THE ILLINOIZE: Monday Free for All...Cost of undocumented insurance program balloons...Lead found in school water supplies around the state...Ethics reform? Good luck with that.
May 8, 2023
Good morning, Illinois.
Batten down the hatches. There are two weeks left in the legislative session and you know what is about to hit the fan.
The House is in at 2. The Senate is in at 4. There is nothing on Governor Pritzker’s public schedule.
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YOUR MONDAY FREE FOR ALL
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Ballooning cost of insuring undocumented immigrants complicating state budget negotiations (Chicago Tribune)
The $49.6 billion budget Gov. J.B. Pritzker introduced in February estimated the cost of a program that provides state-funded health insurance to adult immigrants who are in the country without legal permission at $220 million.
Just three months later, that estimate has grown fivefold, swelling to $1.1 billion and threatening to blow a hole in the Democratic governor’s proposal for the budget year that begins July 1, the first of his second term.
At the same time, revenue flowing to the state appears to be slowing, putting further pressure on Pritzker and the Democratic-controlled legislature as they try to assemble a spending plan that continues the financial progress made during the past four years. The General Assembly’s spring session is scheduled to adjourn May 19.
Illinois created a program in 2020 that provides Medicaid-style coverage to immigrants 65 and older who are in the country without legal permission or who have green cards but haven’t completed a five-year waiting period and are therefore ineligible for the traditional health insurance program for the poor, which is jointly funded by the federal government. The program has been expanded twice, now covering those 42 and older.
Pritzker, who has signed the health care program expansions into law and trumpeted them in news releases, now appears to be distancing himself from the effort, which a spokeswoman described as “a legislative initiative that relied on independent outside cost projections.”
“Every balanced budget that has passed is negotiated with the General Assembly and includes priorities the governor lays out in his budget address and the priorities of lawmakers in the General Assembly,” Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said in an email. “As the program was implemented and real costs were calculated it became clear the program was going to cost much more than what the advocates had predicted.”
During a Wednesday budget hearing for the Department of Healthcare and Family Services, which administers the health care coverage for immigrants, state Sen. Chapin Rose, a Republican from Mahomet, said the projected overrun in the program next year “is a significant hit because of the other choices that are now going to have to be made by the General Assembly on how to fill this $880 million gap.”
The program also is running over budget in the current year, with the total tab now expected to be about $690 million, more than three times what was budgeted, according to the Department of Healthcare and Family Services.
However, the department expects to be able to absorb the cost due to lower-than-expected spending in other areas, Ben Winick, the department’s chief of staff, told a Senate committee Wednesday.
An Illinois law required schools to test water for lead. They found it all over the state. (Chicago Tribune)
Most Illinois public school districts that tested sinks and fountains for tiny traces of brain-damaging lead as required by a 2017 state law had to tell parents they found the toxic metal quietly lurking in the children’s drinking water.
According to a Tribune analysis of state data, more than 1,800 of the roughly 2,100 public schools that submitted test results identified some amount of lead in their drinking water. That includes more than 1,350 schools where at least one water sample had lead levels exceeding 5 parts per billion, the threshold where parental notification is required.
But despite the widespread nature of the problem — and the threat lead poses to young brains, even in small amounts — the state’s efforts to curtail lead in school drinking water mostly ended there.
The Illinois Department of Public Health, the state agency tasked with overseeing the law, did not make the statewide testing results public. It did not ensure that all eligible schools had conducted testing and submitted their results. And it offered schools conflicting guidance on what steps they should take after finding elevated lead levels in their drinking water.
“You don’t really realize it could be an issue as an educator,” said Kankakee School District 111 Superintendent Genevra Walters after water testing identified traces of lead at each of the district’s 11 buildings, including six schools with fixtures where water lead levels exceeded 1,000 parts per billion. “We’re focused on education; we’re not necessarily focused on the facilities as much as we should.”
As the public health department stumbled in its oversight efforts, the law itself also posed barriers to finding and eliminating lead in school drinking water statewide:
- Illinois legislators carved out major testing exemptions in the law, including schools serving students in 6th grade and up, as well as those in buildings constructed after 1999. Schools in these categories that voluntarily tested their drinking water sometimes found elevated lead levels, according to testing data obtained by the Tribune.
- Schools were instructed to test their drinking water just once before the end of 2018 by taking two samples from each fixture. Experts who study lead contamination warn that the amount of lead leaching from internal pipes can vary widely based on water temperature, water pressure, frequency of use and other factors. Dozens of schools that conducted more than one round of testing identified lead issues that had not surfaced in earlier sampling, state and district-level data show.
- The law did not require districts to take action to reduce elevated lead levels, and state funding was not available to aid schools that wanted to do so. As a result, district responses to finding lead varied greatly, Tribune reporting revealed. Some districts spent millions on additional testing and plumbing work in efforts to reduce lead in the water, while others took little action.
Hey, imagine that, the state didn’t have transparency and the legislature carved out more exemptions than you can count. Only the best.
Related: With no state funding and shifting guidance, schools’ actions on lead in water vary widely (Chicago Tribune)
Following 'Com-Ed' trial, lobbying and ethics reform the talk of the Capitol (State Journal-Register)
House Republicans, again taking a swipe at the "Madigan Machine," discussed the ruling during a press conference and urged action before the Illinois General Assembly adjourns on May 19. The former speaker, serving in the legislature for 50 years, faces related criminal racketeering charges in his own trial which is set for next April.
"Every single Illinois lawmaker should be compelled to work with us on this to prevent this embarrassment from continuing to bring about honest, accountable and trustworthy government," said House Minority Leader Tony McCombie. "Ethics reform should be the General Assembly's top priority. How many indictments is too many? How many more court rulings do we need to make unethical behavior stop?"
Gov. JB Pritzker and lawmakers found common ground in 2021 after much debate with a bipartisan ethics reforms package granting expanded investigative abilities to the legislative inspector general and setting a six-month waiting period before a legislator leaving office could lobby.
The legislation, first receiving an amendatory veto from the governor, also required “consultants” to register as lobbyists. Lobbyists are now required to disclose more information about themselves on public documents filed with the state through the law.
Some Republicans and Democrats said the bill still did not go far enough, failing to grant the state attorney general the power to convene a statewide grand jury to investigate public corruption among several shortcomings. Former Legislative Inspector General Carol Pope resigned from the role saying the legislation actually weakened her ability to investigate wrongdoing.
Chances of reform before the session adjournment were slim at best Reform for Illinois executive director Alisa Kaplan told The State Journal-Register on Friday. The 2021 omnibus bill was "woefully inadequate," she said, with special attention given towards the "revolving door" pattern where former legislators return to the Capitol as lobbyists within a short window of time.
Several pieces of legislation have been introduced in this General Assembly that would address pushes made by Reform for Illinois. Being mostly Republican-led, however, none have advanced to a vote.
Related: The ComEd jury foreman says Madigan is a dangerous force in Illinois politics (WBEZ)
Judge sets sentencing dates for ComEd conspirators (Chicago Sun-Times)
Illinois GOP quick to pounce on ‘ComEd Four’ verdicts, but even party insiders say outcome might not move the needle much in deeply blue state (Chicago Tribune)
Editorial: ComEd convictions send message to Springfield, but are Democratic leaders listening? (Daily Herald)
Editorial: ‘Politics as usual?’ The ‘ComEd Four’ convictions say corruption is the better word. (Chicago Tribune)
Opinion: Power politics in Illinois are alive and well (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Opinion: Meaningful corruption reform requires big swings (Shaw Media)
SOME TOP LINKS FROM LAST WEEK
POLITICAL POTPOURRI
Wheels in motion for crackdown on Illinois car insurers (Chicago Sun-Times)
Measure barring police from stopping motorists solely for having small items dangling from rearview mirrors heads to Gov. J.B. Pritzker (Chicago Tribune)
Illinois' power struggle: Environmental advocates split on legislation to lift nuclear ban (Daily Herald)
Firefighters’ pension bill could cost Chicago taxpayers $3 billion, city official says (Chicago Sun-Times)
Illinois lawmakers pass bill to require new homes be equipped to handle EV charging stations (Chicago Tribune)
Naked land grab or a boon to the environment? Proposed ‘carbon-capture’ pipelines across central Illinois trouble land owners (Illinois Answers Project)
Illinois’ governor is letting this man out of prison after 26 years so he can earn his Ph.D. (WBEZ)
Aurora man accused of threatening Gov. J.B. Pritzker (Chicago Tribune)
Chicago, state of Illinois get $8.5 million in federal migrant grants; requested up to $191 million (Chicago Sun-Times)
Illinois’ property tax sale system on path to potential reform (Chicago Tribune)
Illinois’ government has spent billions in federal pandemic aid. What do some programs do when the money runs out? (WBEZ)
Bill aimed at deterring library book bans heads to Gov. J.B. Pritzker after party-line vote in Senate (Chicago Tribune)
Editorial: Nothing good comes from book bans (Decatur Herald & Review)
Simmons: Book bans have no place in Illinois (Chicago Sun-Times)
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