We have utility bills to pay. Is there anything you can do?’ And I have to look them in the eye and say, ‘No, there really isn’t. I wish I could.’ 09400127.doc 76  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 Comptroller’s Office is… is good about returning phone calls and we make a good faith effort, as I know all of you do, to try and expedite payment. But what we’re doing is wrong. It’s wrong and it’s harming some of the most vulnerable citizens of our state. We can’t continue down this path. You know it and I know it. In closing, I’d like to quote a Member on your side of the aisle. I assume he was quoted accurately. And I think his quote says more eloquently than what anything I can say about this year’s budget. ‘We have made some short-term gain, but we have created some long- term pain.’ I congratulate that Representative because he’s absolutely on target. He knows what’s gonna happen. This can’t continue. There’ll be a tax increase that we’re gonna be asked to vote for, regardless of the Governor’s campaign promise that made some of you mad, by the way. And when you’re asked to vote for a tax increase for debt service, do you think you’ve made a tough vote, you haven’t seen a tough vote until you have to do that and go back and your constituents say, ‘Look, I’ll pay a little more in taxes, but what am I gonna get? Are you gonna improve my roads? Are you gonna build a new bridge? Are we finally gonna get a new ambulance?’ And you look ‘em in the eye and say, ‘No. We’re gonna try and pay down Medicaid and bonded indebtedness debt.’ I congratulate your Member on your side of the aisle for his very timely and cogent observance of what we’re doing. ‘Short-term gain creating some long-term pain.’ I know what’s going to happen on this Bill and you all do too. I won’t take anymore of your time, but I will leave you the way I started. When we do the best we can to 09400127.doc 77  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 follow the process, as the Majority Leader so eloquently said yesterday, this place can work very well. When we short circuit the process and we get into a hurry-up two- minute offense it doesn’t work very well. I don’t think any of us are gonna leave today or tomorrow and go home and brag about this budget. Even those of you who vote for it are gonna know we could’ve done better, there are things we should do that we don’t, and sooner or later we’re gonna have to face that reality. We can’t continue to live in a state of denial. We are in debt. We owe money. We are putting people at risk of going out of business. We are not dealing with the developmentally disabled. We are not dealing as best we can with the mentally ill and we’re not dealing with our senior citizens in a fair and equitable manner, who are totally vulnerable and often dependent upon public dollars for their care. What we do today, in my opinion, is wrong and we will all answer for it sooner or later.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Gentleman yield?”

“Representative, in… in the big picture of this budget, did we increase spending?”

“Rel… relative… Excuse me, Representative.”

“I didn’t mean to be rude. Relative to last year.”

“Did… did spending go up or down?”

“Okay. Thank… thank you, Representative.”

“The… the fact is that we increase spending by a little bit over a billion dollars. This administration has raided pension funds, it’s raided special funds, now it’s raided its own campaign promises fund, if you will. The Department of Corrections has been decimated under this administration. We’re saying now that we’re… we’re going to hire some people back. The fact of the matter is that the Governor wanted to spend 13.7 million and that was reduced to 11.75 billion… million for frontline staff. We’re told that… the Democrat staff says that the Governor said that they overestimated the cost of the additional officers and so they’re gonna cut that budget. All right. So we’re not spending as much as we could on frontline officers, but we did have money in the Department of Corrections while at virtually every facility corrections officers are in jeopardy of their life today. We did have money to… we had $790 thousand lump sum, reentry, transitional, and related services. Reentry. That wasn’t for the people that we laid off from the Department of Corrections, that was reentry for those who were getting out of the system. So, we had $790 thousand for them. We also had $150 thousand lump sum for costs associated with the long-term prisoners study committee. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars to find out 09400127.doc 79  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 something that I can tell ya right now, they’re misbehaving in there. The longer they’re there the more they misbehave and the more they put our corrections office in jeopardy… officers in jeopardy. As the one who represents an area that has a prison, I’m not impressed with this budget. Let me go on to another area that… that I have a great deal of interest in, and that is the veterans of the State of Illinois. I… I’m not one who supports veterans’ issues just because it’s now popular. I’m not one who with the… depending on which way the wind is blowing that year as far as whether you’re supporting a war or not. I’m one who came home from Vietnam on a stretcher. And when I came home I was just as proud of our efforts in Vietnam then as I am today, because it’s the effort of the soldiers that… the veterans now, that I reflect on and not on whether you might agree with the public policy of any administration. When we stand here this year and talk about veterans’ issues every one of us has stood up and supported this veterans issue, this Resolution, this welcome home party, this pro-veterans’ issue. It was more like the issue of the day. But when you put together this budget you decided that we were gonna cut $79 thousand out of the Quincy Veterans’ Home. We decided that at the various veterans’ homes around the state where we have a 760 veteran… a list of 760 veterans waiting to get in, that we couldn’t afford to add more beds. Not just… not add more beds literally, but to put the veteran in the bed, the space that’s already available. Except that this budget, like the budgets of the last 3 years, has continued to eat away at one of the nation and Illinois’s highest 09400127.doc 80  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 priorities, service to veterans. I can tell you as a veteran who has never, ever hung his head about his service, one who appreciates what the men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world are doing today, as a veteran I am not impressed by this budget. I don’t see anything in this budget to be happy about, except when you’re wearing one hat. If you happen to be a partisan Republican you’ve got to be tickled to death by this budget. I’ll tell you that every one of you that puts your vote on this budget today are going to jeopardize your careers. And it’s not courageous that you’re doing that, it’s out of desperation. It’s out of desperation because you have to support this administration only because you have the same small ‘D’ behind your name in this fall’s election as the Governor. You are tied to him. This budget inextricably ties you to him. This is your last hoorah before you go into the fall elections. And you are going to say today that we support this failed administration, we support putting the pensions of the State of Illinois in the greatest jeopardy in the history of the State of Illinois, we support that what the administration has done to the veterans’ homes in Illinois today, we support putting the corrections workers in jeopardy. This year before this election… unfortunately between now and then there will be a corrections worker injured because of this budget. I pray, I pray that that attack that we know is coming in this long, hot summer is one of little consequence. I know it’s coming. You know it’s coming. We can stop this process right now and correct it. I believe with the members of 09400127.doc 81  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 AFSCME, that had a press conference this morning in Marion, Illinois, I believe that they were legitimately trying to talk to their downstate Democrat colleagues that they have supported year after year the people that have put the workers in the streets for your campaigns, they were legitimately saying to you, ‘Please stop. Don’t put our members in jeopardy any longer.’ And your response to that is, ‘Well, we did what we could. We hired 231 of ya back. Oh, that’s not much of a hole in the 6 thousand that we needed, but… but it’s the best we could do.’ And if you think they’re gonna forget it, you’re wrong. Downstate Illinois… as someone told me the… the other day, ‘The Democratic Party has wiped its behind with Southern Illinois.’ And that came to me… that quote came to me in reference to a campaign close to my district by a lifelong Democrat. And I… I thought it spoke volumes about what they think about what you’re doing to them with this budget.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, I have a few questions about the Elementary-Secondary Education budget. One of which… actually, my understanding is we’ve got about 400 million in new spending for schools. Is that correct?”

“Okay.”

“Right.” 09400127.doc 82  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Yeah, but that includes the chargeback for the loan… the textbook loan program, I think. So, we’re looking at 408 million?”

“Okay. So, we’re looking at $408 million in new funding for schools, but the potential of $577 million in pork. So, we’re putting more into pork spending then we are into additional spending for… funding for education?”

“Okay. What is the… do you know offhand what the mandated categorical funding level will be for this coming year?”

“What they were last year.”

“So, it’s an increase in spending, but it’s maintaining a level that we were at last year.”

“How about for special education teachers?” 09400127.doc 83  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Actually, I think… I think what we’re doing is maintaining the level that was established in 1985. We have not increased spending for special education teachers since 1985, which is over 20 years ago. We’re funding them at an $8 thousand per teacher. And to my knowledge, there are no teachers in the State of Illinois teaching special education at $8 thousand a year, but we are adding over… over $23 million in brand new programs. So, we’re not funding what we currently have, but we’re adding brand new programs. And… do you know offhand, Representative, who’s going to be administering the Bullying Prevention Program, which is a million dollar brand new program?”

“The Bullying Program, Bullying Prevention.”

“It is in the budget? Okay. Well, it is… it is a billion… it is a million dollars of new funding, taxpayer dollars that is going to be administered by private organization known as ICASA, which is a wonderful organization. But they are private and they’re going to be administering a million dollars of new funding for education as one of the new initiatives?”

“Well, one would hope so ‘cause I don’t think that the… the rules and regs have been written as yet for that particular item. Back to special education. Is gifted education in the budget in any way, shape or form?”

“Okay these are our best and brightest. They… the kids that are… are probably…”

“…hopefully, gonna take some of… well, I hope some of them will take our jobs. Sometimes I’m not so sure.”

“Well, in which case it probably is not gonna go to the ge… we have said for years if special ed, and that includes gifted children, were fully funded, which obviously it’s not in any way, shape or form, that we could take care of the regular education for all of the kids. As to the early childhood program, the early childhood program for All Kids, the $45 million, is that in the budget?”

“Does that include the… the funding for the transportation that will need to be involved? Because once 09400127.doc 85  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 we put this in as a mandate and I get to add it to my long mandate list.”

“Except that once we put this into programs, we’re talking about needing to provide early childhood education for All Kids. So consequently, then we’re gonna have to provide space, which we do not have, and transportation, which is expensive and going… and getting more so as the summer wears on. We need to provide certified teachers who are not there right now. We will need to provide breakfast and/or lunch for these kids because they’re there and unfortunately, they will not… they… the kids that are going to be eligible for this program for the most part are the needier kids. So, we’ll be needing to provide breakfast and lunch for them. So, out of the 45 million instead of preschool for All Kids, we’re really talking about preschool for some kids. Correct?”

“Okay. But the… but the money is in the budget. Is that correct?”

“Okay. To the Bill, Mr. Speaker. One of my concerns about this particular budget… one of my concerns about this particular budget is that Dr. Dunn who is… Ladies and Gentlemen, if I could have your attention just for a minute. Ladies and Gentlemen, one of my concerns about this particular budget is that the state’s superintendent who is obligated to provide this budget to the Appropriation Elementary-Secondary Education… Elementary and Secondary Education Committee admitted that he had not had input into this budget, received it 24 hours before he presented it to us. Why then do we have a theoretically independent State Board of Education who are defending a budget that is not theirs? I find that very sad. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Bill. Mr. Speaker, Ladies and Gentlemen of the House, I was thinking this morning when I walked in to this chamber about the first time that I entered this chamber, about the day that I was sworn in, and I bet most of you could also remember that day that you were sworn in. Think back to that. What were your dreams? What were your goals? What did you wanna do for the State of Illinois? Some of you have a passion for education. Some of you have a passion for minority issues. Some of you have a passion for those that are developmentally disabled. Maybe they were on your mind. Maybe, maybe your children or your grandchildren were on your mind. Maybe you simply wanted to leave this state in a better shape than when you arrived. There was book… a great book written a few years ago by a man by the name of Stephen 09400127.doc 87  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 Covey called the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Now, Mr. Covey in that book says that we all have basic needs and the most basics are to live, to learn, and to leave a legacy. Mr. Speaker, Members of both sides of the aisle, today I ask you whether you’ve been here for 3 years or 30 years, what do you want the legacy of your service to be? And more importantly, what legacy do you want to leave our children? Are we leaving them with a state that has a healthy economy, that has a great business environment, which will give them something that we all want? We saw hundreds of thousands of immigrants marching throughout this nation with one thing and one quest in mind, they want opportunity. Opportunity. Does this budget do that? Does this budget give our children and our grandchildren opportunity? Can you get up in the morning and say, I did my best for the future generations? I would like to close with a quote, Mr. Speaker, and a challenge. And I may get in some hot water for this, but this is a quote from someone whom I respect, someone who I watch, work, and manage and lead, and I take these words seriously. And I quote, ‘Good stewardship requires elected officials to use a time horizon that extends beyond the present. It demands that we consider our obligations not only to those who need help today, but also that we keep the state on a sound financial footing so that we can meet our responsibility to those who will need our help tomorrow.’ My challenge to all my colleagues today before you vote on this budget, can you honestly say to yourself that this budget’s gonna leave us with a sound financial footing so that we can meet the 09400127.doc 88  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 responsibility that we owe to our children and our grandchildren? Thank you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, I hope everyone will bear with me, the hearing processes were quite short and there’s any number of questions I have about the budget particularly the Human Service budget. There’s a supplemental included in this budget Bill that is just short, according to your staff’s analysis of $1 billion, 98 million GRF and the rest from other funds. Some are federal rollover, but some of them aren’t. But it’s still $1 billion. When I asked you at the end of last year on the budget Bill if you thought we would need a supplemental because this budget from last year, the FY ‘06 budget, was not accurate and had a lot of holes in it, I think your response was ‘no’. Now, from your lines that we have from your staff this supplemental is almost a billion dollars, which increases what I would say spending or appropriation authority for this year, which certainly changes what last year’s budget figures were. So, in some of those, there is a half a million increase in Telecommunications and Human Services. Could you explain to me what that half a million supplemental is? Is that all cell phone usage? When we asked that in committee yesterday, we were not given an accurate answer, but half a million dollars is quite a bit of cell phone bills. Perhaps you ought to look for a better plan. And will this be annualized?” 09400127.doc 89  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“They’re just moving it around. And what do you mean by just moving it around? I always like that…”

“But it’s half… half a million and it was allocated to individual places. I mean, we took this right off of the Bill.”

“I mean, Representative Munson went through this in committee and asked some of these questions. We were told that they would get back to us with the answers. Of course, we haven’t gotten them yet. It’s always interesting when they say they’ll get back to us with the answers, I always like that. So, you have no idea what the half a million was for… I mean, it goes…”

“Well, perhaps they are… and then are they gonna annualize that? Is there gonna be no containment on the usage of telecommunications with the different agencies?” 09400127.doc 90  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“All right. There’s a line item for… under DHS for 3.5 million in tort claims. Could you explain that, please?”

“Well, I would think that… I… I wanna go to one particular incident that’s in the regular budget. Although, I hate to go back and forth. But… just trying to go through my… I’ll go back, it’s in Veterans where they had to pay off a claim and I’ll go there. In the supplemental according to your staff’s analysis and our staff crossing it, under DPH, the legislative transfer to AIDS awareness from other Department of Public Health tobacco funded projects is gonna be $2 million and that’s gonna be change… and moved. Is that gonna be moved into this year’s budget or is that going to be currently spent in the supplemental?” 09400127.doc 91  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“So, they have switched tobacco funded projects and they’re giving 2 million additional dollars to FY ‘06’ budget for indiv… individualized HIV grants in the City of Chicago.”

“All right.”

“Well, I can understand why the Governor would think it was very important, because along about March he started hustling to pay off the memorandums of understanding and other issues from the FY ‘06 budget. Because I think many Legislators who had gotten those memorandums did not believe that they could vote for a budget this year when they didn’t get what they currently were promised. So, I presume that’s part of it. There’s also a movement of money in the anticipation of the hospital assessment waiver. It looks like it’s a movement of $525 million that’s being moved in the supplemental. So, is part of that to cover if you have chargebacks? What you call chargebacks, what we call fund sweeps. Is that the anticipation for that?”

“What’s the current Medicaid payment cycle as of today? A hundred and twenty-some days?” 09400127.doc 92  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“No, that’s the hope for what it will be at the end of the fiscal year.”

“77.6 days and 86.2 days in the worst case if we allow fund sweeps, which what my understanding is, is we’re being asked to do the fund sweeps by our local people in order for them to get paid. They are being pressured to have us argue about the fund sweeps. But isn’t the current payment cycle now around a hundred and twenty as of today?”

“For who? For the people that are expedited or for the ones that aren’t expedited?”

“Well, that’s another question…”

“Well, that was mentioned yesterday that… so I’m just curious as to who it is. I mean, I know there are people 09400127.doc 93  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 out there that have called their Representatives because they didn’t know how they were gonna pay a bill the following day. We would hope that they wouldn’t wait that long but it’s really a problem. But I noticed also in the supplemental that the medical assistance line for physicians is increased by $80 million to pay down the payment cycle for FY 2006. That obviously is, and it was stated in committee yesterday, a blatant attempt to get physicians down so that they will sign up or be available for the All Kids program.”

“But you’re taking the money back in FY ‘07.”

“So, you’re giving them… you’re putting $80 million into that line for physicians but then you’re taking it back in FY ‘07. And what you want physicians to do under the All Kids program is to believe that they’re going to be paid in 30 days. I think that’s really an insult to other groups who have bills that are hanging out there for longer than that. And I don’t think physicians are necessarily believing that that’s gonna be the case, but in order to have enough physicians statewide to implement All Kids you need to give… pay them off now so it does look like that. Don’t you think that’s a little bit duplicitous?”

“Is that the fund sweep Bill?”

“Okay. Let’s go to the FY ‘07 budget. Oh, no, first I wanna go back. Where’s the $14 million from the Employee Health Insurance Fund coming? Is that gonna be moved in the supplemental or is that for the FY ‘07 budget?”

“So, is the Department of Health and Family Services planning on any sweeping changes in employee health care, which won’t be signed up for until the beginning of the year? And since they now are the ultimate in all health care including employee health insurance, anything to do with Medicaid, anything to do with All Kids because of what we passed last year. Are they going to make $14 million in savings or are they gonna increase the payment cycle to those that provide services under employee health care? How do they assume they’re gonna save $14 million?” 09400127.doc 95  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“All right. So, let’s move to the FY ‘07 budget for Human Services. There is no COLA for early intervention workers and there hasn’t been for quite some time. Even though in downstate, sometimes they drive an hour each way to provide services which are not covered. And yet, you have put $45 million into early childhood programs and preschool. Wouldn’t it be more advantageous to children… to young children to take 5 million of that money and put it into an increase in COLA for early intervention so those kids will actually be ready for school, rather than to not have them be able to provide the services or to be uncompensated either for fuel or for two hours of travel time, particularly downstate, since there is no COLA for them and hasn’t been I think for what 8 years?”

“Well, maybe they won’t understand that with the 800 million you put into pork but, I mean, 5 million for a COLA for people that are providing services are really interesting.”

“Well, Representative, we’ve ad… adequately had adequate time to do hearings perhaps we would’ve found those before. In the 14 years I’ve been here, this is the least amount of time we’ve ever spent on hearings and suddenly, the Speaker’s… has changed from saying that he would go to individual Bills to putting all the budget into one big Bill. The new $75 thousand line for affordable housing from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund has been deleted. What was the rationale behind that?”

“So it’s just not gonna be there.”

“Okay, TANF received a reduction and there are also some other… there was something in your budget here under DHS. It’s a million or $302 thousand increase for the Cicero Memory Bridge. Could somebody explain to me what the Cicero Memory Bridge is?”

“So does that mean you don’t ask what it is if it’s the Senate’s? I… there should be a little bit of…”

“…reciprocal discussion between…”

“I mean, but the Cisco… Cicero Memory Bridge. I mean… Come on. Yes, I know… yeah. There are a couple of comments over here that I won’t repeat. Guardianship and Advocacy 09400127.doc 97  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 reflects a 2.5 reduction in personal services across the board. For the last 3 or 4 years they have been the orphan in the storm and have managed to get by providing services to really… clients that have no other re… last resort at all by going out to law schools and begging for people to come in and help them. You know, I think that’s very interesting. Don’t you think that they at least deserve to have adequate staffing that they don’t have to beg for as being free staffing so that they can meet emergencies? I don’t understand that.”

“In the Department of Veterans Affairs, 466,200 was cut from personal services for the Quincy Veterans Home. Last year or during this current year, it’s very understaffed and you’re cutting more staff it appears…”

“…or you’re not going to hire staff.”

“Well, in the past…”

“…year because they were understaffed an elderly veteran wondered off and died. And they were fined $50 thousand.”

“All right. But you have additional add-ons, numerous ones for community colleges, particularly in the City of Chicago where we still have approximately 16 million for veterans’ education that is going to go unpaid that local taxpayers and local institutions will pick up the cost for. Yet, both the Lieutenant Governor and the Attorney General who promoted the program of giving additional waivers to returning veterans and the Governor are taking credit for this program and still saying there’s no tax increases when local taxpayers who pick up the cost for community colleges and local students who are paying for their education at Illinois universities are covering the cost of the veterans returning to the tune of $16 million. Why wasn’t some money put in the budget to cover that amount? If you’re gonna take credit for it on the campaign trail, don’t you think you ought to fund it?”

“Representative, last year before the budget was done and again this year we’re pointing out to you that that money was not covered. It has been pointed out in any number of hearings that I have attended.”

“How come the amount of money for emergency placement for CILAs was only annualized? When in most instances any Representative in this room knows practically the only way to get someone into a CILA is if they have a relative that is dying or there is a true emergency. Why is that money only annualized?”

“I’m gonna talk to the Bill. In some instances my general ind… inclination is to stand back and let this happen because there’s not much we can do about it. But that’s never been my way in life and this particular year, in the 14 years that I’ve been in the General Assembly, this is absolutely the worst hearing process we have ever had. For the Department of Healthcare and Family Services, which 09400127.doc 100  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 I fought last year combining, which has control over the employees’ health care, the hospital assessments, the Medicaid, almost every major medical issue in the State of Illinois, the ability to make or break the state budget under Medicaid. We have spent a sum total of one and half hours hearing that budget. Questions that we asked on the All Kids when I asked specifically on the House Floor on House Bill 806 if the PCCM program rollout would begin all over the state and in the hearings, we were told specifically that the rollout that made those savings would start on July 1 and it would be statewide, and it would not eliminate Cook County and start them later. That is proven not to be true. The fact that they claim that All Kids will start July 1 is not true. They have to promulgate the rules and in the discussion that we had, the rules will not be emergency rules and they have to come to JCAR in July. So that program will not start. When we asked for the number of all the publicity that’s being done both in television commercials and in forms that are passed out to our house, how many new children were added to KidCare because of all the forms that were filled out, which means you have to move those kids onto KidCare that are… that… are eligible for it, we weren’t… could not be given the number. It took us until two days ago to get the number for the end of last year in December, not the fiscal year, which means that was before the big publicity push was on. Some of the pla… areas were told to hold back on pressing All Kids and going to see who would actually be eligible for KidCare, a program that we at least get 75… or 65 cents back on the dollar. As far as the 09400127.doc 101  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 hearing process, it was abominable. I quite am appalled and in some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, which I’ve worked with for a number of years and I’ve had cordial relationships for a number of years, I think I got a little bit testy with them because I expected them to have the same view of public policy that I had. The fact of the matter is, if you wanna go out and do some of these new programs, that’s perfectly fine, some of us support those programs. But it’s only fair to take it back to the public to discuss the public policy if that’s what they wanna do and that’s what they wanna do, if they want an income tax increase to cover it or if they don’t. The fact that three or four people sit in a closed room and make these public policy decisions for all of us for… not just for the Legislators but the people that we represent and there’s a large number of people on this side that we represent too is unconscionable. The fact that the process in Illinois has gotten so convoluted that it’s really embarrassing. It’s hard to stand up and be a Legislator and go home and not try to work to see how you can change it. Quite frankly, I think it’s really embarrassing. I can’t believe that any of you came here to be part of this kind of a process. Three years ago the Speaker wanted to rein in the borrowing and had a lot of good ideas. What happened from those 3 years ago? Does he think this Governor has gotten anymore fiscally responsible? I can’t believe that. I suppose elections are really important but, quite frankly, some of these programs are important but they’re only important if the public wants them, the public wants to pay for them, and 09400127.doc 102  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 they wanna support it. When you have three minutes in a hearing and you’re told to hurry along after you’ve gotten up at the crack of dawn to drive down to a hearing or you’ve come to Chicago where you’re paying $25 to park because we decided to have hearings in Chicago, this is an embarrassment. The fact that a little bit of pork this year had to be paid off before you could even get the votes. If all of you on the other side that are getting this 800 million think that this Governor who has such good word is gonna pay off your programs that you’re putting in in pork for your vote on what’s really bad budget and bad policy, you have another thing coming. When we stand here next year, if I’m back here next year, and discuss what’s been paid off, what’s not, what supplemental your gonna need and how this budget’s gonna cave in, I’d like to hear some of you comment, some of you who I know have better ideas, are better Legislators, and have better ideas of public policy than what you’re portraying. To have to stand up and take abuse on a Bill to justify a bad vote on pensions last year seems to be not what the Lady from Champaign has come here for. I do not understand how you can go along with this and then go home for the summer, go your merry way, and just sign off on what’s a totally bad budget. Within 2 years all of this is going to just fall apart, you just wait and see. No matter who’s the Governor, no matter what happens. I only hope to think that the people from the Bureau of the Budget who seem to think that we give them abuse, who sit back there and smile will be around to figure out how to pay it off. And I hope that some of us when we’re asked to come 09400127.doc 103  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 and help you solve the problem will do so with good faith, but I think it’s going to be pretty hard to do that.”

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?"

"Representative Hannig, for the last two Legislative Sessions, Members of the House Democratic and Senate Caucus have forced the Governor to sign a number of memorandums of understanding prior to voting for a budget Bill. Are there any memorandums of understanding which have been entered in between any Members of the House Democratic Caucus or the Senate Democratic Caucus regarding their… regarding this Legislative Session?”

"Is there anybody in this chamber who can speak with some certainty of whether or not there are memorandums of understanding which were entered into with the Governor’s Office?”

"Okay. Now, if there were memorandums of understanding entered in with Members of the Democratic side of the aisle, will it be disclosed at some point?”

"Okay.”

"It’ll be disclosed in a timely manner, I hope.”

“It’ll be disclosed in a timely manner.”

"Okay. I have one question. This is regarding this… Representative Hannig, this is regarding the Illinois State Police budget. The original budget, which was… which the State Police had asked for, included $5 million for the… to be dispersed to law enforcement across the state for the implementation of the videotape interrogations on homicide cases. As you know, a few years back we had passed legislation which first created a pilot program which would apply to the City of Chicago. Now, this past July, it is… we must videotape interrogations in all homicide cases statewide, and one of the understandings was when this Bill was first drafted and one the architects was then Senator Barack Obama who said that this was not going to be an unfunded mandate, this would be a cost-sharing plan with the state and also local government. It’s my understanding that the $5 million, which was earmarked by the State Police for 09400127.doc 105  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 this program, has been taken out of this budget. Is that correct?”

"Representative Hannig, I just wanted… was your response ‘no’, that it was not removed from the State Police budget?”

"Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate your answer and I will just speak to that question… that specific issue. You know, we’re all gonna… you know, we’re gonna vote our conscience, I think, today, and the Democrats will put their votes up. But when they go back and do the victory lap, I want you to talk to your… your sheriffs, your state’s attorneys, and your public defenders and tell them why that the money was not included for this… this program. I think it’s… it’s a tragedy. We spent a lot of money and lot of time and effort over the last 4 or 5 years to clean up our criminal justice system and this is one of the keys to it, was the videotape interrogation. And the fact that we’re not funding it I think it is a disservice to our administration of our criminal justice system in Illinois. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, I’ll try to be very brief, really will be. My concerns essentially… the questions I’m gonna ask 09400127.doc 106  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 you on your budget are around Department of Corrections and community colleges. I guess I’d start by asking you, what do you see as the mission of the Department of Corrections?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I… Representative, I certainly share that view of the mission of Corrections. Do you feel this budget provides adequate funding to staff? The Department of Corrections, we’ve heard of… does it provide an increase? ‘Cause we certainly heard of some problems all around the state of… of attacks on staff and… and then I talked to the director yesterday and he graciously agreed to have staff meet concerns of a prison in my district. Do you… do you think we’ve put funds in here to possibly increase funding to staff?”

“I appreciate that and certainly, I hope they’re spread around the state. That was certainly what you indicated by your comments. One other… you mentioned in your… what you see as the mission and I share your description, a place where we hope is… the Department of Corrections, we hope we correct some past problems, correct some behavior, correct some attitudes. Clearly, that takes education and it takes training. Would you agree?”

“In my own district, Hill Correctional Center in Galesburg, Carl Sandburg Community College has been providing educational training for inmates. They’ve announced that they probably intend… and they’ve been down to Springfield and asked for increased funding…”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Carl Sandburg College has indicated that it cost them more to provide the training than what they are receiving in reimbursement. And if things continue that they actually intend to cease providing that education which, ya know, really stifles what you and I see as the mission of Corrections. Is there an increase in 09400127.doc 108  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 funding for our community colleges and this would apply across the state to provide adequate reimbursement for training and education in our correctional facilities?”

“Does this actually provide an increase that could be used to pay community colleges for the training and education at comm… at the Department of Correction? Is there a potential pool of money that could increase what we pay?”

“I appreciate that response. That would be my hope too. Thank you for that response. Mr. Speaker, there’s certainly been lots of comments made here today. There’ll be a number of more. But just on the one issue of Corrections, I think we share that mission of what Corrections is. But if we don’t provide adequate training, adequate education, a change, a correction in… in attitude and behavior and in skills, some of these people simply lacking skills. Then really, instead of Department of Corrections, it becomes the department of detention and I think we all want it to be Corrections where we’re really correcting something. So, I hope that can be addressed, that is certainly a concern in this budget. And we’ve talked about the process, we’re asking every portion of the state to pay for this budget. That’s why every portion of the state should’ve had adequate time for input. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield for some questions?”

“Thank you. Representative, how are you holding up over there? You doing all right?”

“Can we bring you a soda or something? You’ll be okay?”

“All right.”

“All right. Hey, I got a couple questions about the Ethanol grants.”

“There’s $25 million in this budget for Ethanol grants?”

“Five million for what, I’m sorry? I didn’t quite get all that.”

“Okay. There was a Senate Bill floating around here, it’s Senate Bill 2236 that included a number of other incentives regarding alternative fuels and it’s something that I had hoped we’d have the opportunity to… to vote on up or down this Session, especially when we look out, ya know, we drive down the streets, we see $3 gasoline. I know that’s not in this Bill. Could… can you give me status as to whether or not any of those good ideas that came over from Senator Demuzio are… are getting any consideration?”

“Okay. And I appreciate that approach and I wanna come back to that because… ‘cause really what you’re doing is you’re paying… you’re paying for it…”

“Mr. Speaker, I’ve had experience with study halls that were… were quieter than this with more people and hopefully, we can have the decorum that you suggest that maybe teenagers can have in school, we could have as adults in this chamber. Representative, the… the $25 million does help that industry. My concerns about the other issues related to the ethanol industry, are they included in here? The percentage of mandated fuel alternative use, is there anything in the ‘bimp’ language that also supports the use of those fuels?”

“I hope so.” 09400127.doc 112  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Another question I have relating to my district regards a work camp in Paris, Illinois. The Department of Corrections, a couple years ago, closed that camp. I’m not expecting that… that camp has been reopened but I think I owe it to the workers in that area and the people of Edgar County to ask the question as to whether or not that that camp was given consideration for reopening?”

“Yeah. I know I’ve… I’ve contacted the Governor’s Office several times in the fact that it wasn’t intr… introduced budget. However, we are opening… we’re using some staffing to open another facility. Is that correct?”

“Yeah, the work camp was built some years ago too and it’s also sitting idle. So, I would hope that at some point or another we give serious consideration to using that before we begin to staff new facilities. But I also understand that this an election year and I know the geographic concerns that might have been at the top of the list. The other thing related to the Department of Corrections that I’m hearing from people in my district, the guards that work 09400127.doc 113  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 in Lawrenceville and Robinson, Illinois, is that there are dangerous conditions in those facilities that this budget does not address as far as staffing is concerned. These are real people who work hard every day who have real concerns about the staffing level. And I believe that this budget does not adequately address the safety concerns of the workers at DOC in those facilities. Do you feel like this budget has done an adequate job of staffing facilities in DOC?”

“How… how many go to the new facility?”

“So a total of 325?”

“I appreciate you getting that straight. I appreciate, Representative, your attempt to answer the questions 09400127.doc 114  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 accurately. I sincerely do. I wanna go to the Education budget for just a couple minutes. I have some questions regarding some of this particular line items that I find rather interesting. There’s a $500 thousand line item for something called ‘regional superintendent initiatives’. Now, I’m somewhat familiar with the State Board of Education budget and I notice that the regional superintendents have not fared well as a group. However, it seems as if $500 thousand in that line item wasn’t detailed out in the budget. Can you tell me what that’s for?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you have any idea what the pilot project is in regards to? Is it… is it in regards to alternative education for truants? Is it… do you know specifically?”

“Okay, thank you. There’s also a teacher mentoring program, a couple million dollars. My question is, do all school districts in the state get to share in that pot of money? Is that a block grant per student?” 09400127.doc 115  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“The teacher mentoring program, I think it’s a good idea. Teacher mentoring is something that we’re trying to do around the state.”

“All school districts have new teachers. Is this something all districts will receive some funding for?”

“Is there a block amount or is it per student probably?”

“But all schools will receive some funding from the $2 million line item? Every school district in the state, there’s 800…”

“Okay.”

“I’m guessing that’s the same for the community service line item, the security for schools line item. Those are… those are line items that are new and I know a lot of people in the education world are gonna wanna know what they need to do to access that funding. There were very few answers yesterday from Superintendent Dunn. He did his best, but he didn’t have any real information.”

“Okay. Let me… let me just ask it this way. If I had a desire… if I had a desire to try and obtain some of that funding, would I be better off hiring a grant writer or a lobbyist?”

“Yeah, maybe both. Well, the way the ISAT contract was done this year, ya know, with all these separate line items that require RFPs, that particular RFP benefited greatly from the hiring a particular lobbyist. So, I… I’m wondering how busy Mr. Wyma is gonna be at the end of this budget. There’s twenty three and half million dollars in… in new RFPs. There’s a… there’s a program added last year that I, quite honestly, think is a good program and I support the concept. It provided a line item for students who have visual problems to receive eyeglasses. Can you tell me if that program continues in this budget?”

“Which was? Do you have that?”

“Three million dollars. Now, let… the next question does that… does that funding again only provide for eyeglasses for students who live inside the City of Chicago?”

“Okay. So, if you’re from Decatur or… or East Moline or Carlyle or a number of other places and your students have 09400127.doc 117  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 trouble seeing the blackboard and you wanna apply for money, you can’t get this money.”

“But this money is limited by where you live.”

“That would’ve been a wonderful thing to do…”

“…if I’d have had the opportunity.”

“Representative, with all due respect, I certainly would’ve liked to have that possibility but I don’t remember at any point that we had the opportunity to enter into negotiations regarding the budget. We had a little bit of an opportunity to listen to the final product but we didn’t really have that opportunity to negotiate. I wanna go down…”

“I would hope that the Members on the other side of the aisle who are part of those negotiations would feel the same way and in their downstate areas would try to make that happen for those children.”

“Does the budg… well, it hasn’t happened if we’re in the same place we were. I would hope that in the future we see that happen. Does the budget include any funding for the 23 school districts who were promised money for school funding?”

“School construction.”

“We have another Bill introduced on the Calendar as well that we’d like to get to that actually pays for ‘em. You know, there are 23 school districts in the state who received this letter from the Illinois State Board of Education in 2001. At the top of the letter it says very clearly, ‘School construction project grant entitlement approved.’ In these communities for 4 years they’ve been waiting for the State of Illinois to fulfill the promise not to indi… to the children of those school districts that they would have the type of… of buildings and classrooms that they deserve in order to get an education. Approximately a 09400127.doc 119  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 hundred and forty-nine million dollars would take care of that. There are twenty-three and half million dollars of new programs in this budget. For Education there’s $577 million in unidentified projects that can be referred to as ‘pork projects’. Was there any consideration, whatsoever, whatsoever, of making sure that those districts that were promised the hundred and forty-nine million dollars received it before we went on the other spending spree?”

“Representative, I don’t mean to interrupt you.”

“Very soon.”

“Representative, what you just suggested was we ran out of money. My problem with that comment is, if you put them at the top of the list, they get paid first and you don’t run out. You pay your obligations. And as you stated, I could go down this list…”

“Does anything prohibit you from paying for projects like this out of General Revenue?”

“So, it could’ve happened? It just was a choice that $577 million in other projects took priority over a hundred forty-nine million dollars for school children who had it promised. Very quickly, I wanna go to another issue and that’s about the pension issues. You know, under the Edgar plan and… in FY ‘06 to the TRS Downstate Pension fund, there was supposed to be $1,058,000,000 contributed. The actual budget contributed $534 million last year, shorting that Pension Fund for downstate teachers 520, almost $524 million. And at that time, that… that pension was funded at about fifty-nine and a half percent. In FY ‘07 that… that schedule would’ve paid $1,372,400,000 this year, in the actual budget it’s $735,636,000, diverted out of the Downstate Pension Fund, a fund that’s selling assets now. I have a concern because the funding percentage has gone from fifty-nine and half to 58.6 percent, it’s actually going down. And we’ve examined the schedule for the future; we’re talking about major pension bills coming in the future. This will be an issue. Last year, I stood here and I described that anyone who voted for this budget which was funded by pension raids and raids on other dedicated funds as lemmings. The nice thing about being a lemming is that you only walk off the cliff once, but many of you are walking off the cliff a second time. If you vote for this 09400127.doc 121  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 pension raid a second time, you’re gonna fall. But the fall is gonna be in 2006 when the people in your area realize what you’ve done to their pension system and you don’t have the opportunity to walk off the cliff for a third time. The people are watching, Representative, they can’t be fooled on this issue.”

“That does not… that does not…”

“…meet the schedule. That’s a different issue. I appreciate what you’re sayin’…”

“I understand that. The funding ratio is the important part and it’s actually going down…”

“…and I think your figures show that as well.”

“And when you borrow $10 billion and put seven and a half billion of it into the fund obviously your gonna increase the percentage. But you’re doing it with borrowed money. You know, if you… if you wanna…”

“You bonded the increase. You know, Representative…”

“…if you wanna stop going in the hole you have to stop digging first.”

“And we’re digging the hole deeper.”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

“No, Sir.”

“I’m saying we’re not making payments with money we’re earning, we’re making payments with money we’re borrowing, and there’s a big difference. We’re… we are pulling…”

“Because of… because of borrowed bonded money. It’s not real. This is a charade.”

“You know it’s a charade. All this is is an attempt to make it look like you’re funding a pension system while you’re lowering the contribution. Except for the fact…”

“Except for the fact that you don’t lower the payment to those pensions anywhere in the City of Chicago, you actually increased that payment. And that’s what’s gonna have to be explained.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to debate this. I wish we had more time because I am absolutely certain that the facts bear out a real issue related to pension underfunding and I’d like to have that debate at another time. Thank you for the opportunity.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative Hannig, as I look at… well, first of all, I have some questions, several questions for you. But first, I would like to ask some questions about the Higher Education budget. The Higher Education budget is… is pretty good. There’s an increase across the board for just about every area of Higher Education, the state universities, IBHE, the Community College Board, ISAC, IMSA and the State University Civil Service System. But let’s talk about the universities first. Now, they’ve received over-all a 2 percent increase in their budget over the previous year. However, there’s some very glaring differences between the universities. Two different institutions received 6.5 09400127.doc 124  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 percent increases while one institution received only a .09 percent increase. Now, I heard you explain a little earlier why some of those differences may exist and I will accept some of those explanations. But can you tell me why a couple of the Chicago institutions received 6.5 percent increase and the downstate institutions received 1.2, 1.4 maybe 1.5 percent increase?”

“So you say it’s easier for some institutions to increase their tuition and… rather than others? It’s…”

“And that’s part of my point, Representative Hannig. Is we’ve talked about Chicago State and Governor State each getting 6.5 percent increase, but yet, we see the downstate schools like Illinois State and Western and Eastern and Northern receiving very little in percentage of increase. We acknowledge that the University of Illinois can maybe raise their tuition a little easier than the rest of ‘em. But as we… as we look at the… the rest of the schools, they’re all pretty much in the same boat. I’m not gonna say that Western could raise theirs any easier than… than Chicago State or vice versa. But I think there’s a great disparity. Because we need to… all of these institutions are having a very difficult time now, especially as we have gone through previous years’ budgets when they were cut up to 17 percent in the available funds that they had to use to provide an education. And then we… we come back and we start increasing the overall funds to these institutions, but we certainly don’t… at least this does not demonstrate that we do it on an equitable basis unless you divide the institutions up by geography. And in that case, maybe you can make that argument. But I… but I don’t think that’s a very good argument to make. So I would… I just suggest that maybe in the future that maybe some of these downstate schools ought to be taken into consideration a little bit better. But let me move on to another question, because as we’re talking about the disparity in funding, we certainly 09400127.doc 126  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 look at some of the add-ons that have gone to various institutions, and I don’t think anybody begrudges some of these add-ons. They do… some of them do look like they’re going to very worthwhile projects, but one in… one in particular I want to ask you about. We… we all know that the universities that have been coming to the Appropriations Committee for Higher Education have suggested that deferred maintenance is a high priority for them. It is one that they’re very, very concerned about because the… the State of Illinois not only has not been providing operations and grants money but they haven’t been providing capital money for them to build on their… their deferred maintenance. But yet, for Southern Illinois University I’m not, and I’m not picking on Southern, but they have a line item of $262 thousand of GRF for replacement of cabins at a Touch of Nature Center. Now, are these cabins… are they designed to last for 20 or 30 years or are they a disposable item that’s only gonna last for 2 to 5 years?”

“But isn’t this something that would be a long-term capital item?” 09400127.doc 127  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“But that’s my point. Here we have one institution that is getting capital construction dollars in the GRF budget, and I’m not saying that that’s not irregularly done because we know it is, but yet there’s a lot of other institutions in the State of Illinois that would like to have the benefit of some of those dollars as well.”

“Well, my point was that I think all universities should be treated equally and alike. And this one singles out one university for one special project when the others also feel like that they’re special in various other ways. Let me move on to a couple of other items. First of all, Medicaid, let’s look at the Medicaid budget for the coming year and you’ve indicated that there’s 50… $353 million in new Medicaid funding. Is that correct?”

“And you… do you have any idea how that will impact the payment cycle?”

“Well, I think we do need to work together and we need to work very diligently together, but this budget here is not going to address that problem. We’re looking at $2 billion of unpaid Medicaid debts when we reach the end of this fiscal year. One nursing home in my district has 36 beds, 70 percent of those beds are Medicaid beds. Now admittedly, it’s a small nursing home. Admittedly, it’s a locally- funded nursing home, but they also have the lowest reimbursement rate of any nursing home I know of in my particularly area.”

“Well, let me proceed with this particular example, though, and it’s kinda endemic of the problem that we face. This one particular nursing home when my staff and I checked on the status of payments for it since it had not received any payments since the end of the fiscal year, which provided payment for services of October, maybe November. We’re told that they probably shouldn’t expect payment until July, when the start of the new fiscal year came about. Now, we had a Bill in the State Government Committee recently, the fund sweep Bill, Senate Bill 14 as you mentioned earlier, that would reduce the payment cycle if the fund sweeps were allowed to go through and we met the federal match. Representative Hoffman said that that will reduce the payment cycle by 23 days. If you stay on that payment cycle and this nursing home wouldn’t expect payment until July, you back it up 23 days then they’re already going to have their doors closed. That’s a $2 billion problem then, you lower that by 353 million or let’s just say you get the fund sweep and that’s another 235, 250 million dollars. We’re not solving the real problem of addressing the real needs of the Medicaid providers, whether they’re nursing homes, whether they’re pharmacists, whether they’re doctors or hospitals. They’re all concerned about the payment cycle. Admittedly, there are some nursing homes that are of different stature… different categories than others and some get paid a little quicker than others. But the one that I’m referring to is one of those that fall 09400127.doc 130  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 through the cracks and they’re in a category that’s the last one to be paid. So, I… I think that we really need to take a look in the future at what we do to really address the Medicaid problem and the providers instead of us borrowing the money… instead of the providers borrowing the money, we need to be borrowing the money at the state to make that happen. One other area that I’d like to touch on very briefly and that is the fund sweeps. Representative, you’ve indicated that there’s no increase in taxes or fees to the general public in this budget. Is that correct?”

“Okay. Do you… are you aware that the fund sweeps that the Governor makes on a yearly basis has any impact on those that either pay fees or… or pay licensers or of that nature? Are their charges increased, are their licenses… license costs increased that you’re aware of?”

“I had a call this morning from a constituent, Representative Hannig, that said that the employees that are in a particular fund, and I’m not sure whether it’s a local government fund or a state fund, that provides health care costs for these employees has been raided by the Governor and will be raided again and their health care premium costs are going up 20 percent next year. Do… would you care to guess why they’re going to go up 20 percent?”

“It is a problem, but the health admin… the fund administrator indicates that the reason it’s going up 20 percent is largely because, not totally, but largely because the Governor keeps sweeping this fund and they have no reserves. The reserves are what help build an insurance fund and pay for the costs that the employees incur when they have health care concerns.”

“No, they’re not required. And as a matter of fact, these employees are looking at the possibility of trying to go out on their own where they can secure services that’s not going to jump up 20 percent a year because the Governor keeps sweeping their funds. Again, I just say that this budget is a good budget in many areas. It has a lot of increased funding for a lot of people. To the Bill, Mr. Speaker. And these areas will be helpful to citizens around the state, but at the same time, there are some… there are still some endemic problems in this budget with how we pay for the services of the existing programs and we need to address those. Not only in the future, we need to address them now, to make sure that we don’t have citizens that currently are… are being provided for with these programs, falling through the cracks, seeing their cost increase in one way or another. I just thing that there’s a lot of fiscal responsibility that could’ve been demonstrated in 09400127.doc 132  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 this budget that hasn’t been demonstrated. And I urge all of our colleagues here in the House to take a very serious look at this budget and its impact on all of our citizens before they vote on it. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Could we have a little quiet in the chamber for a moment? I will be very brief. I’m sure that’ll please everybody. Representative Hannig, I just wanted to get this on the record.”

“To your knowledge we have not met…”

“Yes.”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Hannig. I just want to get this on the record. We have not met together as budgeteers at all this year. Is that correct, you and I in a budgeteers’ meeting?”

“Okay. And to your knowledge Leader Cross has not met with the budgeteers except for the day that they gave the State of the State address when they talked about bond issues? You’re not aware of any time that Leader Cross was involved in the budget process. Is that correct?”

“And to your knowledge have you… well, have you ever met with Leader Cross at a budget meeting?”

“Can the same thing be said about Kent Gaffney, that you have not met with him or discussed with him any meetings this year on the budget?”

“We have and we have talked very briefly on occasion. I was a little bit disturbed ‘cause I read an article this year from a central Illinois district that essentially said the Republicans refused to partici… refused to participate. I would merely say to the people on the other side of the aisle, we did not. Very quickly, if we were subject to ERISA rules the 2005 contribution would have been how much to your knowledge? I won’t put you on the spot. I’ll give you the answer. According to the Business Round Table in December of ’05, if we were subject to sound business practices of ERISA, last year’s budget contribution would be $10 billion. To the Bill. Rather than run into a lot of dialogue, just a couple of points. I would like to refer to 09400127.doc 142  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 the concept of taking funds from the Refund Fund. My understanding is we are taking sweeping funds that, if they become short, the General Revenue Fund will fill them back up for most of the various items where these funds are being swept from. The Refund Fund is money we know we owe. We’re borrowing money we know we have to pay back. The last statement you heard… heard me say, on many occasions and we hear it frequently on the campaign trail, I’m here to tell you I was on the budg… the Governor’s original pension commission plan. I was here when it was presented, the six items, in order to save all of the money from which we’ve had the Bond Bill last year to cut the money contributions to the pension. Rather than go through all the details, and I’d be glad to give you copies of this, 815… .5 percent of those proposed reforms were never enacted. The only one of any substance dealt with the teacher’s retirement which have already started to erode, and I think appropriately so because I think we had unintended consequences which we’re beginning to accept. I would make the statement to all of you and I’ll end with this. When you go around saying that we’re shorting the pensions because there were pension reforms, there were no pension reforms of any substance. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“I just have a few short questions for you. I don’t intend to editorialize them. I’d just like the answers to 09400127.doc 143  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 them, please. In the FY ‘07 budget what was the increase to Chicago public schools?”

“I believe in committee yesterday you told me that it was $104 million of the… of just over $400 million increase.”

“Well, it’s a question that my constituents ask me. I mean, somebody in my school districts and my constituent…”

“They have 20 percent, yeah.”

“Well, that’s… that’s the reason why they would… my district wants to know. How much is allocated in the state budget for the Chicago Teachers Pension System for ’07? And is that an increase or decrease from ’06?”

“10.2. And is that an increase or decrease?”

“Did the Chicago School System get the pension holiday that they asked for?” 09400127.doc 144  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Are there memorandums of understanding for promised projects to the Chicago School System?”

“I…”

“You have none?”

“Will they be… if there are ones will they be made public?”

“And so based on the information that you’ve given me before, you cannot tell me what percentage of the education budget goes to the City of Chicago?”

“And what would those guesstimates be?”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, yesterday in Executive Committee you and I had a discussion on several items in Senate Bill 1977. 09400127.doc 150  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 One of those items was the OSLAD Fund. Are there transfers out of the OSLAD Fund with this Bill?”

“What amount of money is left in the OSLAD Fund after this transfer?”

“I believe that’s probably pretty close. And the projects that are in this pipeline and what’s expected to come in for OSLAD grant applications, what is that amount?”

“So that’s what’s in the pipeline. Of course there’ll be more… more… there’ll be more grant applications coming in to tap into the 30… the additional 30 million that’s left in the fund as of this transfer. Would that be your understanding?”

“And now it’s my understanding in talking with the park districts and the forest preserves lobbyists down here that they understood that the Governor wanted to take $12 million out of OSLAD grants this year only and fund the 2000 program. You spoke of looking for…”

“Yeah, I understand. You spoke of looking for a funding source and thought that this was a good identified funding source for the 2000 program. Would I be correct in believing that you believe then that this should be an ongoing year after year funding source for this program?”

“All right. I’m asking this based on what you just stated though, here, as part of our discussion that you felt that this was a good match for a funding source which would lead me to believe that you would envision this to carry on into future years as the source for the 2000 program. Would that be correct?”

“Well, let me ask you it this way. Would you support it then into the future, continued sweeping of this fund at the expense of… or for the 2000 program? I’m basing mine on…”

“…understate… of the understanding that the park districts and forest preserves has on this budget, that they were willing to go along with this year only to take the $12 million out because there’s clearly enough funds in there for that. And your statement here today on the House Floor…”

“…that indicates that it’s a funding source. One year? Is yours…”

“Would you agree that that…”

“…should be the case if they only would authorize it for one year and we shouldn’t be coming back next year for an additional whack at it?”

“Well, perhaps this may be the park district’s need to reach their own level of understanding with this administration because I can see right now that what you’re suggesting is going to set it up for future attacks on this fund, and they may not be in the best interests of open spaces in the future.”

“Okay, I accept your explanation of it at that point. Thank you very much.”

“Mr. Speaker, I’ve seen the NCAA do some strange things over the years. I just want the NCAA to understand that none of us are trying to do undue recruiting here. We cannot interfere in that process. God forbid the NCAA come down on us again. You know it’s… if it isn’t the chief it’s 09400127.doc 154  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 illegal recruiting or improper recruiting. But I do think it would be permissible and I know everybody joins with me, this is an outstanding high school basketball team, absolutely outstanding. And I wish… I wish all of them the very best and while the NCAA would not want us to put any undue influence on any of them, if they would like to enroll at a 4-year university in central Illinois, about 145 miles south of Chicago to where their family, their aunts, their grandparents could perhaps see them play and win a national championship, I hope they do. I hope they do.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am Rose and I did go to the U of I.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I was wondering if a couple of the players could stay. We’ve been playing defense now for a couple of years and some of our players are a little tired and they look like they could maybe guard the basket. Let me… I’ve got some questions regarding some of these funds, Representative Hannig, if you would yield for a question.”

“The funds that I’m going to ask ya about, I’m basically interested in how the money is generated into the fund, as opposed to general revenue or fees or tax. I’m going to give you an example. There’s one called the Asbestos Abatement Fund that looks like $500 thousand is being 09400127.doc 155  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 transferred out. I won’t say its being raided, I guess that would be one way of putting it, I’m going to say transferred. But how does that fund generate revenue?”

“Yeah, how does the fund accrue revenue?”

“Okay, so… so it’s allowed to accept money from… it’s not general revenue?”

“What about the Coal Mining Regulatory Fund? How does that accrue revenue? How does it become funded?”

“It’s not general revenue?”

“Okay. So people who pay fees for a specific dedicated purpose, put money into this fund and they have an expectation that that money is being used for activities related to the coal mining industry in this case or removing asbestos from buildings… those types of… those types of activities are the expectation of those who fund the account.”

“So the Grade Crossing Prevention Fund, for example, the $4 million that’s being taken out of that fund isn’t… isn’t accrued… funded by general revenue, it’s probably funded by some type of licensing or fee on the railroad industry in order to promote safety. Would that be an accurate depiction of that? And I don’t mean to make you go through all of these… I…”

“So would you describe them as excess funds?”

“Then why don’t we lower the fee?”

“Yeah, except for the fact that the people that pay the money are expecting the money to go for a specific purpose. And I know we’ll get to that Bill and maybe discuss some of the funds that are being raided there. But I guess my point is a lot of people in here have recently joined the historic foundation or the historic site caucus. We’re all interested in making sure historic sites around the state are taken care of. But I see in here that $134,400 is being taken from the Illinois Historic Sites Fund, and my concern is that the people that want to see that money used for its intended purpose of taking care of those sites are being kind of short-changed in this process because we’re taking money out of that and I don’t think they would describe those funds as excess funds. I would think they could find a way to spend those funds. And I think it’s just very disingenuous to create these funds, fund them through fees or some kind of dedicated way. And it’s philosophically different than I think the way we’re approaching this budget and we basically just disagree. I think that money in dedicated funds should be dedicated to those purposes whether its road funds, historic funds, asbestos funds. But I really believe that when people pay a fee to a fund that they expect it to be spent for that or we should lower the fee.” 09400127.doc 158  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Well, I think it’s… it’s obviously one that has become more of a dependent upon source of funds recently. I had… My good friend Jim Sacia passed a Bill here this spring that I think he got a lot of support for that had to do with the police vehicles, and the fact that he took a fund and created it for the express purpose of making sure that the state police had money for their vehicles. Now in this I see $144 thousand is being transferred out of the Police Vehicle Fund and I’m wondering how if police vehicles are in need of updating, we in good conscience can take $144 thousand that could be used to purchase vehicles for policemen and take in out of that fund.”

“And if that were the case we’d have a much different situation. We would be, by appropriation and general revenue, paying these rather than through dedicated funds and I understand that argument. My problem is, is when you create these funds and dedicated fees are being paid for that purpose, you’re being disingenuous with those by not putting them in general revenue. Perhaps it does tie the hands of the General Assembly by having these, but while they’re there we should respect the sanctity of those funds. Mr. Speaker, very quickly to the… to the Bill. You know, we have a budget that is growing by $1.4 billion in spending. It includes a pension raid of $1.1 billion; $577 million in unaccounted for programs; $950 million in new revenue that you think might be able to satisfy… to satisfy and quench the thirst of those who want to spend. However, it’s not enough. We have to take $200 million from dedicated funds in addition to all of the other revenue the state’s generating and taking out of fund raids. Maybe what we need to do in this Body for people who are seeking to be public servants, is instead of asking them not to take no new tax pledges, we should ask them to start taking no new pension fund raid pledges or no new dedicated fund raid pledges. Because if you’re going to increase spending by $1.4 billion and you’re not going to do it through any kind of tax increase, it’s slight of hand to make that budget balance. We’ve got an 800 pound gorilla in the room, Ladies and Gentlemen, the pension system. And we’re not just ignoring 09400127.doc 160  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 the pension system, we’re poking it with a sharp stick and it’s going to turn on us.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative Hannig, there’s one fund in here I simply would like to speak to, that is the Savings and Residential Finance Regulatory Fund. Could you explain to me what that fund is set up to do?”

“Gary, I can’t hear you. Can you just speak into the mike, please?”

“How much is currently in that fund?”

“Okay. How much are we taking from the fund?”

“All right. Now I’d like for you to just stand with me for a second. Back in 2004 a lawsuit was filed in the Sangamon County Courthouse; the plaintiffs were the Illinois Credit Union League, the Illinois League of Financial Institutions, the Community Banker’s Association of Illinois, the Illinois Mortgage Broker’s Association and the Illinois Association of Mortgage Brokers. The defendants 09400127.doc 161  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 were John Filan, the Budget Director, Fernando Grillo, the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, Michael Rumman, Director of CMS, Judy Baar Topinka, Dan Hynes, and Rod Blagojevich. And that lawsuit was to challenge the action of the Governor’s Office from raiding money from that fund, specifically the… one of many funds. One of them was the Residential Finance Regulatory Fund. Now in March 11th of 2005, Judge Leo Zappa from the Circuit Court in Sangamon County issued an injunction prohibiting State Government from removing any money from that specific fund. The…”

“The Savings and Residential Financial Regulatory Fund. How do we… what… under what authority can we go above this court when there is a sitting court injunction against the State of Illinois for that specific fund, what authority can we… do we have to violate that court order?”

“Well, let me… I’m just going to read this into the record. I would disagree with your analysis and the fact is we have Constitutional Officers, the Budget Director and the Governor, are named as defendants. But here’s what the order says, that the defendants are enjoined and shall refrain from and those in active concert with or participating with them are hereby restrained and enjoined from transferring any moneys from the Credit Union Fund, the Savings and Residential Financial Regulatory Fund and the other funds. And also that John Filan, Director of the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget and Rod Blagojevich, the Governor, are hereby enjoined from transferring, reallocating or spending funds collected pursuant to the… a number of those other acts, but also specifically the Residential Mortgage… Residential Financial Regulatory Fund. This court has ordered the Governor from not moving any of those moneys. Now if we’re gonna pass this Bill, it’s gonna go over to the Senate, the Governor’s going to sign that Bill. Trust me, one of these people who is a plaintiff is gonna go back to that court and seek another injunction to keep that money… that Bill from actually having any type of effect. What is the… do you have a response to that? Is this…”

“All right. Well, I’m going to speak to the Bill. Now I have a serious problem with this and I think the points I’ve just raised. But the fact is, because it didn’t happen last year, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing. What we’re doing is we’re telling the Circuit Court of Sangamon County, another branch of the government, that the heck with your orders despite what they’ve already ruled. This is a standing order from 2005 that prohibits the State Government from sweeping this specific fund, and the fact is we’re doing just that… doing just the opposite. When you violate a court order it’s called contempt of court, so for those of you who are voting for this you know I hope you have a good conscience and think about what you’re voting about.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to question the Gentleman about his Bill. Will he yield?”

“Mr… Representative Hannig, on page 209 of this Bill there’s an item there called the CTA Pension Intercept, which appears to be a means of requiring the CTA pension to become healthy in 50 years. What will that actually cost us in the way of dollars?”

“Okay, then let me ask you this. If the CTA at some point in the future decides not to fund their pension system and use it for operations or other means, what would the impact to the taxpayers of the State of Illinois be?”

“But my question is what if they don’t meet this requirement?”

“My question is what if they don’t meet that requirement?”

“Well how much money in this budget is going directly to the CTA in addition to what was appropriated last year?”

“Okay. It says here that this is gonna be a pension change that requires a minimum funding target of 90 percent to be reached in 50 years. Is that correct?”

“Okay. Now yesterday we heard a lot of debate about how it was the Republicans that really started the pension raiding years ago under Thompson and then in Edgar. And under the Edgar administration he proposed a 50-year solution to getting the pension funds, all pension funds in the state up to 90 percent. And yesterday we heard how that was a bad thing, but today we’re hearing from you that that is a good thing, correct?”

“I didn’t hear you, what?”

“Well, we think it was a good idea too, but last year you made another Bill that took $2 billion out of that plan and called it a mid course correction.”

“So we’re in agreement then that the 50-year plan in ’94 was a good plan and the 50-year plan in the CTA, in your opinion, is a good plan to restore the pension system to the point it should be?”

“Okay, one other question, Representative. Some time ago the General Assembly approved a permissive action to allow the Chicago Teacher’s Union, which was then nearly a hundred percent funded in its pension plan, to use some of those dollars to be provided for medical costs to the retirees, and in that there was a caveat that said should the plan ever fall under 90 percent that the General Assembly would make up the difference between the shortfall. Is that correct?”

“Okay. In this budget is there money going directly to the City of Chicago’s teacher’s plan to bring them in compliance with that rule?”

“Ten point two million to more or less make the Chicago Teacher’s Union whole. To the Bill, Mr. Speaker.”

“I can’t believe that we would ignore the downstate Teacher’s Pension Fund like we are and the State Employee’s Retirement Fund like we are and the state universities systems like we are. But we are more concerned about the pension systems in the City of Chicago. We are even taking money that we’ve taken out of the other pension plans and shifting it to the Chicago Teacher’s Union plan. Now I think that’s wrong. I think we ought to have the same commitment to all of the… all of the insurance… retirement plans in the state the same. I can’t believe that a downstate Representative or a suburban Representative would stand by and watch this. It’s why I voted against the budget. It’s mortgaging the future of our state at the expense of the pension systems that it’s making one of the pension systems very healthy and that’s wrong.”

“Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, in one of the proposed sweeps is the Coal Mining Regulatory Fund. What exactly is that used for, Gary?”

“Okay, and then what is that… what is that money… obviously we don’t just receive and record the fees, we do something with that fund. What is it that that fund is used for?”

“To… to record more of them?”

“Okay. In your description you said it’s used to record the…”

“So we charge them a fee to record it… so that we can just record it?”

“Okay, regulatory laws. It could be safety rules; it could be those type things as well?”

“Okay. And how much… how much was taken from that fund and where are we at as far as balance is concerned?”

“Okay, I just saw that on there. I really didn’t know what it was. Thank you for enlightening me with that. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, would you please explain the changes in the fund transfer for the 718 fund as it is finally going through, and is this the only place where we’re seeing any language authorizing that?”

“Yes, this is the only place we’re going to see the proposed changes, and then would you explain what they actually are because in the last several weeks I’ve seen three or four different proposals.”

“All right. There was some question in how additional moneys would be spent and how this split would be. At one 09400127.doc 171  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 point so much would go to general revenue, so much would go back to providers, so much would go to the department. My understanding is that in the additional way the moneys will be split, the understanding is that additional moneys will go to providers?”

“Okay. You’re creating the Pension Stabilization Fund, which was a big object of debate. How much money do you actually think will be in that fund?”

“Did that Bill pass the Senate?”

“I’m sorry, no. The Pension Stabilization Fund that created that, did it pass in the Senate?”

“All right, and does anything in that Bill dissolve the obligation of returning the money that was borrowed from the Rainy Day Fund by the end of the year to the current Rainy Day Fund?”

“There’s an Efficiencies Initiative Revolving Fund having to do with CMS. There has been a big controversy and much discussion in Human Service Appropriations about 09400127.doc 172  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 efficiencies of great amounts of money charged to human service agencies that they had to pay. What is in the initiative… Efficiency Initiatives Revolving Fund and what are you doing with that money? It looks in my analysis here; something’s going to facilities management. Could you explain the Efficiency Initiatives Revolving Fund, since efficiency initiatives have been quite controversial with CMS?”

“There have been some astronomical amounts in the last 3 or 4 years that have been charged to human service agencies for these efficiency initiatives which were always very hard to explain. It seems to almost be, in some instances, just a slush fund of taking money out of human service agencies. I think that’s really inappropriate. Tobacco Settlement Recovery Fund; it’s a transfer in of 80 million from GRF to later be retransferred back to GRF at the request of the Governor. Is that the 80 million that is going to cover payments to physicians?” 09400127.doc 173  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Is the Budget Stabilization Fund also part of the Bill that created the Pension Stabilization Fund?”

“I see. Okay. Do you have a transfer from funds for the sale of the ISAP loan portfolio from the Student Loan Operating Fund to GRF? The maximum amount that can be transferred is 38 million. Is that what the anticipation of the sale is going to bring or are we just selling a certain portion of it, and aren’t you anticipating something that has not been done, and doesn’t that need some approval?”

“Do you have a transfer from the Hospital Provider Fund? Well, let’s go back to the last one. Is that being set up just to anticipate the sale of that portfolio?”

“All right. Some of the funds that you’re sweeping, that you’re anticipating putting money in to take are not actually there yet, but yet you’re basing your revenue assumption that we’re going to do all of that in order to make your budget supposedly be a balanced budget?”

“Right. But you’re using it as a basis for money that’s not there yet and hasn’t been approved yet and hasn’t been done yet.”

“Okay, but you’re still going back to the original part of it. You’re basing your budget assumptions on these Budget Implementation Acts on moneys that aren’t there yet.”

“There’s a transfer from the Hospital Provider Fund and the Health and Human Services Medicaid Trust Fund to 09400127.doc 175  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 GRF. There’s a change in that because the current law sunsets at the end of June. Is this changing the sunset automatically till the end of June ’07?”

“All right and is that from the hospital tax?”

“All right, but you may not change it in this Bill but you’re trying to change it in another Bill, so… That’s pretty much my sum total of this. I think this Bill is based on a lot of suppositions that have not happened yet and may not happen. It’s a nice way to put a budget together, but it’s got a lot of false premises in it that I think make it really difficult to vote for.”

“Yeah, some years they’re better than others.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, just a clarification for myself. At one time in the budget process, the Fire Prevention Fund and the Firefighter Memorial Fund were on your list. Have both of these been taken out of any sweep or administrative chargeback or any use of funds?” 09400127.doc 176  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Right. I appreciate that. That was the way it appeared to me because a list I’d seen earlier, they were on the sweep list. So, I appreciate them being taken out and all persons responsible. We passed legislation protecting those two funds prior. I know one of the pieces of legislation to prevent a sweep of the fund was by Representative Joyce. I think there was a second piece of legislation. Is there anything in the budget implementation, the budget process, anything we’re doing with the budget that would remove that legislation or reverse it or void it, that prior action we took protecting those funds?”

“There is now?”

“That protection remains in place.”

“Because at one time I thought there was some indication that it was going to say superseding any prior law. So those protected funds for fire are still there?”

“Okay. Just three more quick questions. I don’t believe anyone had asked on these. I… they do impact, of course across the state. One of the sweeps is a Grade Crossing Protection Fund.”

“Can you tell me what that fund is used for?”

“Okay. At one time there was quite a backlog of crossings, of communities that applied. Do you know if we’re current on applications to upgrade railroad crossings?”

“Because I mean I would hope we aren’t delaying the upgrade of crossings. At one time there was quite a backlog and that’s just…”

“Okay. Because if one is, you know, a dangerous crossing, there have been incidents there and they’ve applied for funding, I think we would all want to get that upgrade as soon as possible, not be doing something.”

“Another fund is the IPTIP Fund, which I believe is Illinois Public Treasurers Investment Pool. Is that correct?”

“It’s fund #0195 on my list.”

“Yeah, it’s listed as IPTIP, Illinois Public Treasurers Investment Pool. Is that the correct…”

“Right. We’re talking about public funds of local government. I was a county treasurer before I was elected to the House and I used the Illinois Public Treasurer Investment Pool. It would appear to me if we sweep this fund we’re taking funds that could have gone to local government. Is that correct or am I in error?”

“Funds that would be earned by the Illinois Public Treasurer’s Investment Pool, it just would seem to me that that would collectively belong to the units of local government that each of us represents back in our counties or townships or cities or villages, and we certainly want them to get all the funds that they’re entitled to. You know, a few years ago there was a court case where county treasurers when they collected taxes, property taxes, that when they held those funds prior to distribution to local taxing bodies, schools, et cetera, they would earn interest on it but the interest did not belong to the county, it belonged to the taxing bodies. It would seem this would be in the same realm where the state is holding this money helping local government earn more money, investment pooled to help them get a better rate, and yet, we want to make sure that they’re getting their share. And I just… I would certainly be concerned and would be in opposition if we’re 09400127.doc 180  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 taking funds that really would seem like they should be going to local government.”

“Certainly a significant amount for a local government. One final fund that I wanted to ask about and it’s… I see it as #0397, Trauma Center Fund. And I believe it’s a sweep of at least 5 million. Is that correct?”

“So what… what is that to go for? We’re taking money from a Trauma Center Fund. I think almost everyone in here represents communities that have trauma centers. They’re experiencing difficulty in certainly staffing and financing and keeping up with technology. Five million would be a significant amount towards trauma centers. Can you explain what…”

“And at what point would that occur? And where would that money come from?”

“Thank you, Representative. I appreciate your direct answers. It does raise a concern, though, for me, that we’re potentially taking money that might be going to our local trauma centers. It might be going to local government and might slow the process of upgrading railroad crossings. If I have a mis… if I’m misunderstanding, you know, feel free to… I hope you would correct me. But I think we all want as much funding for those very worthy projects as possible. So thank you, but that’s certainly some concerns I have on this sweep. Thank you.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Would the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, it was a year ago that I stood up on the floor and I’m not an attorney, I listened to Representative Durkin very closely. There is a court injunction that prohibits the transfer of any funds from various financial institutions. It’s my understanding that that injunction still stands. Is that correct?”

“Well, let me ask… let me ask you a basic question of law. Is there a severability… do you have any severability language in this sweep Bill?”

“Again, in talking with my colleague, Representative Durkin, it does not appear that there is any severability language. Now there was speculation in the press a year ago, what if the courts rule that because they have already and I’m quoting, enjoined Mr. Filan, Mr. Blagojevich, ta da da da da da are hereby enjoined from transferring, reallocating or spending funds collected pursuant to the Illinois Credit Union Act, the Savings Bank Act, the Illinois Banking Act, the Illinois Savings and Loan Act of 1985, and the Residential Mortgage License Act of 1987, by virtue of the authority granted them under 30ILCS105/8h and 8g. Now do you have… have you discussed with the Governor what your plan is if the court not only enjoins those funds but says, issues a ruling that these fund transfers are not constitutional in toto.”

“Well, I guess that’s why we have a court system and we’ll find out. As I said last year, I’m not putting my vote, going home and telling people in my district that I am cavalier about a court injunction. I expect my children to follow the law, I expect my grandchildren to follow the law. My late mother and my father have always raised me to follow the law. And so, as you did last year, you’re asking me to vote on something that I think the courts have said you will not do this. We are enjoining you from doing it. And it’s my understanding that those funds had better be held in escrow. But I, you know, that’s why we have a court system, but I’m not going to in any way, shape or form be arrogant or ignore what a court has said because I think it has dire consequences down the road depending on what the courts decide to do. Let me just ask you a few questions about some of the fund transfers that I honestly don’t understand. A 0024… excuse me, 0363, the Department of Business Services Special Operations Fund. What is that?”

“Would that fund be able to be used for staffing purposes to get titles and other things that people ask the Secretary 09400127.doc 184  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 of State? Would that money be available to hire staff to expedite some of those things?”

“Okay.”

“All right. Look, Representative, if you’d look on that line item and follow it across, you’re transferring 7.6 million, cash balance 4.4 million, and then in the right hand column, in my accounting courses that I took years ago, with the parenthesis that means that… meant when I took accounting 101 and 102, that that becomes a negative balance. Is that… is that correct? Is that… am I interpreting that correctly?”

“Well, set my mind at ease. When there is a parenthesis around a number, in general accounting practice that means that number is a negative number. It means you’ve taken more money from the account than there is. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Representative. This is on our chart; you may not have that.”

“It simply shows that there under the balance transfer our staff has $3.1 million in parenthesis, which would indicate to me that that fund has not only been swept, it has been eliminated. In fact, you’re transferring more money than the fund had in it. But you know…”

“…hey, what’s a few million dollars among friends, right?”

“Well, maybe he gave you that line item because he knew it didn’t have enough money in it to meet what you were trying to do. But again, time will tell. All right. Down the page at 0907, the Health Insurance Reserve Fund sweeping $21 million out of that fund. You and I have been here long enough to know that we get in trouble on that fund every year. Last year we had state employees who were being literally dunned by health care providers because we didn’t have enough money in the Health Care Fund to pay claims. Why would we want to sweep that fund? It seems like we never do a very good job of budgeting. And I’m not being critical, it just seems like that’s a hard item to budget and if you make a mistake or God forbid we get an avian flu that would ravage not only state employees but people in the State of Illinois, that obviously we’re not going to have enough money in this fund and it’s there to pay unexpected claims.” 09400127.doc 186  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“All right.”

“That’s a good answer, Gary, and you’re right. I’m not… I don’t want to insinuate in any way that we wouldn’t. And we may have to. We’ve done it before. Fund #278, now this one really worries me because those of you who have been in office more than a few years, if your constituents do not get their income tax refund in a reasonable period of time, now reasonable is subject to debate. I have some constituents who think three weeks should be a turnaround time. Others will say that it should be five, six whatever. But in 0278, the Income Tax Refund Fund that we set up not too many years ago because you were here when we ran out of money and couldn’t pay income tax refunds, and I know I’m sure your constituents and I know mine at the time were livid that they were having to wait three, four, five, six, seven months to get their income tax refund. Why in the world would we want to go back to those days and sweep $44 million from that fund?”

“All right. I’ve gone through three tourism… tourism, easy for me to say. You know, you just can’t buy these things on eBay. It doesn’t work. I found three tourism funds with the help of staff that takes $7,070,000 out of the International Tourism Fund and other var… tourism funds and that makes no sense to me. We spend over $200 million to open the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, which is absolutely fantastic, and I think the first museum, presidential museum in history that to approach a million visitors or whatever it was, I can’t remember the exact number, and we are trying to encourage people to visit Illinois and traverse the Lincoln Trail, finding Abraham Lincoln. Now when we’ve invested so much money in our Lincoln heritage, again, and I know the answer, we could put more money back in if we need to, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me to take… to rob tourism funds when we are doing everything possible to increase tourism not only in Chicago, a world class city, but to get them to come down from Chicago and visit the various Lincoln sites in Illinois. And I won’t go on, but let me just… let me just mention one more. 0040, the State Parks Fund, we’re transferring $1,046,000 out of the State Parks Fund. I’m blessed with more acres of park land in my home County of Vermilion per capita than any county in the State of Illinois. And it’s something that we’re very proud of but what I’m not proud of, are the number of cuts that have been made to DNR. I got many complaints last year. I have three 09400127.doc 188  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 people trying to take care of over 10 thousand acres of state recreation and park land. We have a campground that does land office business in the summer. Years ago and you helped, Representative, we worked in a bipartisan way. We did a complete upgrade at Kickapoo State Park; new electrical facilities, new water facilities, hot showers in the campground. Now we don’t have staff to clean them and so often they’re locked and people certainly aren’t bashful about calling my office to complain. We do… employees do the best they can. But again, to sweep a fund when we have literally skeleton staff manning some of our state historic sites and state parks makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Let me, in closing, just ask you one question and I think Representative Eddy asked the same question. If some of these funds like the Real Estate Administration Fund have so much money in them that we transfer $5 million out, wouldn’t it seem more prudent to lower the fees? I’m a licensed real estate salesman. If I’m paying so much more for my license than is necessary to regulate that profession then why don’t we in the interest of transparency and truthfulness in government, why don’t we lower the fee?”

“Well, if you can sweep $5 million out of the Real Estate Administration Fund, leaving a balance of $5 million, I don’t think we have to worry about the fee being too low. 09400127.doc 189  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 In other words, of the hundreds of professions that we license… Mr. Speaker, to the Bill. If… you know, if you’re a real estate person, a lawyer, a teacher, a doctor or cosmetologist, barber, whatever, you pay a fee for the license that you use to practice your profession. And that fee is suppose to be used to run the Department of Professional Regulation, to hire inspectors to go out and see that you are doing what you’re suppose to be doing to investigate complaints. If you’re absconding with an escrow account, somebody needs to come out and put a stop to that. Something’s wrong here. We are using licensure fees as an income producing procedure and that’s not the purpose of a professional license or fee. That fee is to make them self- sufficient, hiring enough staff to make sure professions are… and licensed individuals are doing what they say they’re doing. And I don’t want to get my barber, we call them barbers downstate. You call them hair stylists up north. He told me he has not seen an inspector in his shop in 15 years. And he asked me, he said, why should I renew the license? And the only… the only thing I could think to tell him is ‘cause we need the money. But he… I think he raised a good point. He pays his fee, he puts his license on display and he hasn’t seen an inspector in his place of business in 15 years. I assume he’s doing things right. Although I looked in the mirror yesterday and I’m not so sure. When all is said and done, and I appreciate your indulgence and I appreciate the attention, we can’t continue down this path. Fund sweeps will eventually wipe out balances or in some cases will make the profession not 09400127.doc 190  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 sustainable and so then we’ll have to turn around and either raise the license fee, heaven forbid, or transfer some of this money back into the intended purpose. I think that’s why the courts are interested in this. You pay a fee for your license for a specific purpose that’s embodied in statute and then we come along and say, well, that’s wonderful but the fund has a little more money in it than necessary so we’re going to take some of the money. And I know that people have called each and every one of us in this chamber and said wait a minute, what’s this all about? I mean, why don’t you give me a break on the fee or why don’t you hire more inspectors to police the industry? We’re using this as a backdoor way of raising taxes. Now it’s not a tax that everybody pays, but if you’re in one of these licensed categories and we’re raiding your fund and we raised… remember 3 years ago we raised the fees on a lot of those licenses, it’s a backdoor tax increase. I don’t think that’s the way we ought to do business. It’s not the way we used to do business. But when all of this runs its course, and it will in another year or two, what have we gained? A temporary fix is not going to solve the fiscal problems of the State of Illinois. We have some systemic problems that we are not willing to address and so we come up with more gimmicks than… it’s like going to a circus and watching the clowns. They have more gimmicks that hold your attention, to entertain your children and grandchildren, and at the end of the day you feel good, you’ve been entertained, but nothing’s really changed. I don’t find this entertaining at all. I find this, as someone said earlier, driving very 09400127.doc 191  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 close to the cliff, stopping the car, getting out and looking and hope you’re not going to fall over. But sooner or later this will collapse within… you know, of its own weight. We won’t have the fund sweeps, we won’t have some of the gimmicks we’re using and we’re still going to be faced with massive debt. So, as Representative Durkin said earlier, this… this is going to pass. It doesn’t make any difference what anybody says on the floor of this House. And I don’t use the word deal in a pejorative manner, but the deal has been cut. Each of you in your own way feels comfortable with what has transpired. Some of us are not as comfortable with what has transpired, but everything will pass. But the public, in the next 10 days, will begin to find out what’s in here, how we did it and where the money’s going and then each of us, to the best of our ability, will have to answer the questions that we are going to get and that we deserve to get. How did this happen? Why did this happen? And who made this happen and what was your role in it? Some of those questions aren’t easy to answer and we put ourselves in that position.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker and Ladies and Gentlemen of the House. I’d like to draw your attention to the Speaker’s Gallery. It’s an honor for me to introduce Miss Ceitlyn Glenn. She’s the Miss Teen Illinois for this year. She’s from Effingham in my district. She’s 17 years old and a junior at Effingham High School, and she will be competing for Miss Teen U.S.A. this August. You can vote online and she’d certainly appreciate everybody’s support. Welcome to Springfield.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I have filed a Motion and it’s been carried on the Calendar for two days. At this time, under Rule 18(g), I move for the discharge of House Bill 5785 from the House Rules Committee. I… you all know what this Bill is. You all know the calls you’re getting from your constituents. The State of Illinois can’t do a great deal on gasoline prices, but what we can do we should do. And what this Bill does is to eliminate the state sales tax on motor fuel from May 15th until September 15th. The summer driving period, we could very well see gasoline approaching $4 a gallon. At 6.25 percent, if it gets to be that high, I think the money should go to the pockets of working men and women and working families who are having difficulty in commuting to work. Students are having difficulty commuting to school. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the difference, but I certainly have, in the cost of gasoline just to come over to Springfield. It is having a ripple effect on our entire economy. It doesn’t do one bit of good for the Governor of this state to be silent on this issue. In fact, the only thing he’s said is that it’s George Bush’s fault. Well, fine, whatever you want to say is okay with me, but that doesn’t solve the problem. It doesn’t do one thing to give working men and women relief from what may very well be record high gasoline prices in the summer driving period. That’s all the Bill does. It’s simple, it’s straightforward. We did this in 2000. And a good friend of mine on the other side of aisle, the last 09400127.doc 197  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 time we debated this said, ah, you know, it was a bunch of baloney. It didn’t save any money. ‘Ec & Fisc’ estimated, when we did this in 2000 and gas prices were no where near as high then as they are now, ‘Ec and Fisc’ gave us a report and you all have it and we got it too, that the consumers saved $160 million by our action. They would save, I would suggest, much more today. And by the way, please don’t tell me that sales tax on gasoline goes to the Road Fund and oh my goodness we can’t afford it. Sales tax on gasoline goes to the General Revenue Fund. It is expected that by the end of this fiscal year we will take in 200 million more dollars than we anticipated. I think giving working families a break, I think the state’s still going to come out ahead on this deal. That’s what the Bill does. I think it’s a vital Bill, needed and necessary. I don’t do this in any partisan way, but I’ve tried in other Bills to address some kind of relief for people throughout the State of Illinois and particularly in my district. I would ask that the Bill be released from Rules.”

“Mr. Speaker, in the interest of time and trying to be as civil as possible I will not ask that the Chair be overruled. I will just say this to all of us in this chamber, I think many of you share my concern and many of you share my disappointment that we can’t do this. It’s one 09400127.doc 198  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 of the few things we could do directly to give people in our district some modest relief from record high gas prices. It isn’t the total answer and I understand it’s a very complicated program, but I fail to understand how people who spend all of the campaign season talking about what they do and how much they love working men and women, when given an opportunity that would give honest to God relief to working men and women, you turn your back on them. I won’t move to overrule the Chair, that’s an exercise in pure futility. But shame on you and some of you are going to hear from your constituents.”

“I rise to a point of personal privilege. We just recognized the birthday over on your side, there’s another birthday I’d like to tell you about. Yesterday, one of our colleagues became a grandfather again, Representative Sid Mathias. His son in Israel had a granddaughter and he’s headed over there. Congratulations to Grandpa Sid Mathias.” 09400127.doc 199  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Will the Lady yield?”

“So there’s no opposition, if I understand, to this Bill directly, to shortening the tax loss carried forward to 3 years?”

“So the tax loss carried forward remains 12 years?”

“I thought I saw something in a ‘bimp’ Bill that shortened that to 3.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, this is a Budget Implementation Bill on the revenue… on the revenue side, correct?”

“All right. Now, I’m… I’m looking at… at my analysis and it says, and I quote, ‘Amends the Illinois Income Tax Code to provide that any net loss claimed by a business on or after December 31, 2002, must be reported to the Department of Revenue within 3 years and all net loss claims may be subject to an audit.’ Now, am I to surmise from that that the carry forward provision has not changed in the original bill?” 09400127.doc 202  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Okay. All right. And then how many… do you have any idea how many landfills in the United… how many landfills in the State of Illinois actually tap into methane gas? I have a very large… the reason I ask, I have a very large landfill in my district and they do not.”

“All right. Yeah, yeah, I understand. And then if… if one is participating and they do decide to sell methane gas to a distributor, then who gets the tax credit, the company, the distributor who owns the pipeline or the landfill who sells the methane gas?”

“Okay. Thank you very much.”

“Thank you very much. As always, Representative Currie, your answers are generally always succinct and to the point, I appreciate that. Wish you a very happy birthday.”

“Well, you know, I… you’re not old enough for me to send you an invitation to AARP yet, but I thought that would be your birthday present in a few years. Yeah, where’s the cake by the way?”

“We’ll… we’ll… we’ll sweep something. We’ll sweep the Bakers Regulatory Fund. Somebody get that cake up here. Mr. Speaker, Ladies and Gentlemen of the House, to the Bill. This is a straightforward Bill, it’s a tax Bill. One can say that it isn’t a tax increase or it’s a tax decrease or it’s neutral or whatever. It isn’t what the Governor… I guess it’s a good news, bad news sort of thing. It’s nowhere near what the Governor requested that… that those evil, money grubbing businesses in the State of Illinois should pay. Those… doggone those businesses. Oh wait a minute, they hire our constituents. They give constituents jobs. They pay a lot of taxes. We’ve lost more than 100 thousand manufacturing jobs in the last 4 years. Twenty thousand trucking jobs since we passed the onerous commercial distribution fee. Well, you know what? Representative, I would like to vote for this Bill. It’s relatively straightforward. But, I’m not going to participate in a process that builds a budget on some minor revenue enhancements, that’s what we call tax increases now, so that we can prop up a budget based on toothpicks and marshmallows. And when you eat the marshmallow then the foundation will crumble. Debt, borrowing and to borrow a phrase in honor of your birthday, let those pensioners eat 09400127.doc 204  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 cake. We’ll get around to that pension system. Why in 50 more years, Bill, you’ll see we’ll have met that goal that we passed in 1995. Well, in 50 more years I’ll be 133 years old. So, I won’t be here to see if you met your goal. But, I sure hope you do, but I don’t think you’re on a path to do it. And I’m not gonna vote ‘yes’ for this Bill.”

“Yes, Mr. Speaker, with your indulgence. Math was not my strong suit in elementary, high school or college. In 50 more years, I’ll be 113, not 133. But, either way… regardless of my fuzzy math… I’ve been around the Governor too long, fuzzy math. You know, two and two is five, three and four is four, five and five is eleven. But, either way I’ve got a hunch that I won’t be here in 50 more years. I hope you make that goal ‘cause I know a lot of young teachers are counting on you making that pension goal. But, we’ll see, you know, leave a message on my grave if you would when… when it happens. I’d like to… I’d like to see it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative Currie, on the part that allows the director of the Department of Healthcare and Family Services to be the sole negotiator of what will now be in the hospital provider tax, how can you say there’s no opposition when we have been discussing a Bill for several weeks both as a part of the CON Bill and then asked to be separated it out? What legislative oversight is left if you put this in the Budget Implementation Act for this Body, depending on what the negotiation, if it is successful, provides?”

“I think it differs a great deal. Last year when this legislation was negotiated at the end of Session there was a big disagreement over the fact that the director wanted unlimited authority to negotiate without any legislative oversight. That was denied him in the legislation that was passed by this Body. And now, you want to change that in a Budget Implementation Act. I would also suggest to you that the hospitals are no longer in any position to argue with him since because we combined the agencies so that they now have oversight on every different amount of money that is given as a fee whether it be for what hospitals are paid under the Illinois Employees Health Insurance, what Illinois hospitals are paid for Medicaid, what legislation is trying to be pushed through the General Assembly which is punitive to hospitals. I think they find themselves in a very difficult position here. They do have to come to JCAR, is that my understanding?”

“So, what kind of authority would JCAR have… what would it take for JCAR to dispute any emergency rulemaking 09400127.doc 209  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 that they would make? And wouldn’t the emergency rulemaking allow them to move forward almost immediately no matter what JCAR does?”

“Under the emergency rulemaking process there is no time for a comment period like there is under a regular rulemaking process. So, JCAR could be told that…”

“…they’re going to come for emergency rule without there even being a time for a comment?”

“Oh, I think if you go back and you look a book under the emergency rulemaking there’s not the same period of comment to make a comment on that.”

“Therefore, when you go before JCAR, a Hospital Association cannot testify. They can only discuss through the members of JCAR as they are lobbied or as far as their rules go. I think this is a very big advocation of rules 09400127.doc 210  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 for us to give away our legislative oversight on things like this through a ‘bimp’ Bill to the director of an agency where we were only allowed to hear an hour and a half of testimony on their $16 billion budget, which they certainly went along with. I really find this to be a really scary thing to do in this budget Bill. To the Bill. The Department of Healthcare and Family Services does not want oversight on anything. They wanted last year to be able go in and negotiate without this. This year, when we wanted to put together an oversight committee on All Kids Program they totally sabotaged it and said that they did not want any oversight, they were perfectly happy to do that. When we asked for a longer discussion on the Human Service Budget in their area for that Department of Healthcare and Family Services, we have been allocated including the time and the discussion of the budget yesterday one and one half hours on a $16 billion budget. Hospitals in my area, my… one of my particular hospitals will pay the single largest tax of anyone under the current proposal. And the Federal Government is looking for more losers. So, this could definitely change so that others hospitals were penalized. In legislation that was sponsored earlier that was very punitive to hospitals, there was absolutely no provision for any of these hospitals who sacrificed their own ability to help a whole system turn out better and to help the state to have any consequences or any kind of reimbursement even in an issue because they’re putting out such huge taxes to give the state additional Medicaid money and to give their hospital system additional advantages to help the people 09400127.doc 211  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 that they represent. What’s happening to hospitals in Illinois is a really interesting thing driven both by unions and people who are pandering to them. To allow this to go through in this Budget Bill, to give them unprecedented authority and to give up your legislative oversight on something that is so very, very important is unconscionable. I think it is foolish for the Legislature to give this away. Remember, we are three branches of government here. Why are we giving everything away to the Executive Branch. This is totally foolish. This is a really bad thing to do. How much would it take for us to come down for one day and pass this? If they even get it. I was told the other day in a very brief conversation with the director that, of course, Denny Hastert wanted him to have this kind of oversight. I doubt that seriously. I don’t think this is a good thing to do, even though I’m on JCAR which we’ll watch very carefully what happens here. This is a really bad precedent for us to set to give our way… legislative oversight to the Executive Branch that doesn’t even want you to examine their budget for more than an hour and a half.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, you’ve mentioned in your remarks when you opened that this included the freeze on… the Medicaid freeze for nursing homes, their rate freeze, is that correct?”

“Yes. And you said that, you do that every year. And every year we go on and we have more and more nursing homes closing. So, why do we… why do we freeze these rates every year?”

“Well, I can understand maybe if the Nursing Home Association supported this proposal, but there are individual nursing homes within the state, I believe, that would very much like to see some additional rate increases. The one that I’m most familiar with has a reimbursement rate of about $73 a day. Now, I stay in a hotel down here that I get the state rate and I pay about $70 a night on the state rate basis and I get a room with two beds and a clean bathroom. When we’re paying $73 a day to this nursing home for a Medicaid patient, they’re not only providing the room, but they’re providing medical services, they’re providing nurse… skilled nursing services, they’re providing food and they’re providing 24 hour security. And I think that we do a disservice to many of our nursing homes, even though they’re getting a rate freeze as you mentioned in another part of the budget, I really think they we’re doing a disservice when we just automatically every year deny them any kind of a cost of living allowance or cost of living 09400127.doc 213  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 increase in their Medicaid rates because not every nursing home is at the same level. We know that they go from 50… or 70 dollars a day in my instance to over $100 a day in other instances. We also know that in the State of Illinois our reimbursement rates are about 49th in the nation. We certainly are lower than any of our neighboring states when it comes to reimbursement rates for the geriatric care of long-term patients in the nursing home industry and I… I seriously think that someday we need to step back and say rather than just do this on an automatic basis every year, let’s take a look at it and see if some nursing homes deserve a raise more than others. And I know the minimum data sets are gonna help this if we’ve got enough money in the budget. Thank you very much, Representative.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, very quickly a couple of questions. The addition of $170 to the foundation level, what does that do to the foundation level in relationship to the recommended level of funding from the Education Funding Advisory Board?”

“I think that’s an accurate statement. I think, however though, even with the additional 170 it falls about a thousand dollars short of the EFAB recommended level. And I understand the amount of money it might take to do that. I just want to remind the Body that the larger question and the larger issue here is how we’re going to address at some time or another the real problem and that’s the inequity that still exists and… and the underfunding that exists in some school districts. The… the foundation level is supposed to be the minimal state level that is afforded to each school district per pupil. And even with this increase we are woefully short of that amount. And without some type of infusion of revenue and a serious effort to bring revenue into this… this situation we’re probably going to continue to be short. The other issue that I want to point out regarding this, there… there’s nothing done with special education personnel reimbursement with this budget. Is there… there’s no… there’s no increase?”

“So, so we are… we are really operating under a 1988 certified personnel funding level for special education teachers? I… I think that’s an also… an issue at some point or another we’re gonna have to address. It takes funding and it’s something we’re gonna have to come together on. Do you know if there was any serious discussion of adding money to the special education line item to help with that problem?”

“Yeah, Representative Coulson has a Bill in that didn’t get out of Rules, suffered the same fate as many Bills. But, it does just that. What it does is it ties that amount to… to an increase over a period of years to try and bring it up to a level that, it was close to what 20 years later might require for certified teachers in special education or other types of aides. I certainly understand the issue, but I… I keep… I keep harping on it because it is an important one to school districts. It helps all districts in the state, not just districts in Chicago. We always get this argument, downstate versus suburbs versus the city. But, this is truly one area, Representative, that I believe that in the future if we get serious about we can get some real agreement in this Body, which would be a… as you know sometimes we’re able to do that and it makes it a lot easier. But, thank you very much for… for your indulgence and I appreciate the opportunity to make those points. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.” 09400127.doc 217  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Basically, what we have here are administrative chargebacks. We sometimes confuse this with the sweeps, but as I understand these, at least some of these have been the topic of court cases where the Circuit Courts have said that these were not allowed. And that’s what the Treasurer is 09400127.doc 219  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 basically saying, that as long as these court cases are still out there not finally adjudicated that we probably shouldn’t be… be taking this money because we would then have to replace it, probably with interest. Is that a… a fair statement of at least some of the funds that are in here?”

“Okay. But the… the same legal argument can be made for the other funds that are in this Bill. We’ve already had court cases that have resolved that the sweep was not legal. Therefore, if we do, excuse me, and I… I’ll get my terminology mixed, not the sweep but the chargeback, that the chargeback was not legal. If we do transfer this money we, I think, stand a great chance of having to later repay it into these funds. Is that… I mean can you… can you tell me where the logic is wrong in saying the courts have found that a chargeback is illegal in this fund and there’s another hundred funds? What is going to stop the courts from finding with another court case that the same… the same argument won’t hold sway? Now, I’m not an attorney so maybe that makes too much logic. You are an attorney, tell me where the logic’s wrong.”

“I don’t…”

“Well, setting aside those concerns, I think that is… that is one reason not to vote for the Bill as we do have some legal concerns, but you then say that we are trying to pay down our Medicaid backlog with these funds. Let me point out that what this is saying that is the Medicaid overrun the late payment cycle counts more than the $14 million coming out of the DCFS, Children Services. So, we’re taking this from Children Services that DCFS is providing for kids that are wards of the state that are in danger and transferring that money away and spending it in another rather than where the initial fund was set up. That… that’s one example of hundreds in here where I… I feel 09400127.doc 221  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 that we may be making a serious mistake. These funds were set up for specific purposes. The fees that… that provide the funds are charged to that industry or that group within our state that is concerned with that. They’re to be set aside and used for those purposes and now we say, you know what, you may not need it this year so we’re gonna… we’re gonna charge that back. I believe it’s an 8 percent charge each year to a different purpose than what it was originally for. Is that a fair statement? Maybe… that may be not the best question. I… I think it is a fair statement.”

“Well, I admit…”

“…I…”

“Were… were…”

“…were these funds specifically in that part of the legislation? Were they… they named?”

“Okay.”

“So, what we didn’t…”

“I guess what I’m saying is I probably made a mistake at that point because by having only the… the funds that were not going to be charged back, the only ones delineated, we didn’t realize some of the funds. I want to put on record that we are… we are shorting the Trauma Center Fund almost 1.3 million, the Firefighters Memorial Fund, Early Intervention Services lose over $3 million, Renewable Energy… I… it’s hundreds of funds in here that we think that the purpose of that fund is better served to retain this money rather than artificial 8 percent chargebacks so that we get it into GRF and people need to understand that’s all that we’re doing. It’s taking money that isn’t necessarily gonna be used in the next six months, putting it into GRF where it’s gone tomorrow.” 09400127.doc 223  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“In… in what way.”

“And where is it now?”

“Well, I… I’m willing to admit my mistake. I’d like you to join me in admitting that we probably made a mistake 2 years ago, these funds should have left… been left sacrosanct instead of raiding the money. So, I would urge opposition to this Bill. Thank you.” 09400127.doc 224  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Thank you, Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative Hoffman, yesterday I… I was looking this Bill over and if my math was correct I counted 173 different funds. And I just listened carefully to the debate between you and Mr. Winters and I… I’m little bit in a quandary because to me it appeared that… that this is an out and out sweep. And some of the ones that really jumped out at me and I… I’ve really gotten a lot of emails and calls, OSLAD is one in particular, Natural Area Acquisition, that’s the total between the two of 8 million. One that really hit me and one that… a colleague of mine on this side of the aisle had spoken so eloquently about in committee, 374 thousand from Veterans Rehabilitation. We’ve taken 200 thousand from the fairs, Ag Premiums 2 million. Representative Winters already talked about DCFS. We’ve got Alternative Fuels, 247 thousand. Early Intervention, three plus million. Department of Corrections, 1.6 million. I guess I could go on and on and it would do little good. But I… I truly don’t understand, Representative Hoffman, how… if this isn’t a sweep to get $235 million, please help me understand that. Because I… I don’t… I just don’t see it.”

“Maybe I did.”

“No.”

“Representative Hoffman, that may be true, but I… I stand here and assure you, Sir, if I would have known in any way, if there had been any paperwork or anything on our computers in front of us showing that we were taking $374 thousand from Veterans Rehabilitation, I can… and just use that one item, Sir. If I would have known that was in there I never in a million years would have voted for it. And… and I just… the only way it could have been in there would have been through some type of deception and I… I don’t want to believe that that happened, Sir.” 09400127.doc 226  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Yes, Sir.”

“I agree. Yes.”

“I did.”

“I don’t think Leader Cross slipped anything in there and I don’t think you did either, Representative Hoffman. But I can assure you that there isn’t a veteran in this Body that would have voted for taking money from Veterans Rehabilitation. That would be absolutely unconscionable. That isn’t a big amount of money in the overall scheme of things, but I think it makes the point. Representative Hoffman, I’m not gonna to take up a lot of time on this floor. All I know is having listened to the debate in… in committee the other day between you and Representative Stephens and… and seeing all the items that are on the computer and what I counted up yesterday, I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was just the grand scheme that I did, in fact, miss 3 years ago. I doubt that. I don’t think these items were spelled out at that time. Thank you, Sir.” 09400127.doc 227  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask a question. Representative Hoffman, will you yield?”

“I’d like to know where you got the title for this Bill, the Opportunity Fund Act? It always amazes me what’s showing up on the board, but that one is really beyond belief. Who’s opportunity?”

“You obviously didn’t think up that name.”

“Very interesting. I’m just gonna talk to this Bill and I’m not gonna…”

“…I’m not gonna ask anymore questions. As far as the vote in 2004, you know, when we’ve tried to go along with the Governor and he presented the fund sweeps and he presented it kind of on the basis that it would be a one- time thing that we would help him get through a bad time. And so, we went along with it and then he reneged on all his promises that he made in the following year and has continued to renege on them. And, you know, you don’t have to stay wed to an abuser that’s why there’s divorce. And so at some point we walk away from it. And the Governor’s mismanagement does not make an emergency for us. Better planning could have averted this. And to have providers or to call providers and tell us that they absolutely have to have this to pay their… have their bills paid is really unconscionable. They deserve to have their bills paid. 09400127.doc 228  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 They don’t need to have their arms twisted. But, I want to go to one really telling thing that happened this year. At the Thompson Center during the hearings on Human Service Appropriations I asked one of the Governor’s people there that was representing him from the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget what rationale there was in how they swept funds? And he said to me, ‘What do you mean rationale?’ And I said, ‘Well, when we decide how we’re gonna cut a budget or what we’re gonna do with a budget, we sit around the table with staff or with other people and we go, how will this impact the public? Can we put off buying the police cars ‘til next year? Can we take the money from community care services line, if they’re gonna help… help the elderly or hurt the elderly?’ And we make decisions based upon how they impact the public and what happens. And the gentleman from GOMB said to me, ‘There is no rationale.’ And I thought, that pretty much describes the fund sweeps in Illinois the last couple of years. There is no rationale. They sit there and they take whatever ‘til the Legislators come back and say, ‘you can’t do that because it’s gonna hurt somebody.’ And we throw enough of a fit if we have enough time to see it to stop that fund sweep. This is really a really bad, bad policy. Occasionally, you could see doing it once or twice, taking a fund if there was a lot of money. But, not con… over and over and over again when the main driver of this, the Governor’s Office of Budget and Management says there is no rationale on how they take the fund sweeps. Just think of that. No rationale for how 09400127.doc 229  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 they’re doing this, really intelligent. We’re not gonna vote for this Bill on this side I am sure.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. You know, in the overall scheme of things… and I voted against the original Bill, by the way. I voted for the extension. But in the overall scheme of things and the, you know, the mind can endure… the mind can only put up with what your rear end can endure and I think all of us are getting tired. But, I… I can’t help but think when I… when I went over awhile ago and said hello to Representative Patterson and welcomed him back, some of these arguments are… they’re not silly. People have… people feel strongly about the issue on both sides. But I think Representative Patterson’s health is a lot more important than me speaking for the next 30 minutes on something that I know is gonna pass. So, let me just say, very briefly and very quickly, I will resist any of you on your side of the aisle who will throw back at me a vote that I made in good faith in trying to get us through a very difficult budget year. Let’s not forget that this chargeback authority goes away at the end of the next fiscal year. We put a sunset clause on it so at the end of fiscal ’07 this chargeback authority will disappear unless you decide to extend it. And I think most of us have learned our lesson on this side of the aisle. We tried to help, we worked in a cooperative, coalition manner, we did some things that we thought would get us out of the difficulties we were in. And the difficulties have widened, the rancor has increased not decreased. And here we sit and argue 09400127.doc 230  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 about $235 million when we owe Medicaid providers almost $2 billion. That’s the equivalent of passing somebody on the street who’s hungry and you say, here have a cigarette. And you feel good about the offer. Two hundred and thirty-five million for past due Medicaid bills, I suppose one could argue is better than nothing, but not much. Next year, Mr. Speaker, I hope you will involve us in the process. I look forward to that. I always enjoy working with you; I certainly enjoy working with Representative Hoffman. But this Bill is going to pass regardless of my feelings about some of the transfers. I won’t belabor the point. Let’s vote on it. Let’s let Representative Patterson get the rest that he needs. Let’s get on with the business of the House.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, in committee last week when we… yeah, last week we discussed this, there was a few questions you were unable to answer that I asked. Are you prepared to answer those now? Do you remember those questions?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Are you ready?”

“All right. Since I was not here 2 years ago to vote on this, my question to you back then was, how much was 09400127.doc 231  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 Medicaid owed 2 years ago? Okay. We’re not ready for that one.”

“He does that. Okay. How much do we owe Medicaid now?”

“Okay. Well, let’s say the providers then. Is it about 1.8 I think we came up… that’s been in discussion all day today?”

“1.8 billion dollars?”

“Well, let’s move on then. I believe the next question I asked you was that we’re taking the 234 million to get 500 million back, correct?”

“Okay. Well, the sweep says 234; it’s 250 to get 500 back?”

“Is what you’re saying? Okay.”

“Okay. Are we applying the whole 500 million then to the providers?”

“All 500 million?”

“Okay. ‘Cause I… ours states 250 million would go to those three and then 250 goes into GRF?”

“So, all 500 will… million will…”

“…go to Medicaid? Okay then. I think the next question I’d asked you then, are we gonna pay that 500 million all at once to the providers?”

“That’s now. Did we get the question answered for 2 years ago? Still working on that one. Okay.”

“Okay. Is all 500 million then gonna be applied to the providers now?”

“So, as I asked before, does that go… once you get the 500 million does it all go directly out then to the providers?”

“By 23 days? And the average I believe you said was at the time 75 days now?” 09400127.doc 233  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Okay. That’s, I think, what we discussed the other day. When the 500 million is gone, do we lose the 23 days saved?”

“On an average? Because we heard in testimony before, it’s 90 days, 100 days, 120 days.”

“Okay.”

“So, for FY ’07 you’re saying we’re gonna drop 23 days for the whole year?”

“So, we have roughly you’re saying 100… a 1.7 billion we owe providers, we’re gonna give ‘em the 500 million now to lower it to about 1.2 billion we owe. That’s for the past year, correct?”

“Okay. And the last question that I didn’t get answered the other day was, are we gonna… since I guess we’re paying all this money to the providers, I guess we won’t be putting the 234 million back in that we’re sweeping out?”

“I’m sorry, chargeback.”

“It would just sit there without being used at all?”

“Why… why can’t it go back in?”

“Right.”

“So, we could put the money back in once we get the 500 million back?”

“Correct.”

“That’s all I was saying. All right. Thank you. And so, a few more of those questions we’ll get answers to eventually?”

“All right. Thank you.”

“Mr. Speaker, will the Sponsor yield for a quick question?”

“I… Representative, this is… I… I wanted to ask this on the last one and I… I didn’t get in. But the State Asset Forfeiture Fund there’s some money in here that’s being transferred out of the State Asset Forfeiture Fund. Where’s that going? I mean, is that going into GRF?”

“I understand that.”

“The question is simple. And this one specific fund that goes into GRF, it’s not been used for a law enforcement purpose. All right.”

“You answered the question, that’s fine. Thank you, Speaker.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Members of the House. I rise in support of this Floor Amendment. Being a Cook County Legislator this will take some of the burden off the Cook County taxpayers. In general, it will allow the civil process unit to continue to act in an autonomous manner and do the job they’ve always done and a fine job speaking as a former process server. And I would urge you supporting Floor Amendment #2 to the Senate Bill 611.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sponsor yield?”

“Representative Turner, your last comments pertain directly to veterans who initially were opposed to this and I… I believe you said AMVETS. Are VFW, Veterans of Foreign Wars, still opposed to the Bill?”

“Do you think that it’s offensive to veterans to be lumped into a Bill with offenders?” 09400127.doc 242  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Representative Turner, I… I certainly agree with you. We’re all… we are all Illinoisans, but… but, I… I personally don’t like being lumped together with ex-offenders having similar opportunities for jobs as ex-offenders when veterans have fought for their country and they come back from Iran or Afghanistan or Vietnam and they are head and shoulders right along side a guy that went down for burglary or what have you and they receive the same ‘opportunities’. It would seem to me that they should be two separate Bills.”

“Yes, Sir. I agree.”

“Well, yeah… thank you for saying that. They’re in different cars. And… and as I read the legislation, Representative Turner, it only applies to honorably discharged veterans, but yet we are dealing with ex- offenders. Now, on one hand you have to be an honorably discharged veteran to qualify and over here you’re an ex- offender to qualify, that… that gives me a little bit of… of 09400127.doc 244  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 concern. And I… I know that the AMVETS are opposed and you corrected yourself on that. And I know that the Veterans of Foreign Wars are opposed. Those are two of our greatest veterans’ organizations in this state. And when those two organizations are opposed it… it gives me great… a great deal of concern. And again, to have honorably discharged veterans only and then ex-offenders just…”

“…seems to be…”

“Thank you, Representative Turner. Just one last comment. To me a Bill of this nature, to lump honorably discharged veterans, not general discharge, not dishonorably discharged, but honorably discharged veterans in the same… as you said yourself, Sir… on the same train, just does not seem fair to me. And… and taking a lead from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and AMVETS, I would encourage a ‘no’ vote in all due respect to you, Sir.”

“A point of personal privilege.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Point of personal privilege.”

“One of the previous speakers mentioned that we all come to Springfield to represent everybody. I would hope that next year when we all come to Springfield again that we make sure that the 5.3 million people that are represented from this side of the aisle get a voice to say in this budget. Before you get to be the point where you want to preach to us about representing everybody, how about including everybody?”

“Mr. Speaker.”

“Inquiry of the Chair. I don’t see Representative Dunkin’s name as a cosponsor. Why’s he talking on the Bill? He wants to ask questions, that’s fine. He wants to explain the Amendment he’d better get his name on it. That’s House 09400127.doc 250  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 Rules. Does it show up? Is he a cosponsor of the Amendment?”

“Okay.”

“Just as long as you get the Amendment filed. You know, if Hollywood’s gonna take 30 minutes of my time, telling me that we can give Hollywood, the real Hollywood, $20 million, I want him to be a cosponsor. You know, and then maybe we can all have dinner with Julia Roberts and go home happy.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor of the Bill yield?”

“Yeah, thank you very much. Representative, as I’m sure you know I suggested that we increase LIHEAP by $50 million by taking the 50 million out of the sales tax on gasoline because we’re… we’re gonna take in 175, 200 million more dollars than we budget. And as you know, the sales tax on motor fuel does not go to the Road Fund, it goes to the General Revenue Fund. So, it makes sense to me. One of the Governor’s spokespeople and I… I don’t know who it was, there… there’s so many of them I can’t keep ‘em straight, implied that I was some kind of an idiot. That first of all, there was no windfall in the sales tax on motor fuel and even if there was they couldn’t afford it because they had better places to spend that money than on LIHEAP. Now, 09400127.doc 252  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 I know you don’t agree with that and I didn’t either. ‘Cause I think we have very similar districts. And I work closely with my community action agency. Given the importance of LIHEAP, given the refusal of your side of the aisle to suspend the sales tax on natural gas, like that’s a luxury item. God forbid, we would do anything that would help people stay warm in the winter. Why… why did you agree to mar… to marry a reasonable, sensible Bill with a tax credit for people in Hollywood who make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and we’re gonna double the tax credit they get if they film a movie in Illinois? Why would you marry those two together? That doesn’t sound like you, Sir.”

“Okay. Ya know, what… what I find so… so frustrating… so aggravating is that when I propose at the request of my community action agency an even bigger increase in LIHEAP than… than what you did, perhaps bigger than it should have been and I get criticized by someone who’s never run for election, Abby ‘Hottentot or Hoetentote’ (sic-Ottenhoff) or whatever her name is, I don’t know. Then she never has the common courtesy to call me and discuss a LIHEAP Bill with me. Nobody in the Governor’s Office would lift up the phone and call a Legislator who proposed how we add money to LIHEAP and asked me to scale back the program or change the program or how we might find financing. I find that so doggone frustrating with this administration. You can’t talk to them, they won’t talk to you. They will criticize you in the paper, but they won’t give you the common courtesy of calling you and say, ‘How can we work with you, Representative? How can we help? How can you help us?’ I’ve been here 20 years I’ve never seen an administration like this. Never. And I know some of you feel the same way I do. We’re not treated like third class citizens, we’re simply ignored. And they send out one of their multiple spokespersons to criticize us or our idea because it isn’t cleared by the Bureau of Information. I… I just… I find this administration so aggravating and you know what happens? When I leave here if I even insinuate that I’ve criticized an agency, their liaison will call me and chew me out. I’m an elected official. I’ll get chewed out by the voters. I don’t need some legislative liaison to pick up the phone and chew me out because I dared to insinuate that 09400127.doc 254  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 a particular agency wasn’t doing what perhaps they could do or weren’t… they weren’t doing enough or they were not responsive. I’ve got letters that I’ve written months ago that I haven’t gotten a response from in more than one agency of this government. I’ve had people tell me in agencies that they have written me a letter to get back to a constituent, but it hasn’t been cleared by the Governor’s staff so they can’t send it. I thought the Soviet Union disappeared. But, I’ll tell you the ministry of information is alive and well in Springfield. I stand with you on LIHEAP, I don’t like the marriage. But, let me ask Representative Dunkin a question. Representative, what exactly does the Film Tax Credit do? Is it a tax… is it a tax break on wages paid or expenses? How… how is the tax credit computed?”

“Okay. Not… not computed on what the stars are being paid?”

“On what the technicians, lighting, sound, whatever?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Now, how much… did we use the full tax credit the last fiscal year? Or how much did we use? How many millions?”

“Twelve million. So, we… we could be opening ourself to how much of a tax credit now? I mean, is there any cap? I mean, would it go to 50 million or 100 million or I mean, is it I assume from what I read it’s wide open.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. So, the only thing that disturbs me, there’s no cap on this tax credit. Let’s say we get lucky enough to attract 30 films in the next fiscal year. Is there a limit to the tax credit that we’ll give? I mean, it… that… that’s what I’m trying to figure out. Let… let’s… I know you were talking to staff. If… if… if we get very lucky and 30 productions are scheduled to be shot in Illinois, that… that’s a lot of money in every respect. Do you cap the tax credit or we just continue to give the tax credit on wages paid no matter how many films would be produced in Illinois?” 09400127.doc 256  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“All right. I…”

“I… I think that’s…”

“…I think that’s something you might want to look into.”

“And I know we… we moved the repeal date back. But, if we were to become more successful in this at some point, given our fiscal status, we ought to tell filmmakers come to Illinois, but you ought to be first or second or third in line because we’re only gonna give tax credits up to 50 million or 75 million or however many million dollars. I don’t think it should be left wide open. I think that’s a potential problem.”

“Yeah.”

“Would… would a television production get the same credit?”

“Okay. Like…”

“How about ER?”

“That’s supposedly set in Chicago.”

“So, when they… when they film there then they’re eligible for the break as well?”

“Okay. Mr. Speaker, to the Bill. I met with Representative Dunkin and I think Representative Turner was in that meeting, I don’t know, Representative, 3 years ago when you first brought this up and I was a supporter then and I’ll be a supporter today. I don’t like the way this has been done, but I’ll be a supporter ‘cause there was a film produced and direct… filmed in… in… largely in Danville and part of it in Chicago. And I’ve got the movie poster that’s… well I did have. The asbestos people made me take all my pictures down. But it was a… it was a remarkable event in a town of 35 thousand people. They left a lot of money in the town. They hired dozens of extras, dozens of people to work on the set. And in fact, the man who cuts my 09400127.doc 258  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 hair became the company barber for all of the extras. And I know he enjoyed the extra money as well. I proposed some months ago, Representative, and I have talked, I think, some months ago about LIHEAP. You know what, I… I wish all of us could represent a district or represent a state that didn’t need any LIHEAP money. But, we’re not gonna be that lucky. I would hope and ask that some of you next year, I have year after year taken to the Revenue Subcommittee a Bill… why do we levy sales tax on natural gas, propane and heating oil? That’s telling people that what they need to stay alive is a taxable product. Heck, we don’t… we don’t levy sales tax on food at a grocery store if isn’t consumable on… on site. Why in the world do we levy a utility tax on the very commodity that people need to stay alive? And I… I again, and I make no apology trying to work with this administration has proven to be the most frustrating, difficult thing I have ever encountered in my life. I pride myself on constituent service; I pride myself on answering constituent complaints and inquiries. And it’s like pulling teeth, on occasion, to get an answer. Some respond more quickly than others. In summation, these are the kinds of things that the longer you stay here the more you will become a little bit leery of. I don’t know if Representative Dunkin’s Bill could have passed on its own. I think it could have and probably should have. The LIHEAP Bill I think on its own would have passed unanimously. I… I represent a blue collar district. I… I haven’t called my district office, but when I tried to float the LIHEAP increase I said, ‘I’m gonna have hundreds of people as soon 09400127.doc 259  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 as warm weather gets here disconnected.’ And I have had. I don’t know the exact number; I haven’t called my district office this week. This is a serious problem. And you know what, if we could just work together and find a way to fund LIHEAP more equitably and more fairly it would be… behoove as somebody said awhile ago everybody in the State of Illinois if we could find a way to fund it more fairly and more equitably instead of begging our federal tax dollars to come back and help us. I intend to vote ‘yes’ on this Bill. But, I want my views known and I think I’ve expressed them clearly. I don’t like the way this Bill was put together. I don’t like these kind of Amendments. I don’t think it’s necessary. I think it creates more rancor than throwing oil on troubled waters. But because of the district I have and because of the fact I worked with Representative Dunkin on this original idea, I intend to vote ‘yes’ on this Bill.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?”

“Representative, now do I understand you correctly, you agree this Bill if it passes will cause a tax shift? Is that correct?”

“So, you’re saying that even with this in effect the residential portion of the tax bill still grew? That residential homeowner, property owners are still paying a bigger portion of the whole.”

“So, you’re saying if we don’t pass the Bill it’ll also cause a tax shift?”

“Okay. Now, we have a variety of exemptions and freezes already in the Property Tax Code. For example, we have the homeowners exemption. Is it fair to say that the homeowners exemption, which we raised a couple of years ago the value of it outside of Cook County, that that policy causes a tax shift?”

“And how about the senior freeze? We raised the cutoff income on that a couple of years ago. When we did that did we cause a tax shift?”

“And do you think it would be fair to say there were more losers than winners among all the property owners when we raised the senior freeze cutoff?” 09400127.doc 264  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“So, the issue is not… is there a shift? Would a TIF district? Every time we vote to extend the life of a TIF district, does that cause a tax shift?”

“I… I think it’s fair to say almost everybody in here at one time or another has voted either for a TIF district or to extend a TIF district or to extend the senior freeze income cutoff or to raise the amount of the homeowners exemption. In effect, they were voting for a tax shift every time they voted for that, is that right?”

“So, the issue isn’t, is there a shift or not, there is a shift. The question is, is this a… justified given the problem created by rapidly rising residential assessments in Cook County?”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?” 09400127.doc 274  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06

“Representative Lang, I believe there are two provisions… two major provisions. The first one that I would like… would like to deal with is the expansion of the cap from $20 thousand to $60 thousand and that is in the Bill. Is that correct?”

“The argument that I would make is that by expanding this cap what you’re doing is targeting the tax savings, primarily to the very richest. A data… some data that was given to me by the Chicagoland Chamber, they did a study along with the University of Illinois and they looked at Winnetka. Now I’m not from the Chicago area, but I believe Winnetka is a relatively high-income, property rich suburb of Chicago. Their findings were that at least half of the homes, over 50 percent of the homes in Winnetka received about a thirteen hundred and fifty dollar tax break. With the $60 thousand exemption that tax break would go to over $4 thousand, almost tripling the tax savings of the highest income suburbs. Is that a fair assessment?”

“Do you have anything to counter… counter argue that that would not be the result of that expansion of the exemption?”

“That’s…”

“…I’ll take that up next. I’ll take that up next. It’s not an argument on the 60 thousand. I… I guess what I’m asking… we’ll… we’ll deal with the inequities. We’ll deal with the inequalities of the law as the second argument. But the first argument, when you expand the cap don’t you almost by definition the people that you’re helping are those that are having large property expansions; therefore, the most expensive housing is the ones that will get the tax breaks by that expansion.”

“I understand that. All… what I’m arguing is that the expansion from 20 thousand to 60 thousand will not affect 09400127.doc 276  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 somebody that’s got a $150 thousand home. In Cook County, I believe that would be assessed at around $10 thousand, 16 percent of a… it’d actually be about 20 thousand. Well, you’ve already got a 20 thousand assessment cap. Expanded to 60, inadvertently, almost automatically it’s the houses from a half million down to a quarter million that are gonna be receiving the… the… the most help there. Or above, any… a million dollar house… anything above a quarter million is gonna get the advantage. It’s the cheapest houses that get nothing. Let’s move on to the second which is the whole inequity of the 7 percent solution. Because we already know that by definition somebody whose house is not rising rapidly or is… is rising less than the average will be penalized by this. Because when the assessed value in aggregate is not allowed to rise with the market, those whose property assessments are not going up as fast will have to pay a higher tax rate. Now, the only… the University of Illinois study, it’s the best one we have by professional people that look at taxation and revenue questions. What they are finding is that those whose property is not going up get a higher tax rate by… in the order of 5 to 5.8 percent, 5 to 6 percent higher tax rates. Seniors… where this property freeze, they’ve already got a freeze. If they’re below 45 thousand in income and most seniors are, their house is already frozen. They don’t get any help from this Bill at all, but because of the higher tax rate they pay more dollars. Apartment building owners, commercial property, industrial property all will be paying 09400127.doc 277  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 a higher tax because of the 5 percent higher rate. How am I wrong in that assessment?”

“Exactly.”

“That…”

“…no, that doesn’t matter.”

“Go ahead.”

“But that’s not because of the 7 percent cap, that’s because the assessments were… we allowed a higher exemption. The rates have not gone down because of this Bill. You cannot say that the tax rates…”

“Where…”

“…where is the savings coming from?”

“But they are not decreasing as fast as they would without this Bill. And that’s the whole point. That 09400127.doc 278  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 they’re paying a higher burden as a percentage than they would if we didn’t have this 7 percent solution.”

“That’s like… that’s like saying that just because 60 percent would have without this Bill… would have received a lower tax bill, too bad we only gave it to 50 percent. So, let’s ignore the extra people that paid more in taxes than they would have otherwise. That’s the whole point. There are people… many more than gain from this, lose. Now, they don’t lose as much. But they… the balloon is only so much. There’s only so many tax dollars in that balloon. When you give somebody a higher exemption so that they’ll pay lower taxes, everybody else in that balloon has to pay more. It may not be a percentage increase as fast as those that are receiving a reduction, but what you’re doing is targeting it at the people that made the most property wealth increase at the… at the expense of those who didn’t have a property that expanded. I’d like to further go on to the fact that the reason why Chicago commercial and industrial property is paying a slighter smaller percentage of the overall tax burden is not because the 7 percent is helping the residential… or not helping them enough and therefore, you want to expand it, I think that’s your argument. We… they 09400127.doc 279  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 are… they are paying a slightly higher… the residential is paying slightly higher percentage and the commercial and the industrial is paying slightly less. The reason they’re paying slightly less is that… overall percentage is because there’s a glut of commercial and industrial in particular because we’ve raised the tax rate so high in Cook County that they’re fleeing Cook County. They’re trying to get out of there to get away from the tax burden. Therefore, the property values are not going up. That’s why they’re paying less total dollars… excuse me, they’re paying more total dollars, but their percentage of the pie is slightly less because their values are not going up. There’s too much commercial and industrial property available on the market. Nobody wants to buy it. Therefore, they don’t have any higher values. Residential property, limited amount of area, they therefore… the residential market has been going up and they… because they have a bigger slice of the pie of wealth they are paying more. This is shifting the burden to the apartment owner, to the person whose house is not going up as rapidly as the higher end houses are and it’s shifting it to commercial and industrial properties. All you’re doing is driving jobs out of Cook County and by extension you’re driving them out of Illinois. I think it’s bad public policy. We tried a 3-year experiment. The data coming from the University of Illinois shows that it was not the right public policy. Why the heck expand it, let alone extend it. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield for a question?”

“Representative, could you in general terms very quickly describe the possible impact of this legislation on the schools in… in the City of Chicago as far as revenue?”

“So, they’re not able to access a certain percentage of their available EAV for levying purposes, but it won’t have an impact?”

“I guess I’m trying to understand how if you’re going to limit one’s access to their EAV for levying purposes how that might not affect how much they can levy for and therefore, affect their revenue. If you can’t get to it, you can’t levy for it, you’re gonna get less money than you could have if the cap wouldn’t have been there.”

“So… so, the City… the City of Chicago is capped in that manner, for those purposes?”

“Outside of the City of Chicago in non-capped counties what is the affect then of this cap on the amount of revenue that a school district can realize from it’s EAV?”

“Representative, with all due respect, if I… if I or any other taxing body’s not able to access part of its levy, unless it’s held harmless in a formula, it would be impossible for us to realize the revenue we could have if there wasn’t a cap on what we’re able to access. Because, quite frankly, I… if… if I’m not… if I’m not able to access that, I can’t get to it. Now, if you’re suggesting that somewhere in another formula that’s held harmless because of… of general state aid replacing what you don’t get to locally, one way or the other you have to make it up.”

“Well, unfortunate…”

“I understand your point and I… I do recognize and respect that point as far as the local issue is concerned, local control. The problem with it, and Representative Flider made comments earlier, I can tell you the Decatur school system the last time we did this lost a couple of million dollars. I know that in Peoria they lost a couple of million dollars. And that happens. But, there is a way to replace it in general state aid, but that puts pressure on general state aid. It basically takes the burden and shifts it in another way so that we have less reliance on local 09400127.doc 284  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 property. And I’m not suggesting that’s a bad thing. What I’m saying is, if we want to work on… on those issues related to property tax and the burden, let’s work on them. For those folks in here that are concerned about House Bill 750 and one of the major components of that House Bill, that tries to… to shift the property tax burden, this… this Bill is just putting a Band-Aid on the problem so that we never really get to… it’s a symptom of the disease. We don’t get to the disease if we continue to put these kind of quick fixes in.”

“Representative, I… to the Bill. I… I have a tremendous amount of respect for Representative Lang and what he’s trying to do here. I can only tell you however, that the longer we look at short-term solutions like this the further we are away from fixing the problem. And… and if we’re 09400127.doc 285  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 gonna tackle the problem, let’s tackle the problem. Let’s… let’s look at reducing local property taxes by shifting that burden. And… and I’m even willing to do that without looking at this huge increase in the amount if… if that’s what we need to do. But, we’re getting further and further away from that day the more we look at these short-term solutions. I… I would strongly urge a ‘no’ vote for the purpose of making sure that the issue becomes the issue and that we don’t continue to hide the real issue. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Bill. I rise in opposition to the 7 percent solution as it’s properly called, but I voted for it the first time because many of the ideas that the county assessor has come up with I’ve supported. As a man of great vision and he’s… he’s… he’s a very creative individual. This one doesn’t seem to have worked as well as the other ones. The study by the University of Illinois confirms that in the south suburbs one half of all the homeowners, in the south suburbs of Cook County, are losers. Additionally, senior citizens lose part of their senior citizen exemption as a result of this shift. Now, the… this current version of the Bill expands the exemption and includes higher priced homes. Well, that dilutes the affect of the exemption of lower priced homes. And so it becomes less of a favorable exemption to those homes that it was favorable for. So, I’m gonna vote ‘no’ on this Bill.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Bill. I know we’ve been here for a real long time and I’m gonna try and be as brief as I can. But, some of the things that were said today we need to… we need to clarify a little bit. First of all, 2 years ago when we passed this legislation… Mr. Speaker, could we have some order, please? Could we have some order, please? Thank… just tone it down. Thanks. We passed this 2 years ago and we thought that it might hurt schools, it might hurt businesses, it might hurt…”

“…renters.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It might hurt schools, it might hurt renters, might hurt seniors, might hurt farmers. Well guess what? We spent a hundred thousand dollars on a study. We asked two professors from the University of Illinois… to… to verify what this does and does not do. Well, guess what? They verified exactly what we said it was going to do. I want to point out two things. We talked about 80 percent of the people in Cook County receiving lower tax bills that Representative Lang said. He’s partially right. Yes, that did happen, but why? Why did that happen? That happened because the tax rate went down, not because of the 7 percent solution. The other thing that 09400127.doc 295  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 the previous speaker just talked about is this shift from commercial properties… the taxpayers from commercial properties to residential properties. Is that happening? Yes, it’s happening, but why? Well, here’s what these professors talked about and some other folks. A hundred and sixty-eight thousand new homes have been built in Cook County. So, you have to put them on the tax rolls. That’s gonna shift the burden. You have… 20 thousand commercial and industrial properties have left Cook County in the last 10 years, 44 percent less apartment buildings because of condo conversions that are taking place. So, yes, there’s gonna be a shift, but why? We just explained why. This Bill is going to hurt the lower valued properties. In southern… or in south Cook County, the professors came up with how many people benefit or don’t benefit from this in Class 2 properties, 52 percent of Class 2 properties in southern… suburban Cook on the south side lose under the 7 percent solution. Why do we want to have a Bill that’s gonna hurt lower valued properties and help higher valued properties. We know who lives in each of those properties, so I don’t need to go into that. We talked about affordable housing in this Body. Under this Bill one person in a unit, they consider affordable housing $150 thousand. You right now get an exemption without this Bill of $30 thousand market value. To get from $150 thousand to $180 thousand is 20 percent, simple mathematics. This Bill calls for a 7 percent. So, if you’re in affordable housing you gotta grow by greater than 20 percent a year to even to be eligible. So, under this Bill anybody in affordable housing can no 09400127.doc 296  STATE OF ILLINOIS 94th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 127th Legislative Day 05/03/06 longer be part of this new exemption. Why do we want to do that in this Body? I think we’ve talked a lot about this Bill; I don’t need to go on. But one thing as a new Legislator I learned real early is that a lot of legislation has unintended consequences. Clearly, we have shown the unintended consequences on this Bill, they’re overwhelming. We need to put this issue to bed. Please vote ‘no’ on this Bill. Thank you.”

“We have no objection.”