There could be signs of progress for school funding in Illinois despite the cancellation of today’s House session.
While the House was scheduled to vote on overriding Governor Rauner’s amendatory veto of Senate Bill 1 today, House Speaker Michael Madigan announced last night that he’s cancelled today’s scheduled vote, saying that there’s been some progress in the ongoing school funding negotiations.
Illinois’ four legislative leaders met for several hours yesterday afternoon to discuss a solution to the state’s school funding issue. Local State Representative C.D. Davidsmeyer says the cancellation of today’s session could be a step in the right direction.
“From what I’m hearing, they had a pretty good meeting last night and that’s the reason for cancelling (today’s session). My understanding is that the Speaker didn’t want to move forward with an override of the governor’s veto of Senate Bill 1 while they were having positive movements on negotiations for schools funding. So I do think it is a positive step, I’m hopeful. I don’t know exactly what the sticking point issues are and what they’ve agreed to up to this point, but I’m going to be talking to some people today to try and figure that out,” says Davidsmeyer.
Davidsmeyer explains who he plans to talk to today regarding yesterday’s meeting and the areas of the bill that legislative leaders are negotiating.
“I’ll be talking to leader Durkin’s Chief of Staff most likely and a number of other people on staff just to see what the negotiations are. Every time they go into these negotiations, they have to have some staff members to make sure that all the agreements are recorded and all that we know the effects of all the changes. These are the people that dig into it on a day-to-day basis so you’ve got to make sure that you have those guys there. So I’ll be talking to them. Whether they are able to share that information or not, I do not know since it is a negotiation,” Davidsmeyer says.
While the Senate has already voted to override the governor’s changes, an override from the House would require some Republican votes. So far, there has been little indication of Republican support. Davidsmeyer feels that, without some changes, Republicans aren’t likely to vote against Governor Rauner.
“It had one Republican vote when it went through originally, so that’s fifty-nine Democrats and one Republican. Its one person who represents part of the city of Chicago, and I would say he’ll probably still vote for it. But I would say that, just the feeling I get is that it will not pass without any changes,” explains Davidsmeyer.
Davidsmeyer says that another session for the House vote has not been scheduled yet. However, there are a limited amount of days that the House is given if they wish to override Governor Rauner’s veto.