Greg Bishop/Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Senate overrode the Gov. Bruce Rauner’s amendatory veto to a school funding reform bill Sunday. The bill’s sponsor said he didn’t even fully review the numbers before calling for the vote.
Rauner’s office released the Illinois State Board of Education scoring of his amendatory veto Saturday showing nearly 98 percent of districts getting more than what they would with SB1. Districts that wouldn’t, would still get more than they got last year.
After Sunday’s session, state Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, said Rauner overreached.
“He overstepped,” Manar said. “He rewrote the entire bill. It was not a roadmap to compromise.”
Before Senators voted on an override, Rauner said that’s false and an excuse. The issue is too important to let go by the wayside, the governor said.
“I’m open to compromise on any issue,” Rauner said. “Every issue can be on the table. But we don’t have time. We can’t wait weeks or months to work out a compromise.”
Local Republican Senators voted to sustain the override.
“First it was a massive tax hike on the backs of every working Illinoisan, now it’s a bailout of Chicago Public Schools that takes money away from our local schools. Where does it end?,” State Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, asked.
Senate Minority Leader Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, said SB 1 gave Chicago Public School students an unfair advantage.
“If we are going to focus on an evidence-based model that treats every student fairly, takes into consideration their wealth, takes into consideration other things, then why should Chicago students get a special block grant?,” Brady asked.
State Sen. Jason Barickman, R-Bloomington, said the Democratic leadership refuses to negotiate in good faith.
“Thus far, all that’s been presented by the Democratic majority in an impossible position, a demand that says we must have this out of school funding,” Barickman said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The Senate waited a full two months to send Rauner the bill after it had already passed both chambers at the end of May. A procedural hold kept the bill from advancing.
Once Rauner got the bill earlier this month, he issued changes through an amendatory veto. Among the changes was removing hundreds of millions of additional dollars for Chicago, spreading it out to all school districts across the state.
Manar said he didn’t fully review the ISBE numbers, but decried them saying he doesn’t know what the impact will be years down the road.
“If I were the sponsor I wouldn’t want to look at the numbers that ISBE came out with just now either,” state Sen. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon, said during Sunday’s debate. “That’s embarrassing. So I’d want to say, ‘That’s going to be a problem three, to five, to ten years from now.’ I would do that as well.”
State Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon, said the override will lead to higher taxes because of empty promises.
“We are promising an increase of funding to schools that we cannot honestly keep our word on,” McCarter said
The House is next to take action on Rauner’s veto. It is scheduled to be in session Wednesday. If an override fails, lawmakers have to start from scratch.
Schools didn’t get general state aid checks last week because there’s no evidence-based funding model as required by the budget.
