Democrats Force Remap Redux While Energy Overhaul Finally Moves Forward
For the second time in three months, Democrats who control the General Assembly on Tuesday night passed a set of new legislative maps over the objections of community advocacy groups and Republicans.
Lawmakers returned to Springfield for a one-day special session to revise the redistricting plan Democrats muscled through the legislature in May, but other issues also competed for top billing Tuesday — especially major energy and climate legislation facing extremely tight deadlines with high-stakes consequences.
And in an unexpected twist, Republicans in the Illinois House successfully held off Democrats’ efforts to approve a change Gov. JB Pritzker asked for in legislation aimed at ethics reform. Though the majority party can try again, GOP members at least temporarily derailed a vote to accept Pritzker’s minor changes to the bill in hopes of forcing more radical ethics reform.
Tuesday’s one-day session involved hours of lawmakers milling around the Capitol, waiting for behind-closed-doors meetings to yield compromises and progress — especially on the energy and climate legislation. Finally as the clock struck approached midnight, Senate Democrats began debating a not-quite-finished energy measure in hopes of freeing the issue from a months-long stalemate by changing negotiation stances.
Though stakeholders called it progress, lawmakers still left Springfield without a clear picture of when they’ll be back, though the parameters of the energy overhaul debate dictate the return happen within the next two weeks.
The brief off-season reunion put on display the tensions built up both between Democrats and Republicans during the pandemic, and within the Democratic party in recent months, despite controlling all of state government.
Redistricting’s legal cloud
Every decade in the year after the decennial Census, lawmakers are tasked with crafting new legislative maps to use for the next 10 years. But the COVID-19 pandemic significantly delayed 2020 Census data, which is usually given to states in the spring of a remap year, to a late summer target date.
Democrats, who hold supermajorities in both the Illinois House and Senate, faced a choice. They could either wait for the official Census numbers but cede their mapmaking authority to an appointed commission — in addition to giving Republicans a 50/50 chance to control the process — or forge ahead with alternative population data to retain their political advantage.
The majority party chose the latter, understanding that path would likely mean stronger legal challenges than historical redistricting litigation, as well as other hurdles down the line. After dozens of redistricting hearings this spring, Democrats in late May approved new legislative maps drawn with estimates from American Community Survey data, but vowing to make necessary adjustments later this year after official 2020 Census data was made available.
Three months, two federal lawsuits and one Census Bureau data drop later, lawmakers found themselves back in Springfield on Tuesday to vote on revised legislative districts after independent analysis showed Democrats’ original redistricting plan included several districts so malapportioned any court would find them unconstitutional.
But the majority party is careful not to make on-the-record admissions that the original maps they approved and sent to Pritzker — who signed them in June despite an explicit campaign promise to veto maps drawn by lawmakers, staff or political consultants — likely don’t pass constitutional muster.
That didn’t stop Republicans from trying to coax Democratic leaders into saying the maps passed in May would be nullified by the new redistricting plan if Pritzker signs it. Such an admission — which State Rep. Lisa Hernandez (D-Cicero) caught herself in more than a few times on Tuesday — serves to bolster GOP legislative leaders’ legal theory that an unconstitutional redistricting plan should be declared totally void and treated as if it never existed.
Erasing the passage of the new maps from the legislative record would mean lawmakers did not, in fact, meet the June 30 deadline to approve a redistricting plan and would prompt the appointment of the bipartisan commission to take over mapmaking responsibilities — at least according to Republicans’ claims. That panel has historically ended in stalemate, triggering the random selection of a tie-breaking member aligned with either Democrats or Republicans, which then cements the political advantage of the party who wins the game of chance.
The path to a forced commission process is an uphill battle, however, as federal courts technically don’t have the power to compel state officials to follow state law.
But the judge overseeing the redistricting cases has already given directives to the Democrats as the litigation unfolds. The week after official 2020 Census data was finally released, U.S. District Judge Robert Dow urged Democrats handling the remapping process to confer with both the GOP officials who brought one of the redistricting cases, as well as the Latino voting rights advocacy group behind the second lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Robert Dow then told the majority party to craft an amended redistricting plan that would satisfy “all constitutional and statutory obligations, not just those raised in the existing pleadings and motions.”
The lawsuit filed on behalf of five Latino voters by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund isn’t asking the court to force a bipartisan commission take over the mapmaking process, but instead asks for court supervision in revising the maps to maximize Latino voting power. Official Census data released earlier this month vindicated the long-expected boost in Latino populations not just in Illinois, but most of the U.S. — a numerical strength those communities have been waiting to translate into increased political power.
During the nine redistricting hearings scheduled between last Thursday afternoon and Tuesday morning, advocacy organizations representing a variety of racial, ethnic and religious groups requested more time to study the new proposed maps. They emphasized the stakes were high for their communities, who are at risk of having their political power diluted through an errant district boundary line.
“We simply don’t have enough reassurances that communities of color have had their voting rights respected,” Ami Gandhi of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights told lawmakers earlier in the day.
But Democrats didn’t heed the requests to delay a vote on the maps and instead pushed the revised redistricting plan through on party line votes Tuesday night. On Wednesday afternoon, the parties will go before Judge Dow once again — roughly 14 hours after the final component of the new legislative maps passed through the Senate.
Redistricting debates got contentious during the hours-long back and forth between the Democrats carrying the redistricting plans and Republicans monologuing their disgust with the majority party’s use of power.
State Rep. Avery Bourne (R-Morrisonville) said the wishes of an Orthodox Jewish community concentrated in Chicago’s northernmost neighborhoods and surrounding suburbs did not appear to have been heeded in the final version of the House district map, despite multiple asks that the population be kept in a single district so as to not dilute its political power.
“You might as well say, ‘We drew this for our own power, hope you like it! You might get to read it after you vote on it,’” Bourne scolded her Democratic colleagues. “This is the opposite of transparent. It was a sham to ask the public to be in those hearings if you’re not even going to take into consideration their suggestions.”
Democrats dished out criticisms to their GOP colleagues too — all of whom are white and the majority of whom are male — pointing to their caucus’ voting records overwhelmingly in opposition to progressive measures like criminal justice reform. State Rep Curtis Tarver (D-Chicago), the House Redistricting Committee’s vice chair, said he was calling Republicans’ bluff in alleging their care for minority communities didn’t extend beyond a convenient partnership in the remap debate.
“This is about one thing for them — well, I guess two: power and control,” State Rep. Curtis Tarver (D-Chicago) said of GOP members. “Which historically has not worked out well for communities of color when Republicans are in control…You hear them talking a lot about minority and diverse populations, which is kind of remarkable to me, and should be remarkable to you too, because they don’t care about diversity.”
State Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Chicago) told Republicans it’s their voters who are leaving Illinois, abandoning rural districts for more populated areas. While that’s a nationwide demographic shift, legislative maps drawn by Democrats in 2011 and 2001 also aided in siphoning political power from the GOP.
The maps Democrats passed Tuesday would likely further that trend as Republicans could stand to lose as many as five or six House districts to Democrats in the 2022 election, further cementing their status as the superminority party in Springfield. Additionally, the maps pack 14 GOP incumbents in seven House districts, forcing them to choose between running against each other, moving to an adjacent district or retiring altogether.
Energy hot potato tossed to House
Early Wednesday morning after House members went home for the night, Senate President Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) successfully pushed the latest version of his caucus’ energy and climate legislation out of the Senate in hopes of putting the ball in the House’s court.
The bill passed with the assistance of a few Republicans who have been advocating on behalf nuclear plant workers in their districts as the nuclear giant Exelon’s threatened shutdown date of its Byron plant approaches in the next two weeks. Exelon has also scheduled the permanent decommissioning of its Dresden plant, near Morris, in November.
Wednesday also represents another energy-related deadline lawmakers have now blown: the date when $317 million in funds set aside for subsidizing solar energy projects will begin getting refunded back to ratepayers.
But with no deal over when and how to force coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to curb their pollution and possibly shut down completely, Harmon called the most recent version of the bill to a vote nearing midnight on Tuesday.
“In my entire time in the Senate, this may be the most complicated bill and the most challenging negotiation of which I’ve ever been part,” Harmon said in opening debate on the legislation. “Inaction has consequences and this is urgent. And there are so many folks that I’m worried about.”
Some of those people for whom the stakes are high: nuclear power plant workers whose jobs may disappear later this month, renewable energy business owners whose project subsidies are now draining from state coffers at a rate of $1 million per day and future generations who are already seeing the disastrous effects of a warmer climate.
In the waning hours of lawmakers’ spring session in May, it became clear that the energy and climate bill aimed at moving Illinois to 100% renewable sources by 2050 would not see a last-minute deal to get across the finish line, despite a long-fought agreement on the amount of ratepayer subsidies Exelon would get to support three unprofitable plants. Most negotiating the energy overhaul agree Illinois can’t get to a future of 100% clean energy without using nuclear as a bridge, especially as Illinois is the state most reliant on nuclear power in the nation.
After the haze of session lifted, just how far apart negotiators from organized labor and environmental groups truly were on the package came into much sharper focus. While most coal-fired power plants in Illinois already have plans to shutter in the next several years as they come to the end of their natural lives, two newer plants owned by municipalities became the focus of negotiations that turned to stalemate as the summer went on.
The fate of a handful of natural gas-fired power plants and a few labor issues like forcing minority-owned renewable energy businesses to pay the prevailing wage also had to be worked out, but the impasse reached by organized labor and environmental groups last month begins and ends with disagreement over regulating the two municipally owned coal-fired power plants.
The Dallman 4 plant owned by Springfield’s City, Water, Light and Power and the Prairie State Generating Station in the Metro East are newer coal-fired plants built in the last 15 years, still being paid off by taxpayers. Prairie State, which opened in 2012, is backed by 180 communities and energy co-ops across the Midwest, including 36 municipalities and 20 electric co-ops in Illinois.
Forcing Prairie State to shut down before its planned decommission date in 2045 would mean taxpayers would still be on the hook to pay down the bonds their cities took out to fund construction of the plant in addition to finding new sources of energy to power their towns.
But Prairie State is Illinois’ largest carbon polluter — and the seventh-largest carbon polluter in the entire U.S.
Environmental groups say the plant must start reducing its carbon emissions sooner rather than later, and also be subject to a hard shutdown date. Pritzker agrees, seeking to cement his progressive first term legacy before his re-election run next year.
But organized labor and Harmon — whose caucus has largely gone along with unions’ point of view — say that’s not a fair bargain. The bill the Senate passed early Wednesday morning mandates greenhouse gas-emitting power plants must reduce their carbon emissions to zero by 2045 or shut down permanently.
Asked in an early morning press conference about the possibility of also adopting the gradual decarbonization goals environmental groups say must be part of a final deal, Harmon was skeptical, citing the cost of investing in carbon-scrubbing technology.
“The question is really one of economics,” Harmon said. “Why would anybody invest $4 billion in an asset that, by law, has to close shortly after that investment matures?”
While Harmon said he was “very open” to be proven wrong that some sort of “hybrid” plan would work, he didn’t believe it would.
Technology to reduce carbon emissions anywhere near 100% doesn’t exist in any practicable way — at least not yet. Part of the legislation passed Wednesday morning directs the University of Illinois to research the issue.
If nothing else, Harmon’s move to send an energy bill to the House will provide a new venue for negotiations and invite House Speaker Chris Welch (D-Hillside) to step into the role of referee at a level he hasn’t yet needed to occupy in his new title.
Welch, who became speaker in January, has only been on the job for a little over seven months — a tenure dwarfed by that of his predecessor, former House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago). The former speaker only relinquished the title after it became clear he’d lost key support to elect him to a historic 19th term leading the House in the wake of a growing federal probe centering on the Democratic power broker.
The ability to navigate and shape large, complicated deals like the energy and climate bill currently sputtering in Springfield was a chief source of power for Madigan. Allies of the former speaker could always find work in close proximity to high-profile issues, which in turn greased the wheels of his political operation.
Since ascending as House Speaker, Welch set out to differentiate his leadership style from Madigan’s in myriad ways — especially in light of a corruption probe that identified the former speaker as “Public Official A” in a years-long bribery scheme revealed by federal prosecutors last year, though Madigan has not been charged.
The architects of that bribery scheme represented Exelon subsidiary Commonwealth Edison, an electric utility with a huge stake in energy legislation that passed in Springfield in both 2011 and 2016. For the current round of energy negotiations, progressives and Republicans alike publicly say it’s good ComEd and its downstate counterpart Ameren aren’t dictating the terms of the energy bill — and neither is Madigan.
But privately, stakeholders and lawmakers all over the political spectrum bemoan the loss of clear leadership in Madigan, especially as the clock ticks on Exelon’s threatened nuke plant closures.