What’s next for the Illinois General Assembly

A week out from a hectic end to the legislative session, many Capitol insiders are beginning to ask what is next for the legislative proposals big and small that failed during session.  

The session’s most-watched subject matter was transit funding. With northern Illinois transit agencies facing hundreds of millions of dollars in budget shortfalls this year, officials wanted the state to step in to address the problem before adjournment.  

While there is broad agreement on reforms lawmakers want to impose on transit officials, there is still significant disagreement on how to actually raise enough funding to avert the agencies’ “fiscal cliff.” A proposal that passed the Senate contained several new taxes — some of which were unpopular at the Statehouse.  

“I wish there were better alternatives,” Senate President Don Harmon told CNI. “But if you don’t like them, come and tell us how you’d pay for it, because this is going to be expensive and most of the stakeholders seem to be worried about protecting or expanding their own power and having somebody else pay for it.”

All four legislative leaders spoke to CNI about the issue, in a story from Ben Szalinski below and for our latest episode of “Illinois Lawmakers.”  

Higher ed advocates also saw delays on major bills. Gov. JB Pritzker earlier this year pitched allowing community colleges to offer four-year degrees as a way to lower the barriers to higher education.  

But that bill faced fierce opposition from the Legislative Black Caucus, whose members said it could hurt the state’s majority Black and majority Latino universities.  

A long-awaited bill outlining a new funding formula for state universities is back to the negotiating table, Peter Hancock reports. The proposal’s boosters say the new funding scheme will make higher education more equitable.  

Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford, who cochaired the state commission that calculated the new formula, said negotiations are ongoing. Like past bills that deal with similar subjects, Lightford said, these things can take years of negotiations.  

Outside of those issues, we have stories covering some of the hundreds of bills that did pass, an investigation into student loan debt relief in Illinois and an update to the long-debated “swipe fee” ban.  

Those stories and more below and at the CNI website.