Legislative Action WHEN the General Assembly
reconvenes on October 22, its major
purpose will be to consider vetoes issued
by the governor. It is not yet possible to
anticipate what might happen on substantive legislation, since the governor
had not yet acted on most of these bills
by our deadline. But he has completed
action on appropriations bills and did
reduce them to carry out his promise to
cut the budget he submitted last March
by 6 per cent. Governor Walker's action
was basically in the form of across-the-
board cuts in appropriations bills. (See
Fiscal 1976 state budget: Vetoes,
vetoes, more vetoes, pp. 291-294.) To accept or not? The work of the first session of the
79th General Assembly is completed,
and the governor has now acted on most
of the 1,406 bills that passed both houses. Much has been said about the
substance of legislative action, but,
other than the mention of the record
number of bills introduced, there has
not been much discussion abut the
quantity of work turned out this session
by the General Assembly. The time has come to focus on some
statistics: namely the numbers of bills
faced by legislators, the percentages
passed, and comparisons with the 78th
General Assembly. The 4,635 bills introduced in one year was clearly a
record; it exceeded by 1.1 per cent the
total of the entire two years of the 78th
General Assembly. But a more
meaningful comparison is with 1973,
the last full annual session. This year's
total was an increase of 39.8 per cent
over the 1973 total of 3,315 bills. The division between the two houses,
however, was somewhat uneven. A
comparison of this year's first session of
the 79th General Assembly with 1973's
first session of the 78th shows an increase of 47.8 per cent in bill introductions in the House of Representatives
and 25.7 per cent in the Senate. The
latter figure might be interpreted as being even smaller by taking into account
the more than 150 so-called "vehicle
bills" which were introduced and then
either tabled or referred to the Rules
Committee as a procedural means of
keeping open the possibility of substantive action in 1976 without changing the
rules to allow for additional non-appropriations bill introductions. Elimination of those bills from the figures would show a Senate increase of only 15.3 per cent over 1973. Do the numbers tell? To change for future? Another result of the enormous
number of bills surfacing during the
1975 session of the 79th General Assembly is the prospect of what's going to happen to all those bills still
"alive" in the House and Senate. The
House created an "interim study calendar" for bills still in committee and a
"fall calendar" for bills still on the floor
in order to keep many bills at least
technically alive for consideration during either the upcoming fall session or
the regular 1976 session. A total of 792
House bills have been placed on these
calendars and represent 25.3 per cent of
the total number introduced by House
members during the regular session.
The House has also assigned to its
calendars 65 Senate bills or nearly 10
per cent of the bills sent to the House October 1975 / Illinois Issues / 313
It seems that there is little that the
General Assembly can do to restore cut
funds to budget bills unless a strong
case can be made as to the availability
of funds to cover the appropriated
amounts. By letting the governor set
priorities through use of the item and
reduction vetoes, the legislature placed
itself in a position of having to accept
Walker's decisions. Assuming that
general revenues will equal the final
amount approved in the bills as signed
by the governor, restorations could only
be made in specific areas if additional
cuts could be made in others. But this
option is not open to the General
Assembly when it comes back to the
veto session. It can only vote to restore
funds at that time. While there may be
some symbolic attempts to add money
back into appropriations—perhaps for
education and public aid—it is likely
that little will be done to budget bills.
More activity is likely in reaction to
gubernatorial vetoes of substantive
legislation.
Another aspect of the "numbers
game" is to look at the quantity of
legislation passed during the regular
session. A total of 2,020 bills passed the
chamber of origin (i.e. House bills passed by the House and Senate bills passed
by the Senate). While bills passing the
house of origin this session increased in
total by 13.3 per cent compared to 1973,
the number as a proportion to the total
of all bills submitted was 43.6 per cent
this year. This 1973 proportion was
53.9 per cent (10 percentage points
higher). But, the numbers evened out
for the 1973 and 1975 sessions when you
compare the bills making it through the
second house: 33.6 per cent of all bills
introduced passed both houses in the
78th General Assembly's 1973 session
compared to 30.3 per cent this year. The
1975 session had 1,320 more bills to
consider than the 1973 session, but the
net result in 1975 was a lower success
rate which eliminated about 40 per cent
of the increase.
But what does this mean for future
legislative action? Some feel that setting cut-off dates for bill introductions
and other steps in the legislative process
only creates artificial deadlines. Faced
with the final date on which substantive
legislation could be introduced in the
1975 session, members threw in everything they could think of, including "the
kitchen sink." In at least one state, New
Jersey, bill introduction deadlines have
been eliminated for just that reason.
According to one New Jersey legislative
official, when there were deadlines,
members had felt obligated to cover all
possibilities regardless of their intentions for actual legislative action. If this
was also the case in Illinois, at least the
numerous "vehicle bills" in the Senate
could have been avoided if the deadline
had not existed.
Legislative Action
after passage in the Senate.
The Senate did not use special calendars, but there are bills technically "alive" in Senate committees and on the floor. Perhaps the bills most likely to be considered are about 50 from both House and Senate assigned to a handful of subcommittees. The numbers indicated do not include the large numbers of bills that were tabled during earlier consideration, particularly in the Senate, and these bills could be reactivated if the membership desired.
The use by the House of study and fall calendars reflects a way to get around the rules. Legislators adhered to their deadlines but created other devices to keep legislation alive for possible future action. It is unlikely that very many of the bills on the interim calendars will ever emerge from committee or come to a vote on the floor, but the possibility for action remains. The calendars do provide one advantage—at least all members have a list of bills which could be considered.
Time enough?
It is possible to interpret the above figures as an indication that standing committees in the 79th General Assembly have been more discriminating than their counterparts in the first session of the 78th in handling large volumes of legislation. It is more plausible, in view of the length of the list of bills on the House's interim study calendar, to reason that committees just did not consider all the bills in the relatively short time allowed by the deadlines imposed on committee work. / L.S.C.
314 / Illinois Issues / October 1975