Progress Illinois

Back in Springfield for the fall veto session, state lawmakers made measured progress yesterday on some legislative priorities we've been tracking for months. Here's a brief rundown of what transpired:

Campaign Finance Reform

The big news was that a House committee approved a revised version of the ethics package vetoed by Gov. Pat Quinn in late August. This bill (SB 1466), introduced by House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), covers much of the same ground as HB 7. It also applies campaign contribution limits -- $5,000 from individuals; $10,000 from corporations, labor organizations and associations; and $50,000 from political action committees or other candidates -- to the election cycle rather than the calendar year, an improvement designed to protect challengers who don't file until close to the election date.

But Madigan did make one major, self-serving change that has reformers up in arms.  He stripped the $90,000 cap from party and legislative leader campaign committees to candidates, allowing himself to continue directing unlimited resources to his preferred candidates. It should be noted that HB 7 attempted to limit the leaders' capacity in this regard, but included loopholes that would have rendered that cap useless anyway. But critics like the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform's Cindi Canary contend that Madigan's latest move is a more blatant power grab, one that will make potential candidates even more reliant on the largesse of party elders. "In the primary, it is very hard," she told WBEZ, "for independents, non-incumbents, non-party-regulars;  you know, people who haven't come up in the ward structure, to break through."

Unless some compromise is brokered, the legislation -- which passed on a party-line vote -- could stall until January, when a simple majority (rather than the three-fifths, super-majority required during the veto session) could pass it. Lawmakers from both parties are hesitant to slap their name to bill they see as fundamentally weak. Bethany Jaeger has more on those political ramifications in her full account for Illinois Issues.

MAP Grants

I guess we should have seen it coming. After talk from both parties of approving new revenue to fund the Monetary Awards Program (MAP) grants, lawmakers met yesterday and, as they too often do in Springfield, decided to appropriate money to fund crucial programs without determining exactly where the cash will come from.

Legislative leaders agreed to pass legislation providing an extra $200 million for the grants but demanded that Gov. Quinn tap into the $1 billion reserve account he secured this spring to restore the funding on his own. For the time being, it looks like two sensible ideas -- a state cigarette tax or a tax amnesty plan (which would have created a six-week window in which delinquent taxpayers could pay back income and sales taxes without interest or penalty) -- will be shelved. "He clearly had the money to spend all along," Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) told reporters after the meeting yesterday.

Thankfully, 138,000 Illinois students won't be denied scholarship money next semester. But now the onus falls back on Quinn, who will keep pushing for new revenue through the fall until his options run out. The safe bet is that the cash will ultimately come from the reserve account. Let's just hope he hasn't exhausted that fund already.

Cook County Veto

Reformers on the Cook County Board can't recruit enough allies to repeal President Todd Stroger's controversial 2008 sales tax hike, so lawmakers in Springfield are trying to make it a little easier for them. Yesterday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill lowering the override threshold from a four-fifths majority to a three-fifths majority.  But State Rep. Deborah Graham (D-Oak Park) subsequently filed a motion to reconsider, placing an indefinite hold on the measure. So despite the Senate Executive Committee's unanimous, 9-0, vote to send the bill to the Senate floor, it is on hold until it clears a procedural hurdle.

Stroger, who the Capitol Fax's Rich Miller tracked down in Springfield yesterday, may be unpopular and ineffectual. But hey, you have to give him credit for finding inventive ways to preserve his administration's power.

UPDATE (1:45 pm): Crain's Greg Hinz is hearing that the veto bill will be released by the end of the day. More here.