The concept of a public meeting on November 18 featuring the four Illinois legislative leaders and the governor sounds nice, but will it actually move the ball forward and break the months-long governmental impasse?
As you might know, a group of good-government types recently called on the state's leaders to sit down and talk about solving the state's budget issues. The four tops and the governor haven't met as a group since late May.
House Speaker Michael Madigan quickly accepted and then suggested that the meeting be held in public. The move has quite a few people scratching their heads, because nobody expects anything will be solved while the public is looking on.
So why bother?
A big reason is that the Democrats want the public to see what they've been seeing with their own eyes for months. They say the governor walks in, exchanges pleasantries, and then repeats the same basic talking points that he's been making since April.
Top Democratic sources say that Rauner cannot talk in detail about much of his Turnaround Agenda. They've asked relatively uncomplicated questions about tort reform, for example, and claim they've been met with empty stares.
"They can prep him [Rauner] on the budget for the next month and it won't do any good," fretted a top Republican shortly after Madigan suggested a public meeting.
It's not that the governor isn't bright; he is a very smart man. It's just that he has never been a detail guy. And a big part of the problem with these negotiations is that many of the topics are nothing but details. Even the far-more-experienced Madigan might be able to delve down only a couple of levels into the workers' comp issue, but he doesn't have the expertise to go much deeper than that, Democrats admit.
What they need to do is set up some expert committees and let them deal with the details. But the experts can't do that until the tops give them some sort of direction, and everybody is just floundering right now.
Back to the upcoming meeting.
Rauner did his level best the other day to once again tamp down expectations ahead of the meeting. "I don't think it's going to matter much," the governor said, noting correctly that people don't like to compromise in front of cameras.
Rauner and his legislative allies have been insisting that the governor be allowed to set the agenda, which has some of the government reformers who initially proposed the sit-down worried that he would attempt to hijack the meeting and insist on talking only about his Turnaround Agenda, which he wants resolved before he will negotiate the budget. The agenda includes some harshly anti-union proposals on collective bargaining, as well as some unacceptable (to Democrats and unions) changes in the workers' compensation program and things such as term limits and redistricting reform.
But the governor also said something last week that went almost completely unnoticed. Rauner told reporters that he was planning a "comprehensive agenda" for the meeting.
"We will include structural reform in the agenda," Rauner said (predictably, since that's code for his Turnaround stuff). But then he said: "We will include revenue and taxes on the agenda, we'll include spending levels on the agenda."
The idea may be to put the Democrats on the spot and finally make them talk about what taxes they want to raise.
Madigan reiterated his support for new revenues recently in Chicago. "The number-one problem facing the government of the State of Illinois is the state budget deficit," he said for the millionth time. "Which means that we have to get together to talk, negotiate, do some cuts, and do some new revenue. There should be a balanced approach."
Madigan, however, has never specifically said what "new revenue" he would actually back, and neither has Senate President John Cullerton. The governor's people have been quietly pointing out this glaring omission for the past several days.
The governor told top Democrats during a private meeting months ago that he would be willing to raise the income tax to 4.75 percent, which is a percentage point higher than its current level, if he got what he wanted on the Turnaround Agenda. The Democrats have not yet accepted that proposal and have apparently been waiting for the governor to make his offer public.
I doubt anything gets done at this upcoming meeting, but it might be fun to watch.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax (a daily political newsletter) and CapitolFax.com.
