Now that Governor Rod Blagojevich has unilaterally
declared that a previously obscure but always important legislative committee
has no real power, things could change radically at the Illinois Statehouse.
Last month, the governor said that the Joint Committee
on Administrative Rules has only an "advisory" role over his proposed
rules.
Legislators write laws, but governors implement those
laws. Often, legislators will leave the bills loose enough that the governor
and his various agency directors can use their bureaucratic expertise to decide
how exactly the laws will be implemented.
The one hoop the administration had to jump through
was the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, or JCAR for short. JCAR is a
bipartisan panel made up of state Senators and House members who review
proposed rules.
Up until Gov. Blagojevich's first term, JCAR couldn't
actually stop proposed rules from taking effect. They could review them and
recommend changes (which delayed the process), but the House and Senate had to
agree with JCAR's decision to block any rules.
Then Blagojevich signed a bill into law which changed
all that and gave JCAR tons more power. Now, the committee can halt any
proposed administrative rules on its own.
As you may already know, last month JCAR blocked a
rule change proposed by Gov. Blagojevich that would have allowed him to
immediately expand the eligibility roles for government funded health insurance
programs. Health insurance is the governor's top priority, and he had
previously claimed the right to veto spending from one part of the state budget
and spend it on expanding health care, which would be unconstitutional, but
that's another story.
After the committee blocked the rules, Blagojevich
ordered his agency to directors to proceed as though JCAR actually approved the
rule.
The governor then sent his press office out to tell
reporters that JCAR was unconstitutional and didn't have the authority to block
his new idea - even though Blagojevich signed that aforementioned law which
allowed JCAR to do just that.
The governor's move caused quite an uproar. His
tendency to ignore the Constitution, his stubborn refusal to take
"No" for an answer from large bipartisan majorities in the General
Assembly, his blatant abuse of his powers to call special legislative sessions
(he's called more than all modern governors combined) and his hypocritical
lawsuits against the House Speaker over, of all things, constitutional issues,
had already rankled legislators to no end.
I asked House Speaker Michael Madigan what impact the
governor's move would have. His response: Bills are going to get a whole lot
longer.
In the past, the General Assembly could avoid writing
the minutiae of implementation language into most legislation because JCAR had
a check on the administration's rulemaking authority. Now, with the governor
throwing JCAR out the window, legislators will likely want to make sure that
they write as much detail as they can into their proposals. As a result, the
system may become lots more cumbersome.
Lawmakers may also want to revisit old laws and update
them in an attempt to prevent Blagojevich from making even more mischief. It's
quite a messy situation, as you can imagine.
The new environment is just one of many reasons why
the House Speaker has taken so long to write his new gaming expansion proposal.
With the governor claiming unilateral authority to write new rules as he sees
fit, Madigan wants to make sure his has all his bases covered on this
super-complicated issue before turning over implementation to the ever
mischevous Blagojevich.
Whenever an executive tries to grab lots more
authority, it's usually seen by the legislative branch as an abuse of power and
that branch often ends up with more power than before. The backlash against
President Richard Nixon's notorious power grabs produced all sorts of laws that
were designed to limit the executive's authority, for instance, and the same
thing is starting to happen with President George W. Bush.
Gov. Blagojevich has seemed intent since Day One on
remaking the governor's office into a far more powerful branch, often
overstepping his authority or "misreading" the Constitution.
Considering his abrasive tactics, massive unpopularity with the public and
bungled Statehouse execution, he could wind up leaving the governor's office as
a hobbled shell of its former self.
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Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily
political newsletter, and thecapitolfaxblog.com