Partial Senate Week In Review: Senate passes gerrymandered map, weak workers’ compensation reform, considers borrowing bills

SPRINGFIELD, IL – Just days away from the scheduled May 31 Session adjournment, lawmakers are tackling some of the most pressing state issues. However, many critical measures have fallen short of meaningful reform.

On May 27, Senate Bill 1177, the redistricting maps for Illinois, passed on a partisan vote without any Republican support.  The map was a perfect example of gerrymandering and highlighted how poor the redistricting process is in Illinois. 

Last week, a map was proposed by Senate Democrats for the public to view, digest, and give feedback.  Yet twenty-four hours before the vote was taken Friday night, Democrats introduced an amendment to the bill with a completely new map, leaving very little time for the public to review what has now been sent to Governor Quinn to sign. 

In other news, four borrowing bills were passed out of the Senate Executive Committee which would authorize the Governor to sell $800 million in general obligation bonds to pay off the State’s bill backlog.  The bonds would be repaid over seven years and leaves taxpayers to pay almost $1 billion in interest.  This proposal is a non-starter and it only perpetuates the bad fiscal situation we have in Illinois. 

Sen. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine) filed amendments to all four of these bills in which he proposes reducing spending limits for Fiscal Years 2012 to 2015 and imposes an additional spending limit for Fiscal Year 2016.  The amendments are supported by the Senate Republican Caucus, who stress the need to reduce state spending and make real reductions in order to avoid high interest costs associated with borrowing and allow the tax increase to expire as promised by Democrat lawmakers.

Lastly, the Senate passed House Bill 1698 which is the Democrat version of a workers’ compensation reform bill.  While the bill contains overall improvements to the current system, I would not call it reform.  It is a step in the right direction, but significant and further reforms are still needed to truly reform the broken system. 

The legislation includes adoption of AMA guidelines, intoxication standards if injury occurred while the employee was intoxicated, limited wage differentials, limited carpal tunnel recoveries, and utilization review and provider networks in order to help control costs for employers.  The major component missing in this measure is causation, which would require that the workplace be the major contributing cause of the injury rather than a weekend recreational activity.