Unfinished business: Illinois House ends session without passing balanced budget

The Illinois House of Representatives concluded its 2015 session without passing a budget, relying instead on piecemeal legislation to resolve policy issues and fill funding gaps.

The last scheduled session for the Illinois House of Representatives concluded Dec. 2 without a resolution of the biggest issue facing lawmakers: the six-month lack of a state budget. While the House celebrated a couple of bipartisan votes, achievement on the most significant matter will have to wait until next year, as the governor has indicated he believes there won’t be a budget until 2016.

An overwhelming, bipartisan majority of the House did pass Senate Bill 2039 on Dec. 2, which released over $3 billion dollars to pay lottery winners and local governments out of special funds, and provided assistance to domestic violence shelters and the Office of the Secretary of State with $28 million of general revenue funds.

Republicans noted in a debate over the measure that the appropriation of the special funds needed to happen, but voiced their frustration with House Democrats’ use of underhanded tactics to add general revenue expenditures to the bill. The House passed a bill almost unanimously on Nov. 10 that encompassed much of these special-fund appropriations, but Democrats, with little explanation, refused to move that bill to the Senate. Instead, the Democrats tacked on the general revenue expenditures they wanted as well as more special funds Republicans had requested in order to force the votes of Republicans who have consistently refused to spend general-revenue-fund money in this piecemeal fashion.

House Bill 1285, which also passed both houses of the General Assembly with bipartisan majorities Dec. 2, codified the unemployment-insurance reform deal reached Nov. 9 by representatives of labor groups such as the AFL-CIO, business groups such as the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, and Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration. No manipulative procedural maneuvers occurred at this meeting – interested parties simply worked out a deal. Business and the Rauner administration got commonsense reforms that limit eligibility for unemployment insurance if an employee is dismissed for misconduct, including violating attendance policies, damaging employer property, and drinking alcohol on the job. Labor was able to remove the limitation on unemployment benefits for those also receiving Social Security. By coming to the table, the affected parties avoided a $470 million tax on employers and a dramatic decrease in unemployment benefits that were scheduled to occur in 2016.

Although people on both sides of the aisle praised the legislation as the result of hard work and good-faith negotiation, Illinoisans shouldn’t give the General Assembly too much credit. As representatives noted during the debate on the appropriations bill, the progress that was made this week was piecemeal, with no budget in sight.

Bipartisan bills are gratifying, and right now any progress in Springfield is encouraging. But the work done on these bills – especially unemployment insurance – shouldn’t be remarkable. Honest, good-faith negotiations should be normal operating procedure for the General Assembly, and this should have happened months ago on the budget the state still doesn’t have.