Gov. J.B. Pritzker touts ‘fiscal discipline’ of $42 billion budget passed by Democrats as debate over energy policy and subsidies to ComEd parent drags on
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Gov. J.B. Pritzker took a victory lap Tuesday on the $42 billion state budget that the Democratic-controlled legislature went into overtime to pass, but lawmakers left Springfield without an agreement on an energy policy that would include a multimillion-dollar bailout for nuclear power plants in the state.
Reaching a deal to preserve the nuclear plants — and the jobs of their thousands of union employees — was one of the most pressing issues facing lawmakers, who also sought to avoid any perception they were giving something away to a utility in light of the Commonwealth Edison bribery scandal. But ComEd parent Exelon has said it will shut down two northern Illinois plants if the state didn’t provide more help this spring.
There was, however, movement on the politically volatile issue of creating an elected school board in Chicago, a move opposed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Legislation that would make a 21-member Chicago Public Schools board fully elected by 2027 was passed Thursday evening by the Senate on a 36-15 vote. The measure now goes to the House, and would also require a signature from Pritzker, who has said he’s behind an elected board.
The House and Senate worked past their scheduled May 31 adjournment to approve a state spending plan for the budget year that begins July 1, but Democrats used their supermajorities to easily pass the budget despite the higher vote threshold required to do so after that deadline.
The budget, which was balanced with the help of more than $655 million in revenue raised by closing what Pritzker and his fellow Democrats call “corporate loopholes” — changes Republicans label as tax hikes on businesses — also would spend roughly $2.5 billion of the more than $8 billion the state will receive from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan.
The spending plan also would pay off a $2 billion emergency loan the state took out from the Federal Reserve in December and meet the state’s obligations to fund schools and make its required annual contribution to its severely underfunded pension plans.
After months of heightened tension between Democrats and Republicans over legislative redistricting and other issues, Pritzker, who still has to sign the budget into law, praised it in purely partisan terms.
“We Democrats are investing in priorities that will grow and revitalize our economy, improving our fiscal outlook dramatically and reducing tax expenditures on the wealthiest corporations,” Pritzker said during a statehouse news conference, his first public appearance since May 19. “It’s the Democrats that are getting the state’s fiscal house in order. That’s the story of this budget. That’s the story of Illinois in 2021. Fiscal discipline pays off.”
The governor rattled off a list of other legislative accomplishments that included a measure tightening state government ethics and lobbying laws amid an ongoing federal corruption investigation in which ComEd has admitted engaging in a yearslong bribery scheme aimed at currying favor with former House Speaker Michael Madigan. Madigan has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing.
The proposed law would strengthen economic interest disclosures for lawmakers and other state officials, create a six-month revolving door prohibition on legislators becoming lobbyists, and prohibit members of the General Assembly and certain other state officials from holding political fundraisers while the legislature is in session.
Good-government groups and some Republicans who voted in favor of the measure, which passed 113-5 in the House and unanimously in the Senate, said it doesn’t go far enough to address ethical lapses.
But as the calendar turned from May to June, a deal remained elusive on a massive energy package that also would include a deadline to shut down coal-fired power plants in the state toward the goal of reaching 100% carbon-free energy.
Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch of Hillside sent House members home early Tuesday morning, telling them he’d call them back to the Capitol when an energy package is ready for a vote.
Senate President Don Harmon of Oak Park kept members in town with the hopes of voting to send the matter to the House.
After weeks of contentious negotiations, the governor’s office and Exelon had reached an agreement on subsidies for the company’s nuclear plants, sources said, though the details were not made public.
Pritzker, who vowed in the wake of the ComEd scandal that utilities and energy companies would no longer write the state’s energy policy, declined to comment on the specifics of his offer, saying that negotiators were “still working on the bill.”
“Utilities did not write the bill that we have worked on. That is clear,” Pritzker said. “We have done everything that we can to stand up for clean energy principles, to make sure that we’re expanding renewables in the state. I have set out the principles, I have stuck to those principles, and so my hope is that we’ll end up with a good energy bill.”
But a new wrinkle emerged in negotiations late Monday.
An eleventh-hour disagreement over whether the Prairie State Generating Station in southern Illinois and city-owned power plant in Springfield should be exempted from deadlines for shutting down coal-fired power plants by 2035 scuttled the compromise, at least temporarily.
Supporters were pushing the exemption because of outstanding bond debt on the facilities, but the governor’s office said Pritzker would not sign a bill that gives them special treatment.
Republican state Rep. Tom Demmer of Dixon said Tuesday that it’s appropriate for the municipal utilities, including those in Springfield, Naperville and other towns, to seek a carveout.
“If we make a policy change that limits their ability to repay these long-term bonds that they’ve entered into, people in those communities will essentially be paying twice for electricity,” Demmer said. “They’ll be paying once to retire the bonds that they entered into believing the policy was, as it was at the time, and we’ve changed something on them midstream. If those plants close, they have to go somewhere else to buy electricity.”
GOP Rep. David Welter of Morris, whose district is home to Exelon’s Dresden nuclear plant, one of two the company has said it would shut down without additional subsidies, said he remains optimistic a deal can be reached.
“We’re looking for that commitment that we can get back down here within the next week and finish this work,” Welter said. “If we don’t, there are some big consequences, consequences not just for the nuclear fleet and the men and women in my district, the thousands of jobs that are at risk if Dresden decides to continue to move to close down.”
“This is not a game of brinkmanship that we want to play on this topic,” he added.
No decision has been made about the future of the plants, Exelon spokesman Paul Adams said Tuesday.
“The Illinois legislative session is ongoing,” Adams said in a statement. “We remain hopeful that a bill that preserves the state’s largest source of clean energy will be passed in the coming days.”
Legislation to create a hybrid Chicago Board of Education in 2025 that would transition to a fully elected board two years later was pushed through a committee by Senate Democrats on Tuesday evening before being passed by the full Senate.
Lightfoot’s administration said it was committed to the concept of the elected board but called the timeline too fast and the 21 seats unwieldy, and also objected that the bill did not restrict leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union from running for the board, among other provisions.
Chicago never has had an elected school board, with the seven-member panel for the last few decades entirely appointed by the mayor. Advocates for an elected school board have argued residents have been shut out of the process over how the city’s schools are administered, pointing to rounds of school closures and the district’s financial woes as reasons for change.
“The city understands and acknowledges the history that propelled this bill forward, and we know that the status quo must change,” said Sybil Madison, Ligthfoot’s deputy mayor for education and human services. “We continue to believe this proposal has been rushed, and the bill is flawed in ways that could have grave consequences for our students.”
Under the legislation, CPS would transition to a hybrid board in January 2025, with 10 members elected to four-year terms in the 2024 general election and 11 members appointed by the mayor, including the board president. The mayor’s appointments would require City Council confirmation, which Lightfoot’s office did not support.
In the 2026 general election, the board’s other 10 members and a board president would be elected to four-year terms, placing a fully elected board in place in January 2027. Under the plan, 20 member would be elected from districts throughout Chicago while the board president would be elected at-large across the entire city.
When Lightfoot ran for office, she supported an elected board but has since changed her position and said the mayor should remain in control of CPS.
“We can’t have a school board that’s more than twice as large as the largest school board in the country. That just doesn’t make sense,” said current Board of Education President Miguel del Valle, the only candidate in the city’s 2011 mayoral race to back an elected school board. “Down the road, I could see dysfunction, I could see lots of problems, I can see stalemates, I can see all kinds of issues here.”
The bill’s sponsor, however, contended it is long overdue to put the district’s future directly in the hands of voters, particularly because of the fiscal problems the district has faced in recent years.
“In 1995, when the full authoritarian control of the Chicago Public Schools was granted to one person, the mayor of the city of Chicago, their first act was to skip pension payments for a decade,” said Sen. Robert Martwick, D-Chicago. “This is what’s been done by a board that was not accountable to the voters.”
After voting on the elected school board, the Senate adjourned “to the call of the president.” That means, like the House, the body could be summoned to Springfield to resume deliberations on the outstanding issues.
