A 16-year-old Rochester student tailed Gov. Rod Blagojevich with a video recorder as they walked into the State Fair last month. Surrounded by a group of news reporters, Aaron Mulvey didn’t hesitate to call out his question.

“Mr. Governor, I’m a junior at Rochester High School, and I’m still wondering: Three years ago you came to our school and told us we were getting our money. I’m just wondering where it is. We’re still on the top of that list.”

Clearly caught off guard, the governor stopped, looked toward Mulvey’s camera and said: “Uh, yes. Yeah. Look, I want to work with you.” He started walking away and looked over his shoulder. “We’ve got to call those legislators and free up that money. I’m dying to do it.”

Mulvey referred to a construction grant Blagojevich promised to his school in 2006, when the governor held a huge pep rally in the gymnasium and announced Rochester was on the top of a waiting list of about two dozen schools. A $10 million grant would help the district build a new high school.

After Mulvey stopped Blagojevich in his tracks, the high-school junior became the subject of reporters’ questions. He said he was in eighth grade at the time of the pep rally. “Yeah, that money’s not here, yet.” 

Mulvey added that in retrospect, it probably was just another campaign promise to get re-elected. 

Some school districts have been waiting for state matching funds for about five years, repeatedly disappointed as the money gets clogged in the Statehouse.

The reason they haven’t gotten their money is the same reason the state is in its ninth year without a major construction plan for roads, bridges, schools and other infrastructure needs. Democratic infighting continues to deepen a fissure between the governor and the House speaker, while the Republican minority switches between acting as a buffer and shrugging its shoulders as if to say, “We can’t control the Democrats.”

There have been multiple attempts to approve a major capital program, including one as large as $34 billion, but the so-called compromise plans often have turned out to be little more than political tools. They allow legislators to go home and tell voters that they, at least, did their part to vote for a capital bill, even if it had no chance of advancing through both chambers.

That might have changed last month. During a special legislative session called by the governor, the House approved a roughly $1.2 billion capital plan. It would allow the state to tap into federal funds that otherwise sit in Washington, D.C., waiting for a state match. 

Meanwhile, House Speaker Michael Madigan also announced that “very good progress” was made in discussions about funding a significant capital program by leasing the Illinois Lottery to private investors, a plan Blagojevich has proposed more than once. 

The two events, together, have potential to open the door to a compromise. But legislators and voters alike won’t believe it until they see it.

Even House Republicans who voted in favor of the $1.2 billion plan call it a farce.

“It was a meager attempt to access some federal money,” says House Republican Leader Tom Cross. “But the fallacy in it is, you need to appropriate the whole amount of $1.2 billion, and then you get reimbursed by the federal government.”?It is a small component of a bigger picture that has to be developed, he says. “But at the end of the day, it doesn’t work.”

Senate Republican Leader Frank Watson agreed but offered some hope that it could serve as a starting point. 

“We’ll see. I would like to believe that there was a sincere effort here, that it wasn’t some cynical approach to this whole process of just, ‘Pass a bill and don’t worry about what happens.’ We may get a chance to vote on it. At least it’s accessing the federal dollars.”

The mini version would use $360 million in existing state dollars to access federal earmarks, allowing the state to spend the total of about $1.2 billion.

Rep. Gary Hannig, a Litchfield Democrat sponsoring the measure, says some contractors can’t even pour concrete until a series of preliminary steps are taken. The federal earmarks, set aside for such projects as a new Mississippi River bridge near St. Louis, would pay for such work as initial feasibility studies.

“It’s a first step, I think, in an effort to try to access the federal money and a first step to try to get a capital bill passed in Illinois,”?Hannig says.

Sen. Donne Trotter, a Chicago Democrat and majority whip, agrees that it could be a first step to a capital bill. “It at least shows that there’s some action versus no action being taken.”

However, it’s a baby step, far from meeting capital needs that fill hundreds of pages in previous capital bills.

The Illinois Department of Transportation, for instance, says the federal dollars earmarked for specific projects fund only a portion of the entire projects.

“Without sufficient funding to advance projects from conception to construction, the earmarks will remain unutilized, even if matching funds are made available,” Transportation Secretary Milton Sees wrote to representatives.

He added that the $1.2 billion plan assumes that federal funds will be available for the next six years. The current federal transportation program is set to expire in a year. “There is absolutely no guarantee these federal earmarks will be available beyond that date,” Sees wrote.

Hannig says the same fear applies to a full-scale capital plan. “I think we have to assume that our congressional delegation, which has done a good job in putting these earmarks together, will be able to keep them in place. We have to work off of that assumption, whether it’s on the smaller capital bill that we passed or the bigger capital bill that the governor’s proposed.”

Meanwhile, the $1.2 billion measure doesn’t prevent legislators from negotiating a larger capital bill. Madigan’s announcement of progress on discussions of leasing the Illinois Lottery could be the next step.

Soon after the speaker announced that progress, however, Senate President Emil Jones Jr. indicated his hesitancy: “I’ll see when they pass something. We passed something twice on a bipartisan basis out of the Senate.”

Republicans and Democrats in the Senate did, indeed, approve two versions of a capital plan, including a grandiose $34 billion proposal negotiated by former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard. It relied on a large expansion of gaming, which died in the House.

When the speaker announced that “gaming was dead” as a way to fund the construction program, the Senate erased the gaming portion and approved a smaller $25 billion plan that relied on a lease of the lottery. It still stalled.

Madigan said that was because his caucus members distrust the governor. And until the administration proposes a capital plan with detailed legislation about which projects would be funded — line by line — the proposal will have a hard time getting votes from House Democrats.

Blagojevich’s office insists that it provided detailed lists to caucus leaders. Poshard dismissed the House Democrats’ complaints. Construction projects have never been listed line by line, he said, and that could limit the transportation department’s ability to adjust if projects come in over or under budget.

Poshard also highlighted an “accountability provision” that would create a so-called lockbox for capital investments and lottery proceeds for education, which currently receives about $650 million from the state lottery operations.

But Madigan spokesman Steve Brown says neither the lockbox nor the governor’s list of projects ensure that Blagojevich would release the money.

House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie said in July that the spending side of any capital plan must be crystal clear. “Assuming we could reach agreement on the revenue side — a big assumption — we would definitely want line-item allocations and some way to guarantee that dollars allocated are actually spent.”

Other funding ideas include transferring higher-than-expected revenues from two state taxes: the motor fuel tax that goes into a dedicated Road Fund and the sales tax on gasoline that goes into the general revenue fund. Currie said her caucus could consider using excess revenues from the Road Fund if the administration proves that the money would go directly to capital construction projects. Transferring money from the general revenue fund is another story.

She described it as “a very tough sell.”

So what will it take? Trust between all parties. But that first requires some attitude adjustments. It also could change after Jones retires as Senate president in January, breaking the Blagojevich-Jones alliance and potentially opening the door to more communication with Madigan.

Whoever takes over in the Senate, the new leader will have to work with Blagojevich and Madigan to a find a starting point, let alone a compromise.

To get there, all three should consider a poignant and objective analysis voiced last month during an opening prayer of the Illinois Senate’s special session. The Rev. Michael Keppler, pastor at Springfield Southern Baptist Church, offered this insight:

“The majority seemingly proves each day its frustration with leadership and the inability to govern. The minority may be settling into the role of contentment with simply being the anti-majority. Both parties need to rise to actual leadership that results in adjusted priorities if the larger issues of fully funding human services, educational commitments, the capital program and the like are to be addressed.”

There have been multiple attempts to approve a major capital program ... but the so-called compromise plans often have turned out to be little more than political tools.

So what will it take? Trust between all parties. But that first requires some attitude adjustments.

Bethany Jaeger can be reached at capitolbureau@aol.com.

Illinois Issues, September 2008