An often tense and confrontational meeting over gaming expansion last week ended with Governor Pat Quinn not explicitly saying “no” to adding slot machines at horse-racing tracks. That might be the beginning of a reversal for Quinn, who has adamantly opposed allowing tracks to have more gambling options.

For more than a year, Quinn has opposed allowing slots at tracks as part of a deal to give Chicago, the suburbs, and Downstate new casinos. But with the racetracks out of the picture, the bill just can’t pass. So, there’s been a push on for months to get Quinn to change his mind.

Senate President John Cullerton has been telling some of his members for weeks that he was resigned to an overtime session. The General Assembly likely wouldn’t be able to adjourn by the scheduled May 31 deadline, he said. There was just no getting around it, so people should just accept that fact and move forward.

But not long ago, Cullerton reportedly came to the conclusion that if the spring session did go into overtime, Republicans would likely keep everyone bottled up in Springfield all summer long. So now his focus is on getting everybody out of town by the end of May.

May 31 is an important deadline because all bills voted on after that date require a three-fifths majority to pass. That means no budget can be approved, no Medicaid solution can be found, no pension systems can be reformed without supermajorities.

The Democrats control both legislative chambers, but they don’t have three-fifths. They’re seven votes shy in the House and one vote short in the Senate. One vote may not seem like a lot, but the partisanship can sometimes get so intense in the General Assembly these days that one vote might as well be a hundred.

Call it “Blagojevich Lite,” or whatever else you want, but it became pretty darned clear last week that the attorneys for state Representative Derrick Smith are planning the same sort of mockery of the system that Rod Blagojevich’s legal team did during those dark days after the former governor’s arrest.

State Representative Derrick Smith (D-Chicago) may have more legal troubles than his federal bribery indictment.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has told the House’s Special Investigating Committee that his office’s investigation of Smith isn’t over yet, which could be an indication that the government wants to pile on more charges.

But the “active” federal investigation also means that Fitzgerald decided to refuse to cooperate with the committee, which is charged with looking into the allegations to determine if any legislative action is warranted. Fitzgerald also asked the committee to not do any investigations beyond what is already in the public record, except for interviewing Smith himself.

“It’s so quiet,” sighed Pippin in The Fellowship of the Rings.

“It’s the deep breath before the plunge,” counseled Gandalf.

“I don’t want to be in a battle,” said Pippin, “but waiting on the edge of one I can’t escape is even worse.”

That exchange pretty well sums up the current climate in the General Assembly. It’s very quiet. Too quiet. Everybody knows that big, tough decisions are both looming and inevitable, and they’re all tiptoeing around Springfield, peering over their shoulders and whispering about the coming fight that deep down, they are starting to realize, they cannot fully escape. The bloodiest of all battles is just around the corner, and they know it.