|
Water Utility Council Legislative Updates |
| Illinois General Assembly Link |
|
Please find
attached a short and long
update of the 2008 bills we are tracking for you to date. You may
wish to keep this update for your records, as updates will only be sent
two times a month while the Governor is acting on bills. Both adjourned on May 31, 2008 - the Senate around 7:20 pm and the House adjourned around midnight. The Budget is contained in four bills this year and the Budget Implementation (BIMP) is one bill. It is not known at this time what the Governor will do with the budget - he held a press conference yesterday, saying that the budget sent to him is not balanced. He will call a leaders meeting this week to work on a balanced budget and a jobs bill (aka Capital Projects) bill. There are many possible scenarios regarding the budget. Something must happen prior to the 2009 fiscal year start of July 1, 2008. If they are called back to work on new legislation, any bill with an effective date prior to June 1, 2009, will need a 3/5ths majority in both chambers. In the House, this means Republican votes. We will keep you posted in the coming weeks. On Saturday, when the Senate unvieled the 34 billion Capital Project bills they tied all of them together so that if one failed they all failed. The bills are: HB 1496 - Lottery Leasing bill; HB 2651 - Gaming Expansion bill; HB 4723 - Bonding Authoriztion bill; HB 5618 - Hospital Capital Investment & Urban Revitalization bill; HB 6339 - Capital Projects bill. All of these bills are on the House Calendar order of Concurrence on each bill's Senate Amendments. After 30 days, they will go back to the House Rules Committee. Some other bills of note are: Budget Bills: SB 1102, 1115 & 1129 and HB 5701 BIMP: SB 773 Revisory Act: SB 2023 Hospital Assesmt: SB 2857 When a bill passes both houses, the chamber of origin has 30 days to prepare it for presentation to the Governor and incorporate all amendment language into it (this would be an enrolled form of the bill.) Once a bill is sent to the Governor, he has 60 days to approve it or veto it. If he does nothing, the bill automatically becomes law. Because the fiscal year starts on July 1, usually he acts on budget and budget implementation bills pretty quickly. It is not known at this time if he will approve the budget as is or use his veto powers. The Governor's veto powers depends on the type of bill. For an appropriation bill, he may veto it entirely (total veto,) use an item veto (where he deletes a line item of spending), a reduction veto (where he reduces an line of spending); or a combination of item and reduction vetoes. For substantive bills, he may use a total veto or an amendatory veto. In an amendatory veto, he makes recommendations for change to a bill. For years, there have been arguments about the amendatory veto powers - some argue the intent is to let the Governor make technical clean up changes; others argue he may alter the substance of the bill. Here is the Preliminary 2nd year's bill numbers to date (From Jan 1, 2008 forward): Introduced Passed Approved HBs 2464 155 10 SBs 1177 128 7 ---------------------------------------------------- 3641 283 17 The General Assembly has set the 2008 Veto Session dates. They are: House Perfunctory: October 30, 2008 Senate Perfunctory: November 5, 2008 First Week: November 12 through 14 Second Week: November 19 through 21 As always any of this is subject to change. If you have any questions, please email or call. Thank you. Terry and Maureen Government Strategy Associates Terry Steczo: t.steczo@comcast.net Maureen Mulhall: mozhouse@springnet1.com c/o cr1982@aol.com |
|
Do you know of legislation that we should be tracking or
perhaps proposing? contact Gerald Bever, Water Utility Council Chair via email at gbever@baxterwoodman.com or phone 815-787-3111 |