Democrats and Republicans in the Illinois House came together Saturday after tense negotiations to pass a package of legislation that included authorizing a Chicago casino and significant increases in gasoline and cigarette taxes to fund a massive public works program.
After reaching an agreement on an operating budget late Friday, Illinois lawmakers worked beyond their scheduled midnight adjournment and into the weekend on a capital plan and the gambling expansion, two key issues that remained unresolved in the House until late Saturday.
The legislative session went into overtime despite the return of one-party Democratic rule in Springfield, with lawmakers addressing new Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s aggressive agenda after four years of dysfunctional government under his predecessor, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
While Pritzker wasn’t able to accomplish his ambitious agenda by the scheduled deadline, Democrats praised the governor for ultimately being able to check off many items, and Republicans gave him credit for brokering bipartisan agreements on the budget and infrastructure plan.
“The governor has asked a lot, and he’s also accomplished a tremendous amount,” House Democratic leader Greg Harris of Chicago said, citing legislation legalizing recreational marijuana, raising the minimum wage and protecting abortions rights. “Any one of the things Gov. Pritzker and the General Assembly have done this year in other years would have been considered monumental.”
The budget bills passed by the House on Saturday, including gambling expansion and other revenue streams to support a $45 billion, multiyear infrastructure plan, must now go to the Senate for ratification. The Senate is expected to reconvene Sunday afternoon.
Tax increases, including a doubling of the state’s 19-cent-per-gallon motor fuel tax to 38 cents, and higher fees for license plates and driver’s licenses, were approved by the House as revenue sources for improvements to roads and mass transit. A $1-per-pack cigarette tax hike on the current $1.98 state tax is also part of a related plan for public building construction.
“After years of neglecting our state’s roads, bridges, mass transit, and buildings, Illinoisans’ health and safety have been jeopardized, and job creation has been hindered. I’m proud that the state is on the verge of adopting a bipartisan infrastructure plan for the first time in a decade. Our plan to rebuild our roads, bridges and communities will create hundreds of thousands of jobs throughout our state,” Pritzker said in a statement Saturday.
The House “led the way” on the creation of a capital bill, Republican Rep. Margo McDermed of Mokena said.
“Long-term, sustainable funding is the key, ladies and gentleman,” McDermed said. “This is a good way to move forward.”
The list of public works projects moved to the Democratic governor’s desk while the tax-hike project funding still awaits Senate approval. But some Republicans took to the House floor to defend some of the tax increases included in the budget and capital plan.
Republican Rep. Steve Reick of Woodstock, said he was supporting the gas tax increase to support infrastructure improvements, decrying the state of the roads in parts of McHenry County. The capital plan includes a major widening of Illinois Route 47 through Woodstock.
“Our roads are crumbling,” Reick said. “The one thing that makes Illinois the centerpiece of transportation in this country is falling apart. And we can’t expect someone else to pick up the tab. We have to do this ourselves.”
However, not all GOP members were willing to endorse the bipartisan agreement. Republican Rep. David McSweeney of Barrington Hills called the package “a massive expansion of government.”
“This is a loss for the people of the state of Illinois,” McSweeney said.
Negotiations on the gambling expansion remained one of the most stubborn items on Pritzker’s agenda, and Democratic Rep. Bob Rita of Blue Island, one of the chief negotiators on that legislation, called the last 48 hours before the House vote a “whirlwind.”
The massive gambling bill that included a major casino in Chicago and smaller ones in the south suburbs and Waukegan also would open up slots for Chicago’s airports and the state’s horse racetracks, and legalize sports betting. It awaits Senate approval.
The Chicago casino would be privately owned, and the city would get one-third of all tax revenue from it. The casino would have up to 4,000 gambling positions — slot machines or seats at a gaming table — while other new and current casinos could increase their gambling positions from 1,200 to 2,000. It also would allow horse tracks to have 1,200 gambling positions.
For sports betting, licenses would go to all existing and newly authorized casinos as well as horse racetracks and sports venues with license fees ranging from $3.2 million to $10 million.
For the first year and a half, bettors would have to create an account at a licensed gambling facility and then could make deposits online afterward. After 18 months, three online licenses would be created at $20 million per license. Fantasy sports wagering firms could partner as an online vendor at casinos, racetracks or sports venues.
A lottery sports wagering program also would be created.
Sports leagues would not get any of the cut, and wagering on Illinois college teams would be prohibited by the legislation.
New Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot had expressed concern that the gambling bill’s allowance of sports betting at major league sports facilities such as Wrigley Field and the United Center would cut into the city’s tax take. But discussions led to the bill moving on with those facilities allowed to have a betting kiosk under legalized sports wagering.
The final budget agreement also includes a group of business tax credits pushed by House Republicans, including restoring a credit that allows manufacturers to make deductions for equipment purchases, phasing out the franchise tax paid by corporations and creating a new tax credit for data centers, among other items.
Negotiations lasted into Saturday evening after a flurry of activity Friday into early Saturday that saw lawmakers legalizing adult-use marijuana and passing a sweeping abortion bill and new state budget. Both chambers of the Illinois General Assembly passed a roughly $40 billion spending plan on Friday but left a series of major bills undone for the weekend.
It was a contentious Friday at the Capitol that was supposed to be the final day of the spring session as the more than 1,500-page budget document, which a group of lawmakers drafted behind closed doors, landed on lawmakers’ desks.
The House on Saturday evening passed the revenue package for the public works program in a 107-9 vote that includes funding from expanding the state sales tax to internet purchases.
“I believe the package we have struck tonight represents what Illinois needs to move forward,” Assistant House Republican Leader Tom Demmer said.
The votes that came late Saturday marked a major change from a slow-moving Friday when Democrats criticized Republicans for drawn-out speeches and accused them of trying to stall the process until after midnight.
The three-hour debate over legalizing marijuana on Friday, part of the “think big” agenda Pritzker campaigned on, was an early sign of how slowly things would move in Springfield most of Friday. After the 66-47 House vote, the governor issued a statement in which he promised to sign a bill that he said offers “the most equity-centric approach in the nation.”
With the governor’s signature, Illinois would become the first state to create a commercial recreational marijuana industry through the legislature rather than by voter initiative.
The bill takes effect Jan. 1 and would allow residents age 21 and older to legally possess 30 grams of cannabis, 5 grams of cannabis concentrate or 500 milligrams of THC contained in a cannabis-infused product. Nonresidents could possess 15 grams of cannabis. It also would create a licensed cultivation and dispensary system, and it would direct Pritzker to use his power to pardon people convicted of low-level marijuana possession in the past.
Legalizing marijuana is expected to generate $57 million in general revenue in the coming budget year and $30 million for a cannabis business development fund. That’s far less than the $170 million Pritzker projected in his spending plan, but budget negotiators have said they aren’t counting on any of that revenue.
Late Friday, the Senate voted 34-20 to send Pritzker a sweeping abortion rights bill previously passed by the House amid an increased sense of urgency among proponents to pass a law to protect access to the procedure as other states have passed laws essentially banning the practice.
“The health of pregnant patients must be paramount,” said sponsoring Sen. Melinda Bush, D-Grayslake.
The bill establishes the “fundamental right” of a woman to have an abortion and states that a “fertilized egg, embryo or fetus does not have independent rights.” It repeals the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975, doing away with provisions for spousal consent, waiting periods, criminal penalties for physicians who perform abortions and other restrictions on facilities where abortions are performed.
Republican Sen. Dale Righter of Mattoon said the idea that the measure is necessary “simply to protect a woman’s right to choose is not accurate.”
“This bill goes much further and does much more,” Righter said.
A number of measures in the current Illinois abortion law are not enforced because of court injunctions, but proponents of the Reproductive Health Act argue that several cases in the Supreme Court pipeline could provide an avenue for overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case, which legalized abortion nationwide.
The House’s bipartisan 83-35 vote on a $40 billion state budget plan Friday night followed a series of meetings that included Pritzker and Durkin. The House sent the bill to the Senate, which approved the plan early Saturday.
The budget plan would increase by $25 million the $350 million annual boost in public grade school and high school funding required under last year’s rewrite of the formula used by the state to dole out money to schools.
It also would provide an increase of $66 million, or 5%, to funding for public colleges and universities, many of which were devastated during the state’s historic budget impasse under one-term former Gov. Bruce Rauner. Also included were a $50 million increase in funding for Monetary Award Program awards for students from low-income households and a $10 million increase in non-income-related Aim High grants for student achievers.
The spending plan also adds at least $89 million for the Department of Children and Family Services in an attempt to address problems within the agency, including high caseloads and the deaths of children whose families had involvement with the agency.
