December 1, 2007

Section: Local & State

Page: 1C

Gov fuels week's absurdities in the state Capitol

Staff

Rockford Register Star

When the Illinois House was slow to vote on a bill necessary to implement the state budget, Gov. Rod Blagojevich warned of major gloom and doom.

If the House didn't immediately send him the bill, he said, schools would miss out on an extra $617 million in aid. And if that wasn't sufficiently dramatic, he said he might need to lay off 1,800 state troopers.

Wow.

But that was back when the House had the bill. The House is run by Speaker Michael Madigan, Blagojevich's fellow Chicago Democrat and political nemesis. Blagojevich never misses a chance to blame Madigan.

Now that the bill is on Blagojevich's desk, as it's been since Nov. 5, Blagojevich is taking his time with a thorough review.

"We're looking at that bill," he said Wednesday, flashing his trademark glass-half-full grin. "I think there could be a way to actually put more money into education."

The governor's position was just a touch of the absurdity that punctuated the Capitol over the last week, just as it has for much of the last year.

The governor called lawmakers into special session Wednesday after saying they needed to immediately craft a bailout for Chicago-area mass transit systems as well as a statewide capital construction plan.

But in his special-session order, he mentioned nothing about a capital plan. So the House focused only on the subject the governor described: mass transit.

Madigan has failed to advance his plan for a regional sales-tax hike to help mass transit in and around Chicago, so he called instead for a vote on an alternative plan to divert $400 million in fuel-tax revenue to mass transit.

House Republicans had spearheaded this alternative. Blagojevich embraced it and predicted its passage. But the Republicans, insisting they wouldn't support a Chicago-centric mass transit bailout unless they could advance a capital plan, voted no or stayed neutral on their own plan. Blagojevich persuaded just two of his five House allies to support it.

For his part, Senate President Emil Jones Jr., D-Chicago, said too few of his chamber's members showed up for the special session to approve any such plan, even if it did clear the House. The measure fell 14 votes shy of passage, and lawmakers headed home with no solution to either so-called crisis.

Oh, and just when you thought government couldn't get more dysfunctional, did you hear about the Chicago Blackhawks game?

First, some context: In the two days leading up to the House vote, Chicago's CBS2 promoted a story it planned to run on Blagojevich's general disengagement -- physical and otherwise -- from state government. Under the Capitol dome, the story was widely anticipated.

As the House voted Wednesday night to defeat the plan Blagojevich said he supported, and as CBS2 rolled out its story on the state's absentee governor, Blagojevich was on a taxpayer-funded flight to the Blackhawks game.

There he was, seated at the rink and on television, taking in the game.

Staff writer Aaron Chambers may be reached at 217-782-2959 or achambers@rrstar.com.