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 On Jan. 29 the Illinois House of Representatives voted on the
new House Rules, which for the next two years will govern the House legislative
procedures during the 101st General Assembly. Every state establishes rules for
the process of legislating, but Illinois’ House Rules are notorious for handing
Speaker of the House Mike Madigan more power than virtually any other presiding
officer in any other state legislative chamber.
There are several changes to this term’s House Rules, but none of those changes
have addressed the outsized power that the speaker since 1983 has amassed in
Springfield.
Madigan has the power to dole out committee chair positions with $10,000
stipends. He controls who votes in committee, which bills will be called for a
vote and when, whether a bill will even have a vote at all, or if it will be
stuck in the House Rules Committee where, historically, bills have gone to die.
Here is how the landscape looks with the new rules just approved by the House:
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Madigan still has the power to
appoint – and remove – committee chairs, and thereby bestow or take away the
$10,000 stipends that accompany the positions.
Under the House rules, the Illinois House speaker has sole discretion to
give and take away chair positions – and the $10,000 annual stipends that
accompany them – for the legislative committees that preside over issues
ranging from agriculture to veterans affairs.
The possibility of losing a leadership appointment and stipend increases the
temptation for lawmakers to side with their leadership rather than the
constituents they represent. Party discipline rarely wavers.
And while most states do allow the speaker to appoint committee chairs, most
of those positions do not come with the same generous stipends. In fact, as
of 2017, more than two-thirds of the committee chairs in the nation’s 99
state legislative chambers receive no compensation for their committee
leadership positions. Eliminating those stipends in Illinois would have been
a step toward real reform.
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The newly sworn-in House will have
fewer committees and stipend-earning chairpersons than the previous House.
One positive development coming to the 101st General Assembly is a modest
reduction of legislative committees in the House. In the past, many
committee positions have not required much work to justify the stipends that
accompanied them. Many committees had fewer than five meetings and some
committees did not meet at all. This term, the House Rules eliminate 15
standing committees while creating just five new ones, for a net reduction
of 10 standing committees — as well as the chairpersonships and stipends
that go with them. That, at least, is a win for taxpayers.
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Madigan can still substitute members
of legislative committees, thereby getting the votes he wants while
protecting committee members from taking votes that are unpopular in their
districts.
In Illinois, the speaker can appoint temporary replacements for any
committee member who is ill or “otherwise unavailable.” This means that if a
lawmaker does not want to be on the record for taking an unpopular vote,
Madigan can swap out that member for one in a safe seat who will not face an
election opponent or a drop in constituent approval for a vote.
These substitutions are common: In 2016 there were over 600 committee
substitutions, and the new House Rules do nothing to reform this practice.
Illinois should follow the full third of legislative chambers that do not
allow committee replacements. Members of committees should be held
accountable for their committee votes. If members cannot show up to a
committee meeting, they should not get a vote.
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Madigan retains the sole
power to dictate when a bill will be called for a vote.
There is no strict schedule for when bills will be called for a
vote in the Illinois House, which means Madigan can call bills
when he wants. Rank-and-file lawmakers are left with no idea
when any particular bill will be heard, if at all. That limits
their ability to prepare for and research a bill, and in turn,
their ability to represent their constituents.
This kind of power, explicitly backed by the House Rules, is
rare. As of 2017, Illinois was one of only three states to grant
the presiding officer the ability to skip from bill to bill
without prior notice and without the opportunity for objection
from the rest of the body. A 2017 Illinois Policy Institute
study confirmed that at least 55 other state legislative
chambers call bills in a predetermined order, allowing lawmakers
to prepare before the debate and vote. Illinois should do the
same.
The new House Rules do nothing to reform this practice, and
lawmakers will be left guessing which bill will receive a vote,
and when.
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Madigan can still kill
bills before they have a chance to be heard, as the Rules
Committee determines whether a bill will be vetted or sit in
committee until it dies.
Madigan, unlike his counterparts in most other states, has the
power to kill bills, even those that have popular support and
deserve true floor debate, by virtue of his power to handpick
the majority of the Rules Committee members. That committee
determines whether a bill will be sent to a substantive
committee for deliberation or simply sit in the Rules Committee
until it dies.
As of 2017, Illinois was one of only nine states to require
bills to go to a Rules Committee before being vetted in a
substantive committee. When a lawmaker introduces a bill in the
House, it automatically goes to the House Rules Committee, which
is expected to sort bills and send them to the appropriate
committees. But, in reality, the committee can sit on bills that
the speaker opposes by never acting on them. The bills
effectively die through inaction.
In order to get a bill out of the Rules Committee without that
committee’s approval, three-fifths of both the minority and
majority caucuses must sign a petition – and each member of
those three-fifths must also become a sponsor of the bill. The
other way to get a bill out of the Rules Committee, a “motion to
discharge,” requires unanimous consent of the House, a
punishingly high hurdle. In contrast, it simply takes approval
of the majority of members to get a bill out of a substantive
committee.
Perhaps ironically, this rule in its basic form was first
implemented in the short period when Republicans controlled the
Illinois House. When Madigan found his way back into the
speaker’s chair in 1997, he was greeted with added power,
courtesy of his Republican rivals.
A proposal Jan. 25 by House Rep. Mark Batinick, R-Plainfield,
would have required that a bill stuck in Rules Committee be
discharged on a supermajority vote. That would have been a
modest but meaningful step toward balancing the Rules
Committee’s power, but the new House Rules do not even go that
far.
Each of these rules adds to the speaker’s power in
the House, but taken together, they give him power over it. And once
again, the new rules are little different than the old ones. If
Illinoisans are to benefit from a well-functioning legislative
process, they will need to convince their representatives that the
House Rules stand in the way of transparency and fairness.
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