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Senate restores tiny slice of vetoed spending

Posted October 11, 2007 11:00 pm

Doug Finke

The Illinois Senate Thursday opted to keep intact virtually all of the $463 million in cuts made by Gov. Rod Blagojevich to the state's $59 billion state budget.

At least for now.

A day after one key senator said as much as $50 million of the spending cuts could be restored, the Senate voted to reinstate only about $8 million.

About $3 million of that is for a program to re-enroll school dropouts. The rest is divided among the courts, auditor general's office and a variety of General Assembly support services, such as staff who draft bills, make economic forecasts and print lawmaker newsletters.

The Senate did not vote to restore money needed to give home care workers a cost-of-living raise, hire more prison guards, pay more to hospitals and nursing homes for treating the poor, help cover the cost of aiding the mentally ill and developmentally disabled, and to pay for dozens of other funding increases for health-care programs.

However, Sen. Donne Trotter, D-Chicago, said the Senate could vote as early as today (Friday) to restore additional money. He was not specific about how much or for which programs, although he said it would be far less than the $424 million the House earlier voted to reinstate.

"There's going to be more that we will put forward," Trotter said. "We have not agreed on them (yet). Those things that need discussion or need to be looked at, we're doing that."

Trotter called the cuts restored by the Senate Thursday "no-brainers."

Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson, R-Greenville, had a different description for the vetoed spending the Senate failed to override.

"This was all about walking away from senior citizens, from the children of the state, from students, from the people who work on the front lines in the Department of Corrections and other places," he said, referring to Blagojevich's cuts as "petty political retribution."

Denouncing it as "almost an abuse of power," Watson blamed Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, for not allowing the Senate to vote on all of the roughly 1,500 individual budget cuts made by the governor. Sen. Martin Sandoval, D-Cicero, agreed.

"What happened today continues to be a slap in the face of democracy in America," Sandoval said. "There's more democracy going on in the Middle East than there is in the General Assembly."

Jones, though, defended his actions, saying that other legislative leaders went behind his back to sabotage a capital spending plan in August. The plan has since been approved by the Senate, though it has not been acted on in the House.

"I'll be damned if I'm going to be dictated to by anyone in this chamber, anyone (in the governor's office) or anyone in the other chamber," Jones said.

The $8 million the Senate restored was by a 31-20 vote. Sandoval was one of five Democrats who voted "present." Two Republicans also voted "present," while the rest voted "no."

Just days after the General Assembly approved the budget for the fiscal year that began July 1, Jones appeared with Blagojevich when the governor announced he was cutting "pork" and "special interest spending" from the spending plan and using the money to pay for health-care programs the General Assembly didn't approve. Jones pledged that he would not allow the Senate to vote on restoring any of the money.

Jones again said Thursday the Senate was not overriding Blagojevich's budget vetoes, it was "correcting a mistake."

The Senate considered voting to restore another $18.6 million, but decided not to at the last minute. Senate Republicans said at least half of the money was for pet projects in Democratic House and Senate districts.

Doug Finke can be reached at (217) 788-1527 or doug.finke@sj-r.com.

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