Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch raised some eyebrows after he attended a meeting in suburban River Forest to talk about the proposed O’Hare Flyer project, which would run express commuter trains back and forth from Downtown Chicago to O’Hare Airport.
Welch told attendees he could prevent two state agency budgets from moving forward if he didn’t get what he wanted out of the project for towns in and around his district.
Some residents of suburban towns along the route have expressed concern about the project, particularly about noise, and one person asked Welch at the meeting how opponents could stop the project or at least make it more difficult to complete.
“I can make it a little difficult,” Welch replied. According to the Oak Park Wednesday Journal, Welch pointed to the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Illinois Commerce Commission and said he could “let ‘em know that your budgets can be held up at budget time if you do things to negatively impact the communities that I represent.”
It seems kinda doubtful that the other Democratic leaders would agree to hold up IDOT’s huge budget over this, particularly since state money will play almost no role in building the project. The ICC’s main role in this project would be to approve railroad crossings. And railroads have an extraordinary amount of powers under federal law. If they want to build this with federal government help, it’s tough to stop them.
In other words, it was a lot like the playbook Welch used this year when he told the Chicago Teachers Union that he would take the lead on Chicago school funding during the veto session, and then later said he wanted a solution for all schools and then seemed to quietly drop the whole topic.
Welch signaled as much when he said, “I want to hear the good. I want to hear the bad,” according to the Oak Park paper. “I’m hearing from people in other communities that are in opposition. But I’m also hearing from people that are in support of this.”
So perhaps the usual political bluster. But publicly threatening to hold up entire agency budgets over nonbudget disagreements is not a common occurrence for a House speaker. That’s saying the quiet part out loud, and it rarely works well.
Since I mentioned the CTU earlier in this column, let’s get back to them.
As I’ve told you before, the CTU has been claiming that the state has more money for schools than it’s letting on. And as part of that argument, the union is demanding at least a billion dollars from the state during November’s veto session. That’s what Welch was responding to when he agreed to lead the charge for state funding next month.
And the CTU did so again after the release of a quarterly revenue report issued by the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.
The commission reported robust quarterly growth in corporate income taxes and some other revenue sources totaling about $1 billion. But the commission’s report also warned: “While the first quarter produced strong revenue gains, several factors are expected to place downward pressure on revenues during the remainder of FY 2027 and could offset a significant portion of the gains realized thus far.”
For example, the Income Tax Refund Fund will be “$649 million lower” than last fiscal year, with the largest reductions coming in October and November. And another $349 million will be lost to the “annual reconciliation of business-related income tax receipt” which are known as “true-ups.” Another $265 million could be at least temporarily lost because of lawsuits filed against several new online-related taxes that were put into the budget.
The commission is also not convinced that the unexpected growth in corporate income taxes and sales taxes will continue, so “additional time and data are needed before the Commission updates its FY 2027 revenue outlook.”
The bottom line is that it could be quite dangerous to the budget to add a billion dollars in new spending before legislators even know how much money will actually flow into state coffers by late spring.
Welch’s upcoming reelection as House speaker is still in doubt, so numerous media outlets have claimed his nod to the CTU was an effort to bolster his position. But the O’Hare express train has support from several powerful statehouse groups, especially trade unions, which is a big reason it’s doubtful that those agency budgets will be stalled next spring.
So Welch’s bluster might help him a bit back in his district, but likely not under the dome when he fights to retain the speaker’s gavel in January.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.