I asked Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch last week about the failure to pass an omnibus energy bill (the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act) during the just-ended spring legislative session.
“I think the same thing that happened on energy happened on all the things, you know. Big bills take time,” Welch said. “And I really do believe it’s important that we take the time to get it right and make sure we produce the best results for everyone.”
Welch compared the delay to his first spring session as House speaker, when another energy omnibus bill crashed and burned and then they came back in the fall and “passed one of the biggest pieces of legislation that ever passed in this state.”
Gov. JB Pritzker told reporters much the same thing last week. “You don’t get everything done in one year,” Pritzker said. “(S)ometimes they spend two years, four years, six years trying to get something big done.” Like Welch, he also pointed to the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which he noted took about a year and a half to pass.
Senate President Don Harmon, on the other hand, pointed to this summer’s expected temporary spike in electricity costs due to capacity charges by regional grid managers as a reason. Some of the proposals (like battery storage) would cost more in the short term, “so we’re trying to figure out how to how to respond to that anticipated spike,” Harmon told the 21st Show.
In the end, though, Harmon said, “we just couldn’t keep the Christmas tree standing this year” – apparently meaning the bill fell under its own weight.
But other factors were important as well, according to numerous people who worked on the bill. Stakeholders would agree to changes and then the drafts would come back that inexplicably looked little like what people had agreed to, which not only delayed the end but also injected a lack of trust into the process.
This was particularly true with energy efficiency requirements, I’m told. A deal was finally cut with ComEd, and Ameren decided to move off its opposition, but there simply wasn’t time left to get that drafted before the clock ran out.
Many issues had been on the table for months, but a legislative working group came up with some ideas that couldn’t find quick consensus.
People were spread too thin across too many major items (including mass transit reform and the state budget), and, as a consequence, way too much fell through the cracks.
The American Petroleum Institute blasted the energy storage portion of the bill for costing $9 billion for about one to two hours of peak electricity supply per day.
Proponents vehemently disputed the API’s figure, saying the estimate was way too high, and cost increases wouldn’t begin for a few years and cost decreases would start a few years later.
But that and other things helped drive the pipe trade unions away from bill. The unions represent workers at a massive Metro East coal-fired power plant and a major refinery, both of which are heavy industrial electricity consumers.
And their decision to oppose the legislation on May 31 meant there wasn’t enough time to fix that problem and bring the final language to the two Democratic caucuses.
The pipe trades have now officially declared themselves as neutral, as has Ameren, Constellation Energy and the Illinois Energy Association. And some environmental lobbyists think the language on the table has a good shot at passage during the October veto session (or perhaps in January), even though their attempts to rein in power-hungry data centers were left out of the bill.
Whatever the case may be, the legislature goes through this almost every year. They put all the big stuff off until the end, and then they don’t have the bandwidth to deal with a multitude of issues at once, although this year was particularly difficult.
Human beings tend to wait until the last minute to do things. But the leaders need to start enforcing earlier deadlines for giant issues like this energy proposal so they can deal with other time-sensitive things (the budget and revenues, for instance) at the end. Or maybe the other way around.
Far too many major issues were left to May 31st. And that procrastination led to problems like a poorly drafted revenue bill that could imperil some TV and film projects in Illinois.
A buddy of mine who’s been at the Statehouse for decades grumped last week the leaders tried to do a five-month session in five days. That’s no way to run a railroad.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.
Send letters to letters@suntimes.com