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* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has vetoed only a tiny handful of bills since assuming office in 2019 and taken a mostly hands-off approach to this year’s spring legislative session. But that may soon change.
Pritzker and his top staff began contacting lawmakers and interest groups last week to tell them how they need to “fix” their bills and to warn them that the governor will veto their legislation if the requested changes aren’t made.
This is the first kinda-real spring session not only since the pandemic began, but also since both the House and Senate elected new presiding officers. As a result, committee chairs in both chambers have been far more reluctant than usual to bottle up potentially problematic bills, while floor debates have frequently involved sponsors promising colleagues that their legislation would be fixed when it crossed the rotunda to the other chamber.
Well, the bills have pretty much all been moved to the other chamber, and lots of problems remain.
Last Wednesday alone, House committees approved 107 Senate bills for floor action and passed 227 during the full week. Senate committees approved 100 House bills last week.
The biggest problem with this haphazard flood of bills is that many require mandates for additional state spending. The governor’s office rightly points out that the state doesn’t have the money to be creating tons of new and costly programs. Several others would also impose unfunded spending mandates on local governments.
In the past, former House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton would put a brake on most bills like that. But the new leaders, House Speaker Chris Welch and Senate President Don Harmon, are allowing members to police themselves and are standing back as bills pass that could either create fiscal issues for the state or create laws that, in the opinion of the governor’s office, won’t do what the sponsors may have intended.
“Every other day we’re going through bill review [and saying] ‘That doesn’t even make sense. We can’t do that. That can’t actually be effectuated,’” said one exasperated high-level administration official last week.
“At the end of the day,” the official said, “the governor can’t let a bad bill go through that we can’t afford, or can’t actually implement, or doesn’t actually work.”
The respect level for this governor’s legislative operation has never been high in either chamber, to put it mildly. In some circles, it’s even reviled and ridiculed for its ineffectiveness.
But the grumbling has noticeably intensified this year as members complain that the governor’s office has been of no help all session. Just the other day, one lobbyist who works often with a particular state agency was talking about how the agency had zero involvement with bills this year that could significantly alter the agency’s mission. His advice to members was to run their bills the way they wanted.
So, naturally, some members are chafing at the belated veto threats after months of near radio silence. The time to work on many of these bills was a month or two ago, they say. But with the clock ticking down to the scheduled May 31st adjournment they’re being told to change their bills or find themselves working on veto override motion roll calls this summer.
Because Pritzker has so rarely vetoed any bills, more than a few folks are having a difficult time taking these threats seriously. They expect he’ll talk a good game and then roll over to avoid making enemies.
But, in fairness, Pritzker had Madigan and Cullerton shepherding members for him during the 2019 session and had no real need to issue any threats. The 2020 spring session ended up being just a few days long because of the pandemic and everything was negotiated. Now, it’s pretty much anything goes. And even though veto threats are usually a final weapon and not a legislative strategy, he may have no choice at this late date but to do something drastic.
Others contend that some of the advice they’re getting from the governor’s office is off the mark. While the governor’s people are trying to tell members what their bills would actually do in the real world, their interpretation is sometimes just flat wrong.
I’m told, however, that some members have listened to the gubernatorial advice and have agreed to alter their legislation. So, we’ll see.
But if you thought that one-party control of the Illinois House, Senate and the governor’s office always meant things always run smoothly at the Statehouse, well, think again.
posted by Rich Miller
Monday, May 17, 21 @ 1:59 am
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Who has the backbone to say ‘No’, and make enemies? Well Welch and Harmon have decided it’s the governor. So, it behooves the governor to get the staff needed to allow him to be the adult in the room, and be right when he starts handing out vetoes.
Comment by PublicServant Monday, May 17, 21 @ 6:07 am
Whatever happened to think big, JB?
Comment by Precinct Captain Monday, May 17, 21 @ 6:17 am
Stunning that agencies weren’t actively working bills that directly impact their scope and authority. Legislative malpractice to cede the field to legislators and lobbyists. Clean up by the Governor’s Office is a backstop, not the main line of defense.
Comment by Derek Smalls Monday, May 17, 21 @ 6:33 am
I love all the finger pointing. I get government is complicated and no one can know everything, but the GA saying “Well, the agencies and Governor didn’t tell us the plan was stupid so how could we know it was stupid?” is a doozy. And I get the GA is used to not taking responsibility for anything, but no matter how many times I hear it it’s incredible to me that you could try to create a program or mandate with significant expenses but not even try to pay for it. But you know the GA would only be too happy to rake the administration over the coals if it’s illogical, ill-conceived, and self-contradictory mandates aren’t met.
That all being said, Governor, you need to do a better job of managing this, if only to minimize the damage
Comment by Perrid Monday, May 17, 21 @ 7:18 am
The biggest problem with this haphazard flood of bills is that many require mandates for additional state spending.
Democrats doing what democrats do.
Comment by Birds on the Bat Monday, May 17, 21 @ 7:27 am
“Whatever happened to think big”
Majority of voters thought you could have nice things w/o the tax base to pay for them.
It takes it to make it.
Comment by Flyin' Elvis'-Utah Chapter Monday, May 17, 21 @ 7:32 am
When you’re in the big chair, agree or disagree, respect or have no respect for the staff or crew…
… governors own.
You sign a bill, it’s yours too.
It’s not easy being governor… this situation lends itself to that analysis
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, May 17, 21 @ 7:56 am
JB’s staff are frequently wrong in their assessments of the actual effects of a bill. There’s a lot of inexperience peppered with youthful know-it-all syndrome in their ranks. Members should write and pass their bills as they see fit.
Comment by Now I’m down in it. Monday, May 17, 21 @ 8:09 am
In my experience, and there are exceptions, legislators have one particular habit/skill regardless of party. That skill/habit is blaming someone else.
Public education has been the recipient of so many bad bills and unfunded mandates that I lost count decades ago. Too much legislation seems like a knee jerk reaction to something and relatively few actually solve more problems that they create.
We have too many legislators that couldn’t pass a high school civics course so it is no surprize when they don’t know how to craft an effective piece of legislation.
Comment by JS Mill Monday, May 17, 21 @ 8:14 am
=== JB’s staff are frequently wrong in their assessments of the actual effects of a bill. There’s a lot of inexperience peppered with youthful know-it-all syndrome in their ranks. Members should write and pass their bills as they see fit.===
No one is stopping them, the legislators are being told things might not get signed, “maybe change this… “
This…
=== In the past, former House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton would put a brake on most bills like that. But the new leaders, House Speaker Chris Welch and Senate President Don Harmon, are allowing members to police themselves and are standing back as bills pass that could either create fiscal issues for the state or create laws that, in the opinion of the governor’s office, won’t do what the sponsors may have intended.===
No guardrails? Either change it, or we’ll veto it.
It’s a change in process far more than a change in ideology.
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, May 17, 21 @ 8:24 am
I’ve worked with every Governor since Ryan. The unwillingness by this administration to actually learn is stunning. They assume something and educating them on the truth is absolutely impossible so I’ve had to build a lobbying strategy based on incorrect information. It’s insane.
At least with Blagojevich I just knew they were corrupt, Quinn was populist, and Rauner was incompetent. But dealing with wrong information is impossible.
Comment by Just Me 2 Monday, May 17, 21 @ 8:37 am
‘That doesn’t even make sense. We can’t do that. That can’t actually be effectuated…At the end of the day,” the official said, “the governor can’t let a bad bill go through that we can’t afford, or can’t actually implement, or doesn’t actually work.”
Supermajorities are such fun.
Comment by Donnie Elgin Monday, May 17, 21 @ 8:37 am
It’s hard to assign blame when the statements are this unspecific. If the governor’s office is right about the expense or the feasibility of the bills, then I say most of the blame is on the GA, with a small portion going to agencies and the governor’s office for not realizing how incompetently the GA’s bills were written. However, if you (the GA) are depending on your coworkers (the executive branch) to realize you are messing things up and fix them for you, then YOU (the GA) are the problem, not the people who didn’t stop you from making mistakes in time.
Again, that assumes that the governor’s office is correct in their assessments of the bills.
Comment by Perrid Monday, May 17, 21 @ 8:40 am
Should be no surprise that we have a bunch of unworkable bills still around. Some of the questions asked during committee hearings strongly indicate that the committee member hasn’t been briefed on or read the bill, doesn’t have a basic understanding of the foundational issues and laws that are already operating in the area, and, like JS said, strongly hint that they couldn’t pass a HS civics test (do they still require that for graduation?). Being remote is no excuse for this level of lack of engagement.
Comment by Wonk Monday, May 17, 21 @ 8:46 am
Without MJM to keep things under wraps, it looks like the full crazy of the Democrat Caucus is about to be exposed.
Comment by Auditor Monday, May 17, 21 @ 9:01 am
Blaming the Gov’s office for not riding herd on these cats is laughable; each year several thousand bills are filed, and if the authors/sponsors can’t be bothered to read many of them before the vote, let alone ensure legality and clarity, why is the Gov’s office responsible for checking their work before a vote? Or maybe we need more bills signed with impossible deadlines or that are unconstitutional (gambling and pension reform just two respective examples of legislators writing bills with impossible timelines or unconstitutional aspects). Welch and his oppo House number and assistants need to start herding these cats long before the Gov’s office gets the bills.
Comment by thisjustinagain Monday, May 17, 21 @ 9:04 am
=== the full crazy of the Democrat Caucus===
Narrator: The Eastern Bloc wants a 51st state.
I think I’d be dismayed as what you might think isn’t crazy…
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, May 17, 21 @ 9:05 am
=== Stunning that agencies weren’t actively working bills that directly impact their scope and authority. Legislative malpractice to cede the field to legislators and lobbyists. Clean up by the Governor’s Office is a backstop, not the main line of defense. ===
The agency legislative offices are on a very short leash. You can never work against a bill without clearance from the GO and it is often not given.
Comment by Rasselas Monday, May 17, 21 @ 9:12 am
As said by others: No guardrails, no limits…and apparently no adult supervision this session. So JB and staff are forced to start throwing flags on some of these bills that might get to him, even though the legislature is supposed to be the ‘experts’ in drafting legislation. Illinois has seen enough bad bills; time to start getting it right (or at least far less wrong).
The fewer bad bills JB gets, the fewer veto letters he has to write to explain why.
Where’s the House/Senate leadership?
Comment by thisjustinagain Monday, May 17, 21 @ 9:15 am
=== Just the other day, one lobbyist who works often with a particular state agency was talking about how the agency had zero involvement with bills this year that could significantly alter the agency’s mission. His advice to members was to run their bills the way they wanted.===
If this is true it would benefit the Governor’s office to find out what the people on salary whose job it is to specifically do this have been doing with their time instead. Especially if the legislative liaison in that role was retained from a previous administration. If it’s not an intentional effort to undermine the administration then it must be a misunderstanding of what the job entails or sitting around waiting for explicit instructions from someone in the governor’s office instead of just getting to the work.
===their interpretation is sometimes just flat wrong===
I think it might be difficult to take an administration seriously if they were insisting on a possible impact of legislation and that impact was in accurate. Compounding this is the fact that at this point we are learning that the an agency director and their chief of staff were able to blatantly lie to the Governor’s office about what was going on and that it took them a long time to figure out that was going on or they decided not to promptly fire the liars when they did figure out what was going on. How many other agencies have senior staff that are knowingly lying to the administration? How many agencies have senior staff that are unknowingly passing along someone else’s administration? It’s been brought into doubt whether or not the Governor’s office knows what is actually happening at the agencies they’re responsible for and brings me back to something I think has been an issue all along — they didn’t bring in enough people to state government that were supportive of Pritzker’s specific vision for the state and retained too many Rauner appointees in too many important or senior positions.
I think there is a disconnect between the Governor’s office and management at his state agencies though in most cases I think that the disconnect happens below the Director’s level and I think that’s caused by incumbents that were never qualified for the position that they’re in who weren’t replaced and I think those issues will continue to plague and embarrass the Governor’s administration when they come to light.
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, May 17, 21 @ 9:29 am
You would think these legislators/ staff would contact the agencies before introducing some of this ridiculous legislation. They have decided that they are the subject experts and need no help. It works both ways.
Comment by Captain Ron Monday, May 17, 21 @ 9:55 am
I saw Rich’s piece in the Sun Times over the weekend and knew it would provoke an interesting comment thread here this morning. I keep thinking about the meaning of the mantra of “It’s just a bill.”
Comment by Responsa Monday, May 17, 21 @ 10:21 am
I used to work for the state in legal roles at several agencies. This thread and the comments are fascinating to me. It always seemed like there was a huge disconnect between the GA and the agencies who were supposed to do the work the GA was mandating agencies to do via legislation. The amount of inefficiency and waste this caused is hard to overestimate. It causes an endless cycle of audit findings, “teaching to the test” agency practices (wherein the agency works hard to meet a pointless mandate at the expense of its core work, such as helping people).
Curiously, the problem persisted regardless of politics - in other words, Democratic legislators did it to both D and R administrations. The problem from where i was sitting is that legislators are not accountable for the mandates they impose, and they have every incentive to push “tough” legislation and then blame executive branch officials when something goes wrong.
Comment by former state agency lawyer here Monday, May 17, 21 @ 10:40 am
=== It’s not easy being governor ===
Stericycle
Cannabis licensing
Lightford v Harmon
IDES
IDVA
DCFS
Education funding
Redistricting
The governor has had his ups and downs with the legislature. A big part of the problem is that his senior staff does not appear to see The Legislature as a co-equal branch of government, or legislators as equal partners, not even Mitchell. Manar yes, but it’s hard to see he is having much of an impact on the culture of the office.
Comment by Thomas Paine Monday, May 17, 21 @ 10:48 am
I bet some people miss MJM now that he’s gone. He had the institutional memory, and listened to others with institutional memory, to recognize when something just wasn’t right about a bill. He had the fortitude to filter out a lot of bad legislation. I bet a lot of people who miss him now are some of the people who chanted “Because Madigan” last year.
Comment by Quizzical Monday, May 17, 21 @ 10:50 am
Thinking of how a former Governor and federal convict used the phrase ‘drunken sailors’ to describe the legislature.
Post Madigan this was going to be tough no matter what. People obviously, see this as an opportunity. With Illinois generally embracing a more progressive agenda the desire to do and the lack of ability to afford was going to come into conflict.
Comment by OneMan Monday, May 17, 21 @ 10:54 am
This happened all the time under MJM too. Unaccountable legislators forcing mandates on understaffed and underfunded agencies who then reallocate resources from core mission to meeting pointless mandates in order to avoid audit findings. This is nothing new - legislators have every incentive to appear tough or “creative” and none to work within the confines of a particular agency’s headcount and budget.
Comment by idle chatterer Monday, May 17, 21 @ 10:55 am
“does not appear to see the legislature as a coequal branch”
This is nonsense. Mitchell has been engaged for months with the legislature to try and land a compromise on energy - despite some folks under the dome refusing to see how dangerous it would be to force their colleagues to vote on another hand out to the utilities. Some of the griping on here about individual members of the gov’s team has gotten insane.
Look some of this is just the normal tug and pull between the executive and legislative branch. But I’m also seeing hundreds of bills get filed overnight that all the agencies have to track and respond to and a bunch of new legislators that are not even giving their senior legislative colleagues the deference to hear them out on changes to bills. The GA can approach legislating with a devil may care attitude but they can’t do that and insist that the Governor and his staff turn a blind eye to it.
It would be nice to see some order imposed by the House and Senate leadership.
Comment by DuPage Dem Monday, May 17, 21 @ 11:30 am
===A big part of the problem is that his senior staff does not appear to see The Legislature as a co-equal branch of government, or legislators as equal partners===
Have you factored in Madigan and Cullerton stopping bills before they go too far in process?
Thing is, the legislature could decide to, as described, herd cats and cull bills that won’t work… but if they’re not, it’s overreach or the executive not respecting the legislative?
“Pass whatever you want, it’ll get vetoed unless…”
Isn’t that process too, this time with the governor being the “bad guy”, not Harmon or Welch?
Comment by Oswego Willy Monday, May 17, 21 @ 11:38 am
===You would think these legislators/ staff would contact the agencies before introducing some of this ridiculous legislation.===
In fairness to the legislators the last time I checked there were people employed at every agency that served as a legislative liaison, and in most cases it is a team of people. There is no requirement for those liaisons to sit and wait for someone to call them or to only be involved with legislation that the agency is internally encouraging.
===The amount of inefficiency and waste this caused is hard to overestimate. It causes an endless cycle of audit findings, “teaching to the test” agency practices (wherein the agency works hard to meet a pointless mandate at the expense of its core work, such as helping people).===
The real question here should be whether or not the state has a bureaucracy that is capable of administrating itself well or if our bureaucracy just muddles through the day to day business. It’d be interesting to see how much each agency spends on program evaluation, implementation, and design. No organization just accidentally figures out how to do things better on a consistent enough basis to matter.
The law of instrument, the old when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail, gets a lot more depressing if you never bother to look at the nails in the first place.
===understaffed and underfunded agencies===
Who gets the blame for unfilled positions?
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, May 17, 21 @ 11:46 am
===No guardrails, no limits…and apparently no adult supervision this session.=== Aren’t the GOP / opponents asking for Fiscal Notes?
Comment by Anyone Remember Monday, May 17, 21 @ 11:57 am
I know of seasoned agency liaisons that are being told not to work against bills that harm them by the Governor’s legislative staff. Those staff in turn are trying to “fix” some of these bills with disastrous results. This new dynamic is going to come back to haunt the Governor.
Comment by Anon1 Monday, May 17, 21 @ 12:19 pm
Good to see that the Sun Times is willing to go into a deeper look into what is going on and how things happen in Springfield.
As to the post, agree with Candy D.
Comment by Back to the Future Monday, May 17, 21 @ 12:45 pm
///In fairness to the legislators the last time I checked there were people employed at every agency that served as a legislative liaison, and in most cases it is a team of people. There is no requirement for those liaisons to sit and wait for someone to call them or to only be involved with legislation that the agency is internally encouraging.///
You are right on there being no requirement however a lot
of work can be done before a bill is ever introduced if you
Include the experts on the front end.
Comment by Captain Ron Monday, May 17, 21 @ 1:27 pm
All in the governor’s office got pay raises. Some are being paid out of the Governor’s own personal pocket. If memory serves, several are former legislators. Yet the agencies this governor directly oversees are loaded with individuals holding acting titles and vacancies. There seems to be a backlog of Senate confirmations of appointments, some dating back nearly two years. Complaints about unemployment insurance, lack of responsiveness and other state agency type of issues are usually brushed aside.
I’m sure Covid-19 soaked up a ton of their time but a lot of the complaints about his office have merit and seem to be repeatedly brushed off.
After the Governor backed off of his campaign pledge to veto any legislative redistricting reforms that would include independent type map drafters, why would any legislator believe his threats to veto legislation?
Comment by Louis G Atsaves Monday, May 17, 21 @ 1:27 pm
“Usually folks who live in EasternBlocHead zones are scared of big cities”
Prejudice much?
Comment by Tired Tuesday, May 18, 21 @ 10:47 am
===Prejudice much? ===
Another self-described victim heard from.
Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, May 18, 21 @ 10:54 am