Capitol Updates: May 6 week in review
Both chambers were in session this week in Springfield. Moratorium on virtual schools passes out of committee On Tuesday afternoon, House Bill 494 passed out of the Senate Subcommittee on Charter Schools and was subsequently approved by the full Senate Education Committee. The Illinois Policy Institute’s Executive Vice President Kristina Rasmussen and Director of Education Reform Josh Dwyer attended both...
Both chambers were in session this week in Springfield.
Moratorium on virtual schools passes out of committee
On Tuesday afternoon, House Bill 494 passed out of the Senate Subcommittee on Charter Schools and was subsequently approved by the full Senate Education Committee.
The Illinois Policy Institute’s Executive Vice President Kristina Rasmussen and Director of Education Reform Josh Dwyer attended both committee hearings and were prepared to testify in opposition to thisunnecessary legislation, but the committee refused to allow the opportunity for oral testimony. Instead, lawmakers pressed forward and voted on the bill without listening to expert accounts of how detrimentalit would be to innovative technology, such as digital learning that expands and improves student outcomes.
HB 494’s next stop is the Senate floor, where it could be voted on by the full chamber as early as next Tuesday.
School choice in Illinois
It was timely that the morning the Senate Education Committee passed HB 494, the Institute hosted a brunch for policymakers and other state-based interest groups on the power of school choice.
Indiana State Rep. Robert Behning, chair of the Indiana House Education Committee and one of the leaders behind the passage and expansion of the Indiana opportunity scholarship program, attended and was joined by Robert Enlow, executive director of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, one of the leading organizations working for school choice across the country.
The event was inspirational and informative. Illinois state Reps. Joe Sosnowski, Jeanne Ives, Tom Morrison, Bob Pritchard, and state Sens. Kyle McCarter and Mike Connelly also attended.
Illinois General Assembly’s pension reform plans weaken and worsen
Yesterday, Senate President John Cullerton called Senate Bill 2404 on the floor, after a series ofamendments were introduced and adopted. This bill makes even less of an improvement to Illinois’ pension crisis than House Speaker Mike Madigan’s amendment to Senate Bill 1, which passed the House last week. However, SB 2404 passed the Senate yesterday, on a vote of 40-16. Neither bill provides real reform as they both keep the 1995 Edgar ramp in place, include a funding guarantee and keep the broken defined benefits system intact. Unfortunately, Illinois’ pension crisis is so disastrous that simply tinkering at the margins will not be enough to bring the state back to fiscal health.
State Sen. Matt Murphy urged fellow lawmakers to vote no on Cullerton’s proposal, saying on the Senate floor that “the big problem with this bill is that it does not solve the problem.” Last week, the Institute’s Senior Budget and Tax Policy Analyst Ben VanMetre made the same point by explaining howMadigan’s pension plan would perpetuate Illinois’ crisis.
This week, the Institute’s Senior Director of Government Affairs Matt Paprocki appeared on WAND News. Paprocki stressed that “in each one of the pension plans that keeps coming out, the savings is getting smaller and smaller. We saw the most recent plan come out yesterday – Cullerton’s plan – which will save about 10 percent of the current unfunded liability. We don’t think that 10 percent cost savings on a 100 billion dollar problem is actually real pension reform.”
Next steps on this front are difficult to predict, as Madigan is not expected to call Cullerton’s bill for a vote in the House, and Cullerton is equally disinterested in calling Madigan’s bill in the Senate.
At a House meeting on pensions on Thursday afternoon, Madigan was quoted as saying “it is going to happen,” referring to the cost-shift component (or local pension accountability) of his reform proposal. This is a solid development, as the Institute traveled across the state last summer educating residents on this common sense reform, promoting its implementation. Local pension accountability is an important element of the fundamental pension reform plan endorsed by the Institute and sponsored by state Reps. Tom Morrison and Jeanne Ives.
Read more about the Institute’s comprehensive solution to Illinois’ pension problem.
43 of 47 members of the Illinois House Republican Caucus oppose a progressive income tax
This week, the Institute’s Government Affairs team recruited another co-sponsor of state Rep. David McSweeney’s House Resolution 241, opposing a progressive tax. Currently, 43 of 47 House Republican representatives have sponsored this legislation.
Next week
Both the Illinois House and Senate will be in session next week, with committee hearings scheduled beginning on Tuesday.