Budget negotiations continue as Illinois lawmakers enter final week of spring session (2024)

SPRINGFIELD — Budget negotiations continue as Gov. J.B. Pritzker and state lawmakers enter the final week of spring legislative session seeking to strike a balance between competing spending priorities while also raising the additional revenue necessary to support priority programs in a tight budget year.

Lawmakers will return to Springfield on Monday and are scheduled to adjourn on Friday. The session has largely been ho-hum to this point, with the flow of bills passed more than a trickle, but less than the flood that advanced last year. Election year sessions tend to be less legislatively productive, with lawmakers preparing to face voters in a few months.

But some tough choices remain for state policymakers before they can skip town and campaign ahead of the November election.

Among them: the need for new revenue to support the spending proposed by Pritzker when he introduced the budget in February. Lawmakers, advocacy groups and others have also added items to the wish list, such as greater levels of state funding for K-12 education.

"It's up to us to help deliver a balanced budget, so we have to really try to look at everything in terms of revenue, where maybe cuts can be made," said state Rep. Sharon Chung, D-Bloomington. "All those things are on the table right now."

Other legislative efforts remain unfinished, including Pritzker’s health care reform package, which aims to reign in and even outright ban some so-called “utilization management” practices used by insurance companies to control costs, such as prior authorization and step therapy.

That legislation passed the House in April but has yet to move in the Senate.

But the major piece of unfinished business, as is the case nearly every year, is the state budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

House and Senate appropriations committees have held legislative hearings on aspects of the budget since March. But the vast majority of negotiations are taking place out of public view, and with just a handful of lawmakers known as “budgeteers” at the table.

Supermajority Democrats in the House and Senate worked to build consensus around a spending package in their private caucus meetings last week, receiving information and providing feedback to budget negotiators.

Republicans, at least in the Senate, have also been privy to budget discussions. But their ultimate influence over the final product is uncertain.

"I would say we’re very encouraged by the ongoing discussions," said state Sen. Don DeWitte, R-St. Charles. "We hope to have a resolution by the end of next week."

When lawmakers left on Friday, they were more optimistic than when they arrived earlier in the week.

“My sense is that it's going pretty well,” said state Sen. Dave Koehler, D-Peoria. “I mean, the wheels could come off in a day or two. But I think that all the issues are out there on the table. Some good conversations have been going on with both caucuses — the House and the Senate. And so I think we could conceivably get this done by the 24th.”

With robust post-COVID tax revenues finally slowing down, Pritzker’s $52.7 billion budget proposal relies on more than $800 million in revenue enhancements to achieve balance.

These include a tax hike on sportsbooks, such as FanDuel and DraftKings, from 15% to 35%; a three-year extension of the cap large corporations can write off on their state income taxes that was due to sunset at the end of the year; and capping the retailer’s discount that businesses can claim for helping collect the state’s sales tax.

State legislators initially balked at the idea of increasing or extending taxes during an election year. This led to Deputy Gov. Andy Manar earlier this month telling state agency directors in a memo to “prepare to implement a potential balanced budget scenario with $800 million less in available revenue."

House Speaker Chris Welch, D-Hillside, in an interview with Lee Enterprises on Monday, said his members were just going through the process.

"I think the governor's office is doing their part," Welch said. "They're being cautious and conservative and preparing a Plan A, a plan B, maybe a Plan C. That's just how the process works. I do believe in the next 11 days, we're going to land a budget plan that we can all agree on."

By the end of the week, legislative Democrats appeared more open to Pritzker's proposals, specifically the concept of capping the retailer's discount.

Pritzker, speaking with reporters in Springfield on Thursday, said he did not think there needed to be any changes to his revenue proposals, "but we're always open to it."

"The No. 1 principle about my budgets has been and will always be: it has to be balanced," Pritzker said. "So whatever we ended up with at the end of the session this time, as at all the times that I've been governor, is we've got to balance the budget."

In recent weeks, there has been a push for more robust funding of the state's evidence-based funding formula for K-12 schools, specifically from the Chicago Teachers Union, which held a lobby day in the Capitol on Wednesday, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who said earlier this month that the city's schools were "owed $1 billion."

Pritzker has proposed an additional $350 million in evidence-based funding, the same increase he's included in every budget except 2021, where the line item was held flat due to budget uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The prospect of more this year appears extremely unlikely.

"We've invested a lot of new dollars in that in the time since we passed the evidence-based formula, and I think we will continue to make that investment this year," said state Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago. "Whether we're going to be able to go above the $350 million in the governor's introduced budget is an open question. But I know a lot of my colleagues are advocating for that."

Pritzker's spending plan also includes $182 million to deal with the migrant crisis in Chicago and the continued ramping up of his "Smart Start" universal pre-K plan.

Many bills in the works

While budget negotiations continued largely behind the scenes, legislative session hummed along last week as lawmakers sent nearly 180 bills to Pritzker's desk.

Among them is legislation expanding coverage for in vitro fertilization.

Senate Bill 773, sponsored by state Sen. Cristina Castro, D-Elgin, and state Rep. Margaret Croke, D-Chicago, would remove a provision that capped the coverage mandate on in vitro fertilization for private insurers atfour rounds.

The legislation would also require insurance plans to cover the diagnosis and treatment of infertility. And, it would require employers with more than 25 employees to cover an annual menopause checkup for those ages 45 and older.

Lawmakers also amended the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act. Widely regarded as the strongest in the nation, the law requires companies to obtain consent before collecting and obtaining biometric data, such as a fingerprint.

Currently, violations accrue on a "per incident" basis. This means, for example, that there's a violation every time an employee clocks in for work using a digital fingerprinting device if the company did not gain consent.

But if SB 2979, sponsored by state Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, and state Rep. Ann Williams, D-Chicago, is signed into law by Pritzker, liability would instead accrue on a "per person" basis. This would serve to place a cap on the otherwise significant liability businesses have been open to.

Another bill heading to Pritzker's desk is HB 1168. Sponsored by state Rep. Nabeela Syed, D-Iverness, it would ban the entering of a crime victim's DNA into a database if it was collected as part of the criminal investigation.