Treasurer's Office- Late May and Early June

It is time for me to give my update about what has been going on the Treasurer's Office as of late. After the craziness of the first week of May (which was supposed to be the last weekend of session, but wasn't) the following couple of weeks were the exact opposite. The House adjourned on Friday the 7th until the call of the speaker because there were not enough votes to pass the biggest pieces of legislation remaining, those surrounding the budget. So everyone who works in some capacity with the Legislature had a two-week slowdown before the House returned the week of May 24th.



During those two weeks I remained semi-busy working on projects thrown my way by Colleen and John. (My boss and a legislative analyst in the office....It has been a while since I started blogging and I can't remember who I have all identified. And if I have before and I just don't remember, then consider this a refresher.) One of the things I was assigned was to write up an analysis on a propsed bill in the House that would allow the medical use of marijuana in the State. Regardless of one's feelings on the issue, it was an interesting bill to study. Because it is a bill with many components it took me a decent amount of time to initially go through it, write the analysis, and then revise the analysis after Colleen and John sent back thier comments and suggested changes.



I also created a spreadsheet tracking job numbers for all 50 states over various time periods. It was both interesting and a little scary at the same time. With few exceptions, states experienced a loss of jobs in all the time periods, some in the hundreds of thousands. For example, Illinois lost over 260,000 jobs in the period from January 2003 to March 2010 (The most current data available at the time). Not encouraging for someone who will be entering the job market in less than a year....



I also had to write another bill analysis, this time on a bill that has passed both chambers and is not just waiting for the Governor's signature to become law. The bill creates the African American Employment Plan which is designed to better facilitate the hiring and promotion of African Americans throughout state agencies. Another time consuming bill.



The House and Senate returned in the last week of May to attempt to finish a budget. The Capitol was busy once again after a quiet two weeks. The House came back first, on Monday, because they left with more unfinished business than the Senate. I spent the day going through various amendments that were being filed to the budget bills. One amendment cut the Treasurer's office for FY 2011 by 5% so I quickly sent the amendment for review to the rest of the legislative team to determine the best course of action. The Treasurer's office budget was already remaining the same as FY 2010 (which is viewed as taking a cut, as it is supposed to increase each year) and an additional 5% cut would be difficult.



On Tuesday I went to the House Revenue and Finance committee where all of the budget amendments were to be heard, including the one cutting the Treasurer's budget. I arrived in the hearing room very early, expecting a large crowd in what has to be the smallest hearing room in the building. Slowly representatives began to file in and right before the committee started, Illinois' Attorney General Lisa Madigan also walked in. It turned out she was there to testify in opposition to the same amendment I was there for as it also cut her office's budget (the one amendment cut all of the constitutional officers budget by 5%). Not long after the committee started, Speaker Madigan also walked in to the committee room. He rarely makes an appearance in committees, especially one where his daughter was about to testify. After the AG testified and the amendment died in the committee (it did not even recieve a motion to pass, so no vote was taken and it is considered dead) Secretary of State Jesse White walked into the room to testify about the same amendment. He was surprised to find that the amendment had already failed and then laughed and joked with the representatives, thanking them for their time even though he did not need to testify. One very star-studded (if you know Illinois politics) committee hearing!



Session finally began around 3:30 on Tuesday and went on for the next 6 hours. An extremely controversial bill that would allow the State to borrow up to $4 billion to may the payments to State pension systems took up a good amount of debate. Needing 71 votes to pass, it only recieved 70 on the first go around. The floor went quiet for some time until one of the two Democratic legislators voting no on the measure stood up to request a re-vote. The Republicans immediately went to caucus after this announcement for over an hour. After they returned, another long round of debate over the bill, the process that was occuring, etc, occured before another vote was taken. This time the required 71 votes were achieved and the bill passed. After that more pieces of budget legislation were brought up to be voted on but it was almost as if the Republicans had given up. Only a small amount of debate was held on each issue and everything passed. The House continued voting on bills until 9:30 that evening.

Wednesday turned out to be a very long day of listening to the House go through bill after bill. Listening to debate is usually interesting at first, but after 8-9 hours of it all I wanted was some quiet time. The Senate also returned to Springfield on Wednesday but did not take care of much, saving most for Thursday.

As had been rumored, Governor Quinn issued his amendatory veto of the bill to reform the McCormick Convention Center in Chicago. The House quickly over-rode this veto with the required vote and the Senate did the same not long after. The Senate then went through all of the other budget pieces the House had passed out (plus several other non-budget items) with the exception of the bill to allow borrowing for the pension systems, the one that caused so much trouble in the House on Wednesday. It was discovered that enough Democratic senators were opposed to the bill that it would not garner the required super-majority vote. Both the House and Senate adjourned until the call of the chair. For the House this likely means that they will not be back until veto session in November. The Senate may return at some point over the summer if enough Senators agree to vote for the borrowing bill.

It has been a very quiet beginning to June here. With the Legislature finished up (basically) for the summer, I have been helping out with a few end of session tasks like putting together binders that have all information pertinent to our office's bills. I also authored letters to the Governor asking for his signature on the bills our office worked on. There are several pieces of legislation that are in the works for possible action during veto session this fall so I have also written analyses of several bills in preparation for such action.

It is hard to believe that my residency will be over in a couple of weeks. The time I have spent here has gone by extremely quickly and it has been such an enjoyable experience. I will have one more post at the end of June to recap what my final weeks have been like.