Get Ready To Open Up Your Wallets

I know two weeks between posts is too long, but managing my time away from the office isn't easy. I'll try to start posting more often.

Anyway, Gov. Pat Quinn will be giving his budget address on Wednesday. We already know he's going to propose an income tax hike. Obviously, that's going to be a hard sell for Illinois residents, even with a $9- to $12-billion budget deficit. He's also going to call for some big spending cuts, so that might make it easier for lawmakers to vote for a tax hike. Of course, talk of an income tax hike brought former Gov. Rod Blagojevich out of the woodwork to say "I told you so." Of course, even though getting rid of Blagojevich had nothing to do with raising taxes, it wasn't hard to see a tax hike coming months ago. Even the State of Illinois doesn't have more than $9 billion in waste in a $60 billion budget.

Blagojevich might be gone as governor, but his legacy is far from forgotten. Quinn has slowly started reversing some of his predecessor's most controversial decisions, from closing Pontiac Correctional Center to moving the Illinois Department of Transportation's traffic safety division out of Springfield. On Friday, Quinn's office announced those jobs would not be moving to Harrisburg. That was definitely welcome news for Springfield, not to mention the scores of IDOT workers who no longer have to worry about choosing between moving to Harrisburg or finding a new job when the economy is in the tank.

Then there's Blagojevich's decision to appoint Roland Burris to the U.S. Senate. It's clear efforts to hold a special election to oust Burris from the Senate aren't going anywhere. Democrats won't say it out loud, but they're not going to risk losing the seat to a Republican now. Instead, they say it will cost too much money. They now claim it may cost more than $100 million, but if they hadn't blocked the issue in December, we could have held the primary for that Senate seat by now at the same time voters in the Chicago area were voting on who will replace Rahm Emanuel in the House of Representatives. Republicans aren't going to let the issue die anytime soon. They've been bringing it up practically every session day in Springfield since February. But Democrats aren't going to let the special election come up for a vote on either the House or Senate floor.

Meantime, there are a lot of familiar subjects coming up in Springfield. With a new governor in office, some of these issues might get more traction than normal, but it sounds like most of them probably won't be more than routine debate that ultimately results in no big changes. Gun owners want lawmakers to ease up on gun control. It's doubtful proposals to ban assault weapons or limit handgun sales will go anywhere past committee approval, but then again, gun owners also likely won't get the concealed carry law they've been seeking for years. There's also the annual debate about whether the state should expand gambling to help pay for a statewide construction program. Republicans say they want more casinos, including one in Chicago, to spare Illinois residents from higher taxes. But Quinn isn't exactly keen on more gambling and House Speaker Mike Madigan hasn't let the issue get very far in the House in recent years. It doesn't sound like that's going to change anytime soon. One effort that may get more traction is a proposal to sell lottery tickets online. Senate President John Cullerton is pushing for online sales and he also wants to bring in a private firm to operate the Lottery, although the state would continue to own it. That's not the only effort out there to expand the Lottery. Rep. Mike Boland (D-East Moline) wants Illinois to follow the lead of Florida and start selling instant scratch-off Lottery tickets at highway rest stops. It's not clear how far that proposal will get, but lawmakers might need to grab onto any revenue proposals they can if they don't involve mandating higher taxes.

The Lottery also isn't the only gambling option that lawmakers might open up to the Internet. Sure, you can already find plenty of places online to place bets on the horses, but Illinois doesn't get a cut of the money and neither do the racetracks. It's not the first time lawmakers have thought about allowing online bets on horse racing, but it is the first time they've faced such a big budget crisis, so it's a safe bet (no pun intended) that lawmakers will give this one some serious thought.

Finally, for all their talk of reforming Illinois government after they booted Blagojevich and welcomed Quinn to the governor's office with open arms, Democrats aren't exactly champing at the bit to pass any major reform bills. Even when it comes to simply making the process of giving themselves raises more tranparent, they're apparently not ready to budge.

A new governor also means a new opportunity to either abolish the death penalty or end the moratorium on capital punishment in Illinois. But, outside of the anti-death penalty lobby, that's not going to be anyone's top priority right now. In fact, because there's a moratorium on executions, lawmakers probably don't feel any great need to abolish the death penalty. And Quinn has made it clear he won't be lifting the moratorium anytime soon. But with a huge budget deficit, maybe the anti-death penalty people need to change tactics, since part of their argument all along has been death penalty cases are more expensive than life sentence cases.

All that said, the next few months will be interesting. Lawmakers are going to have to do SOMETHING to show they're serious about reform if they want voters to swallow an income tax hike. And as Carol Marin put so succinctly in her Sunday column: "Any state official with a backbone will admit, as House Republican leader Tom Cross did the other day, We can't [budget] cut our way out of this one.'" The only question now is whether Quinn will get the income tax hike he's seeking, or if lawmakers will turn to some other tax to fill the gap.