Illinois House Floor Debate — June 27, 2007

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Let the record refrect… reflect that Representative Paul Froehlich… Oh, I'm sorry. No, all Republicans are present today."

"Mr… Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know we're trying to get everything lined out here and everything like that. And I was just wondering if… when the appropriate time to… to an inquiry of the Chair is… is when the appropriate time would be to say, red rover, red rover, send Jack Franks on over?" 09500081.doc 3  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the Sponsor for working… with us over the intervening week here. I firmly believe this is the right thing to do at this point in time. And it will make the underlying Bill better, and I just want to say thank you to Kathy Ryg for taking this out of the record initially and working through the issues over… over the week here. So… thank you, Kathy. I would urge everyone to support this Bill at this time."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's a good Irish name. Will the Sponsor yield?"

"Representative Hannig, even though this is a 12 month budget, there are some things not in it, particularly the education funding that would be changed so that by next month, the end of July, we have to have some plan in order to make the school payments. Is that correct?"

"All right. But this basically covers payments for the state workers, correctional officers, State Police?"

"Rank and file people that work in offices, and it would cover um… some of the grants for the human service agencies, things like that that would cover the continuation on an emergency basis of the budget in order to make payments and keep the state moving?"

"And it's your understanding that the only thing this budget is actually accomplishing is an emergency funding for the state to keep moving while we get down to the nitty- gritty of passing a real budget. Is that not…"

"All right. And I… I do not feel as the Governor indicated that this is making any statement on either the budget that the Speaker previously passed out of the House or the budget that Representative Cross and our caucus filed. We felt that those budgets and I don’t want to speak for your side of the Caucus, but… your side of the aisle, but that those budgets were originally a point to start negotiations to get things moving or to not have to go into overtime. So because we are doing this, we're doing this to be responsible leaders as opposed to giving a victory to the second floor or any place else. Is that not correct?"

"All right. What would you say, what else would obviously be missing out of this budget that we would need to address, besides the fact that it is pretty much a rollover of ‘07 without any community project add-ons of the Members and with a few other things that were out of it. So this is just pretty much a bare bones ‘07 to keep government functioning. So what else do you think is probably necessary to be there before the end of July?"

"All right. And the IDOT money, so that the summer road projects can continue, is there?"

"And caregivers for the sick and elderly and disabled both continued to be paid and the state pension system will be funded at the full level?"

"All right. Trying to think what else we need to get clarified. I was… I did have some concern on Budget Implementation Acts that were previously passed out of the House. Because they referred to a budget and have projects in there that are not going to be covered by this current budget. My feeling and my… that I would convey in my caucus is that I would prefer that we had new Budget Implementation Acts, but if we can't do that, I would like your assurance that any budget that is going to be crafted at least on our part is not taking into consideration monies that were already put into those Budget Implementation Acts upfront because actually there's been no consensus on a total budget."

"Right. Because as we both know the devil’s in the details and those are usually the Budget Implementation Acts."

"Particularly, Senate Bill 182 that was sent out of here, there were parts in it that were very necessary, but there were other parts that were incentives for Members to vote on an austere budget. So, Senate Bill 182 is… I see as problematic if it were to stay into effect. It's the big one that has not only the hospital stuff in it, but a… a lot of other projects, which I won't go into at the point…"

"All right. And so I presume that it is at least this House, Senate, not the Senate, the House Democrats and the House Republicans by passing this, it's an emergency budget. It's not making a statement or giving a victory to anybody; it's keeping government running so that we will be the rational people and that we will get out there and continue to negotiate, hopefully, to an end sooner, rather than later."

"My staff thinks I've done a great job, so they’re not telling me anymore; obviously, they weren't listening. If I haven’t gotten anything on the budget, I hope they'll come up with it, anything else we need on the record. And hopefully, that what we've discussed here will be taken as it is given as an emergency process to get… keep government rolling and for us to continue negotiating, which I think we 09500081.doc 11  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 will do in good faith and we will be there. Let's hope that the second floor and other people will be also."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have no questions of the Sponsor. I have a few comments I'd like to make. Representative Mulligan I think covered a good bit of the specifics of the Bill. I want to reiterate if she didn’t say this that we on this side of the aisle were fairly aggressive last week, along with some others, in advocating an emergency budget. We are close, relatively close, to a shut down in State Government. And nobody on this side of the aisle and I suspect the truth is others on your side of the aisle, don’t want to see a Government shutdown. It's not responsible. It's not fair. It's not right. It is the wrong thing we should do as government a… or as elected officials to the people of the State of Illinois that rely on us for state services. They may be employees on they may receive State services. So, the emergency budget to get us through the month of July is essential. And we have shown I think on this issue that we are willing to work with those of you on the other side of the aisle, as well as those in the Senate, and even on the second floor, that we want to get things done. And we have tried to do that with an infrastructure Bill. We've tried to do that with our own budget and we've tried to make some statements in other areas. And we will continue to do that. But I think we have to have a serious discussion and dialogue about the future of what we're gonna do. Because up to now… up to now, we have failed miserably. And quite frankly, it's 09500081.doc 12  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 those of you on the other side of the aisle, your party, that has touted the fact that you’re in charge, and frankly bragged about the fact that you are in charge. And you were not able to get a budget passed in January, in February, in March, April, in May, or almost through June. And the sad reality of it is, all sixty-seven (67) of you on your side of the aisle, all sixty-seven (67) of you are responsible for the failure of not passing a budget in time for the people of the State of Illinois. You are causing gridlock potentially in this state, all sixty-seven (67) of you. You should be ashamed of that. We can no longer, we can no longer run from the facts that we have a responsibility to pass a twelve (12)-month budget. It's okay to do a… a thirty (30)-day budget. We want all avoid shutdown. But the inevitable is coming, sooner than later, and for us to avoid the fact that we need to do a budget is a mistake. We need to stop playing games. We need to stop pointing fingers. We need to stop the rhetoric. We need to stop the grandstanding. We need to sit down and have an honest to goodness, serious discussion about the fiscal condition of the State of Illinois. We can't sit here and continue to expect great things, in some people's minds, that cost billions of dollars when we don’t have billions of dollars to spend. We don’t have access to large pots of money. We are a society that expects now and demands instant gratification. We can't be a government that provides instant gratification. We have to accept the realization that the amount of money available to this state is limited. Does it make us all happy? It doesn’t give us everything we 09500081.doc 13  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 want. It doesn’t allow us to play to certain groups and to say, I got you this or I'm advocating for this. So, if we are gonna have some finality on a budget and have a serious discussion about conclusion on this, we need to accept that fact. And it's not necessarily pleasant. We have about seven hundred and twenty million dollars ($720,000,000) of available revenue in which we can balance a budget. That's more money… you couple that with the existing revenue, than we've ever had as a State of Illinois to balance a budget. More money than we've ever had as a State of Illinois to balance a budget. Can't we balance a budget with eight hundred million ($800,000,000) or seven hundred fifty million dollars ($750,000,000) of new money? People in this state don’t want us, to raise taxes. People in this state don’t want us on top of electric bills and gas and milk and eggs and low housing prices, to on top of that hit them one more time with a higher tax bill, whether it's a sales tax, income tax, a gross receipts tax, a payroll tax, a generation tax. The tax goes… the taxes go on and on in this climate, enough is enough. We need to accept the fact that we don’t have any more money. We understand also on this side of the aisle that we can't get everything we want. We have principles that we subscribe to. We think we can live within our means and we don’t want to raise taxes. We’re not gonna get everything we want as we move forward. And I would pledge to you that as we move forward, we will work with you in a bipartisan manner to attempt to craft a budget that has us living within our means, and we’re willing to provide a little give and take. We know that. 09500081.doc 14  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 It's the way this process should work. It hasn’t worked that way so far. For a variety of reasons, we haven’t gotten there yet. As I said earlier, the sixty-seven (67) of you were not able to put a budget together, along with your friends in the Democrat side in the Senate. But that's passed. Let's put that behind us and move forward and get a budget passed. And, Representative Hannig, thank you for your work on this. Representative Beaubien, thank you for your work on this. Speaker Madigan, thank you for your work on this. And I intend to vote 'aye' on this, because I don’t want to see a Government shutdown, and I am hopeful that this Bill passes. Thank you."

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

"Representative Hannig, in your opening remarks you indicated that our debt service would be met, and that's extremely important because unfortunately in the last four (4) years, this State has increased its indebtedness a considerable amount. If my memory serves me correctly, we've gone from about seven billion dollars ($7,000,000,000) of long term debt to approximately twenty-two billion dollars ($22,000,000,000) in long term debt. So, obviously, the holders of that debt need to be paid on time or it could lead to fiscal disaster for the State of Illinois. But in your remarks you referenced, we will pay those debtors or those creditors on an '08 budget scale, if I understood you correctly. But I don’t see that we have an '08 budget 09500081.doc 17  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 scale. So how are you arriving at the payments we will make to our creditors?"

"I would hope that that might be the only part of the Governor's introduced budget that we will borrow from in this Amendment. The Amendment is several hundred pages. Are there any other references to the '08 budget as introduced by the Chief Executive Officer of the State of Illinois, the Governor?"

"Okay. I… I thank you for that because I think one of the a… mistakes we made last year was to not address the pension liability. And we will do that in this thirty (30) day emergency budget. And I appreciate your work on it. Mr. Speaker, to the Amendment… To the Bill, as amended. A previous speaker said that we should vote ‘no’, and listed several reasons why we should. I remember when the Federal Government shut down some years ago. Who won? Who won that battle? My Party, the Republican Party, was in control of Congress at the time. I don’t think they won anything. In fact, one could say that the Republican Speaker at that time signed his death warrant by shutting down the Federal Government. I ha… I have many emotions here tonight. And one of them quite frankly is that the Governor was quoted in more than one media outlet that he wanted to hurry and get this budget done before the Republicans had any say in it. Well, he didn’t make that. But remember that we were not invited to any of the budget meetings prior to the end of May. Suddenly, the Republican Caucus was invited and what did we do? Did we sit there with our arms folded and said, ‘It's your problem. We’re not here to do anything. It's your… You made this mess. You clean it up. We're not going to participate.’ No, we did not. Under the leadership of a… Leader Cross, about seven (7) to ten (10) days ago, the Republican Caucus decided that we would be supportive of an emergency thirty (30) day or July budget, because it is an emergency. If you shut down government, people don’t get paid. Correctional officers don’t get paid. State Police officers don’t get paid. Government workers don’t get paid. 09500081.doc 19  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 Creditors don’t get paid. And I don’t think that’s right. And I don’t think that’s a fair way to do business. So we extended our hand to the Democrat Majority and some of us will join you this evening in passing a… an emergency budget if you will. But my… my caution is this, don’t take our hand for granted. I don’t think we're going to sit here in August, in September and October and extend our hand for continuous thirty (30)-day emergency spending plans. The pressure point is in August and the pressure point is, if you don’t come up with a budget by the end of July, how will you make payments to schools? How will you make payments to higher education? The question… the answer is simple, you won't. You endanger a shutdown of the Illinois public education system both K-12 and Higher Education. I don’t want to see that happen. I hope cooler heads will prevail and that nobody has to see that happen. The previous speaker who urged a 'no' vote said that there are no safeguards. And he breaks an interesting point. But I would point out that Republicans have in the last four (4) months introduced legislation that calls for a sunshine process in the Appropriations Bills. That we don’t get Amendments creating a budget, even an emergency budget, put on our desks consisting of hundreds of pages and the individual Members are given thirty-five (35) minutes, if they’re lucky, to look through it. We trust a great deal in our staff. But there is no appropriation, there is no safeguard that the Governor will not spend money in other ways. One of the things that our caucus insisted on in this budget was no blind appropriations for capital, giving the 09500081.doc 20  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 Governor the ability to fly around the State and hand out millions of dollars in a… in appropriations for this project or that project that none of us knew anything about or in fact voted for. In 2003, I introduced a simple Resolution calling for an audit of the State aircraft executive fleet. I made a Motion to Discharge the Rules Committee on a Resolution that would have the Auditor General examine the cost of our executive air fleet, which has now become a political issue or a media issue. I was denied the opportunity to have that Resolution discharged from the Rules Committee. Had we done so, I think we might have been able to do what the Gentleman who wants us to vote ‘no’ said. We could've put some legislation together that would have revamped how we fund the executive aircraft fleet. That Resolution, and I have refiled it, also says we should look into selling or leasing some of the state executive aircraft fleet that costs us some twenty-six million dollars ($26,000,000) to operate the first year this Governor was in office because of the flights we continually make back and forth, transporting most of the directors, as this same Gentleman pointed out a week ago, only eight (8) of the twenty-nine (29) directors were in Springfield on that day. The rest of them were in Chicago where they live. And they continually use that aircraft fleet to fly back and forth, using it as I would use a bicycle or a taxi cab. We spend millions of dollars on that. We can put some safeguards in this budget. We're willing to work with you on that. In fact, we have filed legislation to put those safeguards in process. You will not release them from the Rules 09500081.doc 21  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 Committee. So be it. You hold the Majority. I would say that you have not used your Majority very wisely since the Governor's budget was introduced in March. So we will extend our votes this evening to help pass an emergency July budget to prevent a shutdown of state services, to prevent a shutdown of community-based organizations in my district that treat the developmentally disabled, that treat the mentally ill, that do a number of things that we simply cannot afford to shutdown. But beware of August when school payments must be made and that pressure point looms. Will we come together and produce a workable, reasonable budget in the next three (3) weeks because it appears we're off next week? Or will we continue? Will we continue to see what we have seen since March? Not one Member of this House voted to pursue a Gross Receipts Tax. Not one. Now that revenue source is evidently off the table. I don’t… it doesn’t appear that the payroll tax has any indication that it will survive. The selling of the lottery, do the math. Is that a good deal? The profit this year is six hundred and fifty million dollars ($650,000,000). It goes to the Education Fund. And yet the Governor wants us to lease it or sell it for ten billion (10,000,000,000) for fifty (50) years. Do the math. Is that a good deal? Not the way I figure it. So I think it's time to stop governing by press release. I think it's time to stop governing by having someone come out and talk to the press and when the minute they’re asked a question, they turn around and walk away. How long has it been since this Governor has had a press conference? I'm not opposed to the Gentleman's measure to 09500081.doc 22  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 do the appropriations process like we use to do it. But it takes you. We can't do it. We don’t have the votes. We're in the Minority. You've made that very clear to us on more then one (1) occasion. So tonight we'll join with I… I hope a majority and pass an emergency budget for July to keep essential state services operating. And I think the challenge to the majority is it’s now time, whether we're here next week or not, to start seriously negotiating a workable, reasonable budget that does the best we can do with the revenue we have, not the revenue we wish we had, not the revenue that was proposed. There seems to be no support for that revenue. Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, we can't continue to spend money we don’t have. I've heard that dozens of times from my constituents. So as we vote tonight, don’t think we have solved the problem; we have not. We have joined you in preventing a shutdown of essential state services for the month of July. I wouldn’t count on that for August. The message should be clear to the Majority. You control the House. You control the Senate. You control the Governor's Office. You control every State constitutionally elected office in the State of Illinois. You wanted that, you asked for it, you campaigned for it, you got it. Now show us in the next three (3) or four (4) weeks that you know how to use that majority, and in fact you will use that majority, and hopefully we can help you in that process in developing and passing a reasonable fair budget that's prioritized and does the best we can do with the revenue we have or the revenue that you are willing to vote for, to spend. And that has been the 09500081.doc 23  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 weakness of the Majority that I have witnessed since March. The time for action is now. The emergency is upon us. I intend to vote 'aye' for the Bill."

"Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield for a few questions?"

"Representative, I just want to make sure there's an understanding of what this budget means as… as it relates to education in Illinois. As I look through the Amendment, and I ran through the education line items rather quickly. They came up on the system finally, but I… I see, for example, Early Childhood Education has a funding level for the entire year's appropriation for Early Childhood Education. However, is it… is it just given the authority for thirty (30)-days worth of appropriations based on that entire annual amount that's in this budget docume… or this Amendment?"

"But is it… is it the intent here to spend what would normally be vouchered in that line item, whatever the line item is, during that first thirty (30)-day period?"

"Or… or whatever portion that would normally be vouchered in that first month."

"So, that follows the logic then that since no General State Aid payments are made in July or no mandated categorical payments are made in July, there are zeros in those line items for now."

"If… if there is an amount in a line item for a particular area, whether it's career and technical education, textbook loan, whatever the number is, is… is there any way for someone who's doing a school district budget to reasonably anticipate whether or not that number is gonna change?"

"Okay. And I don’t want to put you on the spot with this, but Representative Black brought up some tremendous points. When we sit down to actually do a budget, this is not about a line item necessarily. But in the spring, school districts release people. Those people are dependent upon grant funding. In July, when school districts normally rehire people, they can't count on one-twelfth. They have to understand whether or not that money's gonna be… or the intent is to appropriate that money year 'round. For example, the truant alternative money, if that's intended to be a year-round appropriation, how do you hire people back based on a grant when the spending authority is just for 30 days? I guess you just have faith that at some point or another an entire appropriation's gonna come that allows you to hire all those people that that grant supported."

"Well, I would agree with that from a lot of angles. But… but I think we have to remember that this… we look at the lines and we look at the numbers, but there are real people behind these lines and these numbers who aren't sure if they're gonna have a job when school starts because we haven't done what we need to do down here to guarantee school districts that those people will be paid so those districts then can't rehire them. Good examples are gonna… I mean, at some point or another, we're gonna get calls. You're gonna get a call, I'm gonna get a call, and superintendents and business officials are gonna say, 'How much would you put in that line item if you were doin' that 09500081.doc 26  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 budget?' That's a… that's a fair question. Based on the statutory requirements of budgeting for schools, those have to be filed, put on display thirty (30) days, and… and districts have to make those choices."

"Representative, I… and I appreciate that and I support it and I'm gonna vote for this because of that. I think it's the only responsible and prudent thing to do because we have to keep things running and we have to make those assurances. But I will only echo what Representative Black has… has said. If school districts do not have something more than a thirty (30)-day budget when it comes to the end of July, there's absolutely no way school districts can meet their statutory obligations to provide a budget thirty (30) days in advance that is adopted before September 30. They can't do it because a great deal of the money schools would put in that budget depends on the state and it depends on us doing our job. And quite frankly, we should get a failing grade for the job we're doin'. We spend a lot of time in this chamber assessing schools and assessing the jobs that schools do. I think it's time that we get a grade, and that's a failing grade right now, today. And we're failing school districts and school children because we can't come 09500081.doc 27  STATE OF ILLINOIS 95th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 81st Legislative Day 6/27/2007 up with a number to complete a budget. I understand we have to do it this way, but we, as a Body, need to do a better job. Thank you."