Legislators Continue to Negotiate Budget, Bears, and Housing Bills
The State Capitol in Springfield.
With seven full days remaining before the General Assembly is scheduled to adjourn the spring legislative session, some major issues remain unresolved while Democrats are confident they’ll be able to pass a Fiscal Year 2027 state budget without much drama inside their own caucuses.
The Chicago Bears/megaprojects bill appears to be hanging on a knife’s edge, multiple Democrats say. It isn’t clear that Governor JB Pritzker’s BUILD Illinois housing plan that has received significant pushback from mayors across the state will advance in its entirety or if portions of the package (which has been split into eight Senate bills) will advance.
We’re told no major negotiations on the Bears bill took place over the weekend. House sponsor Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) and Senate sponsor Sen. Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago) were scheduled to meet Monday, but it isn’t clear that the meeting took place.
Some statehouse sources continue to believe the Senate will strip the bill passed by the House down to the original Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) language negotiated by the Governor’s office without the dozens of other provisions included in the House bill. Others believe the Senate may add to the original legislation.
“What the Governor’s office has a hard time understanding sometimes is that while they’ve worked through these deals themselves, whether it’s the budget, whether it’s this, whether it’s BUILD Illinois, it starts with zero votes in the legislature,” one Democratic lawmaker said. “You got to build to get those votes.”
Friday, Governor JB Pritzker told reporters he was confident a deal would be made.
“I feel confident that there will be a bill that gets brought up in the Senate, and then hopefully they’ll pass it and send it over to the House, and that bill will be about whether or not we’re keeping them in the state of Illinois or letting them go to Indiana,” Pritzker said at an unrelated event in Joliet.
Additional concern for Democrats has come via the lobbying of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Federation of Teachers/Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates as they’ve attempted to push lawmakers to keep the team in the city of Chicago, an option the team ruled out publicly late last week.
Buckner, the House sponsor, said even though the bill helps the team move out of the city to Arlington Heights, it still helps the city.
“I know that the city has spent years saying that we want transformative investment. We want conventions. We want major economic development, we want jobs, we want tourism. We want compete with places like Nashville and Dallas and Atlanta and Las Vegas,” Buckner said. “But, eventually you have to decide whether you actually want to compete or whether you just want to hold press conferences about competing because other states are not sitting around debating whether or not to use economic development tools. They already use them. I think sometimes here in Illinois and Chicago specifically, we get trapped in a cycle where everybody wants growth, but nobody wants to take ownership of the mechanism required to create growth.”
Senate Democrats are set to hold a news conference today on housing initiatives, mostly related to the bills tied to Pritzker’s BUILD Illinois plan. We’re told some changes have been made from Pritzker’s initial language, but the controversial zoning and historic preservation language in the package remains in tact.
We’re told its unclear if the major functions in the bills will have the support to pass. One lawmaker said a decision to move forward will have to be made in the “next 24 or 48 hours.”
We’re told budget talks continued at the statehouse through the weekend and key lawmakers are expecting a “low drama” budget package to advance through the General Assembly before the Sunday deadline.
A list of potential cuts circulated around the statehouse last week, renewing the push from some progressives for additional revenue to fund schools, social services, and new programs.
But Buckner, one of the top House budgeteers, said he believes Democrats are coming to grips with the idea that the budget won’t include the priorities of every member.
I think last year was tough because we were, even though we started off without a lot of money, people still had a COVID hangover, a ARPA hangover, and they’re like, no, no, we’re used to getting money,” he said. “In my seven years here, last year was my first real budget where I heard ‘no’ to people. We don’t have time for this or money for this. I think people are probably more used to it this year, which is why even the requests for members are not crazy. People are seem to be really prudent, which I think is good.”
Buckner said while state spending is expected to grow between 1-2%, he said it is still expected to grow less than the rate of inflation, which is currently at 3.8%. Buckner did say some cuts have circulated through talks, but it isn’t clear how significant they may be.
