A day before the Illinois House and Senate were scheduled to adjourn, super-majority Democrats dropped a proposed
$55 billion-plus budget proposal on the desks of their GOP counterparts.
The legislation consisted of 1.7 million words that covered 3,363 pages. The next day, over GOP opposition, Democrats approved the measure and sent it to Gov. J.B. Pritzker to sign into law.
Super-minority Republicans can’t do much in Springfield, but they can cry foul.
That’s what a group of them — members of the conservative Freedom Caucus — did when they filed a Sangamon County lawsuit charging Democrats’ warp-speed budget passage violates the explicit “three readings rule” in the Illinois Constitution that sets rules for passing laws.
The lawsuit, filed by Benton lawyer Bryan Drew, is most likely doomed because the Illinois Supreme Court has heard — and rejected — similar challenges on previous occasions.
Nonetheless, the “three readings rule” — in all its embarrassing glory — is back in the public eye. Most people have, for good reasons, never heard of it. After all, it is inside baseball — constitutional law style.
But the subject keeps popping up in lower court opinions that note its undeniable presence in the Illinois Constitution, Article IV, Section 8, Paragraph (d) and question why previous high court decisions refuse to acknowledge it.
It reads: “A bill shall be read by title on three different days in each house. A bill and each amendment thereto shall be reproduced and placed on the desk of each member before final passage.”
An Illinois Supreme Court majority ignores — dissenting Justice Lisa Holder White calls it “turning a blind eye” — the constitutional mandate because it can.
But its decision to pretend that the “three readings” provision doesn’t exist represents a growing stain on a court that doesn’t like to hang its dirty linen in public.
For tactical reasons, super-majority Democrats often prefer to legislate by surprise on controversial issues. They drop a bill on Republicans one day and pass it the next.
They get around the “three readings rule” by a process called “gut and replace.”
Here’s how it’s done. Proponents of a particular controversial bill use what’s called a “shell bill,” an innocuous piece of legislation — that “already has moved through most of the constitutionally required ‘three readings’ rule.”
Then they amend the shell bill, the lawsuit charges, “with legislation that completely replaces everything but the title of the bill.” Then the amended bill is called, briefly debated and passed.
As long as legislative leaders certify — even falsely — that the bill was passed according to the rules, the high court takes their word. That certification is called the “enrolled bill doctrine.”
So who other than the drafters know what in this year’s budget?
Republicans say they don’t because they never were given the time to review it before a vote was called. The lawsuit contends a reader going to a “standard reading rate” of 238 words per minute would require 70 hours to read the budget bill one time.
The high court has threatened in the past to start enforcing the “three readings rule,” a good government provision inserted to ensure proposed legislation gets a thorough public review.
But legislators, perhaps sensing the justices lack of gumption, have continued to do as they please. After all, they don’t no need stinkin’ constitution to guide them.
Members of the Freedom Caucus are hoping this time the results will be different, and lightning might strike. But it looks like another futile act by a super-minority party that has to rely on them to make a political point.
