In a flood of ink, Governor Bruce Rauner addressed 133 pieces of legislation--94 House Bills and 39 Senate Bills--last Friday. With the legislature’s fall Veto Session just around the corner, here are the eight items he vetoed which we may see taken up for a vote in October.

The Democrat’s County Chair brunch in Springfield yesterday morning had a record attendance, 1,800 people, noticeably more than in past years. But despite the capacity crowd, there were few fireworks or barnburner speeches, compared to Governor Bruce Rauner’s promise to pick up “at least” nine House seats at Wednesday’s speech to Republican County Chairs.

As usual, party faithful from around the state plastered themselves with stickers for their preferred candidates, but none of the leading gubernatorial candidates gave especially notable speeches. While Sen. Dan Biss (D-Skokie) and Chicago Ald. Ameya Pawar (47) attempted to deliver message-driven speeches, Chris Kennedy focused on a Walt Whitman poem about Abraham Lincoln’s death that shot wide of his audience. J.B. Pritzker largely skipped message, and spoke mostly about party building and boosting the Democratic Party which, to no one’s surprise, was very popular with an audience of party organizers and volunteers.

Also shocking nobody, 83-year-old Secretary of State Jesse White announced his intention to run for reelection, after declaring four years ago at the same chairman’s brunch, that this would be his last term. White, it is broadly rumored, was asked by Democratic Party Chairman and Speaker Mike Madigan to run for reelection because of his stratospheric statewide popularity. If a Democrat is elected Governor, White would be free to retire after his reelection, and the Democratic governor could name his successor.

• No action in the legislature is expected until Wednesday, when Madigan said the House will convene to take up an override of Rauner’s SB1 veto.
  
  


• In the meantime, Rauner added 48 names to the list of over 100 unconfirmed gubernatorial nominees waiting in the Senate. Some have been waiting since March.

Negotiations between legislators for passage of SB1 have narrowed to one or two issues, say multiple Democratic sources familiar with the negotiations. At the top of the list for Republicans, are including some kind of school voucher program and education spending mandate relief for school districts.

Republican legislators have called for $215 million of Chicago Public Schools pension payments to be moved out of the funding formula to the pension code, but have not demanded reduction in overall Chicago pension funding, say Democrats. And there has been no discussion of reducing the CPS block grant payment either.

“They’ll leave the block grant in there,” said Rep. Will Davis (D-Chicago), lead House sponsor of SB1. They’re just looking for what they can get. That’s what it boils down to. If it was really a problem for them, they wouldn’t be willing to pay for it at all. They’re OK with trying to do it, just in a different place.”

Whether or not Gov. Bruce Rauner on board with GOP negotiations is unclear to Democratic legislators, since negotiations have been limited to legislators.

A leader meeting on SB1 is scheduled for Friday, and is likely to be conducted on a conference call, rather than face-to-face.

House action yesterday was broken into two segments: a protracted and bitter argument over the Democrats’ insincere offering of governor-inspired SB1947, and a unanimous denunciation of white supremacist political actions in Charlottesville, Va. last weekend. In other words, Wednesday was a day for floor speeches.

Education officials in Chicago and Springfield faced tough questions Wednesday. In a morning Chicago meeting, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) searched for funding answers while Republican lawmakers grilled superintendents in Springfield during a House committee hearing.

The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) extended consideration of rules from the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), delivered a warning to the Illinois Board of Education (ISBE), but assented to their proposed emergency rules and voted to object to a rule proposed by the Illinois Gaming Board (IGB).

A Politico report Tuesday suggested today’s House activity would not include an SB1 veto override, and that one would be unlikely until next week as Democrats continue chasing Republican votes for the effort. The report said the House may take up Rauner’s amendatory veto language as its own bill, floating it in the chamber for the purposes of embarrassing the governor.

Three groups of rules are expected to attract attention at tomorrow’s 11:00 a.m. Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) meeting in Chicago’s Bilandic building. The 32 agenda items include a sizable rewrite of consumer safety rules for retail electricity suppliers, three emergency rules proposed by the State Board of Education, and potential property ownership limitations for gaming video terminal operators, first discussed in last month’s JCAR meeting.

A mandate that “any contract the Department of Healthcare and Family Services enters into with a managed care organization (MCO) shall be procured in accordance with the Illinois Procurement Code” has passed both houses.

The change, found in SB1446, essentially hits restart on awarded bids to six companies to administer Medicaid to state recipients. Those contracts are worth more than $9 billion over the next four years. That overhaul did not go through the usual procurement process, which sponsor Sen. David Koehler (D-Peoria) said lacked transparency. The bill would force the Request for Proposals (RFP) process to begin again and go through procurement,rather than as a Purchase of Care, exempt from the procurement code. Opponents said this meant millions of dollars in sunk costs and months of wasted time.

In Feb., Governor Bruce Rauner announced an RFP to overhaul the state’s Medicaid managed care program. The goal was to cut down on costs and the number of providers, while increasing managed care enrollment statewide. Comptroller Susana Mendoza and several Democrats blasted the move, saying it would be the biggest contract awarded in state history to not go through the usual procurement process. She added it shouldn’t have been pursued while the state was in the middle of a budget crisis and hundreds of millions of dollars behind on Medicaid provider payments..

MCOs have been under increasing pressure. Medicaid managed care expanded dramatically after 2011, when the state’s Smart Act mandated 50% of Medicaid recipients enroll in an MCO by 2015. Today, about 65% of the state’s 3.1 million Medicaid enrollees are in managed care programs. Rauner sought to increase that portion to 80% and extend coverage to children under DCFS care.

But Koehler said he wanted to ensure the state was getting the most bang for its buck, suggesting administrative costs and the several million dollars going to the private companies operating MCOs deserve a second look.

“Why are we paying 15% (in administrative costs)?... It’s estimated this year we’re going to pay $800 million in administrative fees to MCOs we have currently,” he said. Pointing out the $120 million in Affordable Care Act taxes, he added “All that profit is going outside the state.”

Sen. Dale Righter (R-Matoon) said the horse had already left the barn. Winners were announced on Friday, though contracts have not yet been negotiated.

“This process began in Feb. of this year,” he said. “The language that we’re voting on was filed in the House, not in March or April, but at the end of May. We’re almost over the goal line in this process before there was a decision to file a bill to block the process. That is very bad, very late timing.”

Koehler parried. He filed a bill in the Spring, he said, and was concerned from the start.

Righter asked if Koehler was aiming to help one of the applicants that lost in the contract process.

“I absolutely am not looking out for any special interest in this,” Koehler replied. “That’s the last thing on my mind.”

“Here’s the bottom line: just because it’s late in the game–and I’ll grant it, it’s late in the game–a bad process shouldn’t be pushed forward just because it’s late in the game. This is a $9 billion contract.”

Sen. Kyle McCarter (R-Lebanon) supported the change.

“Am I slowing down the process by voting for this? Perhaps, but I specifically asked the administration, ‘negotiate on our behalf, on the people’s behalf. Let these people cut their fees and get closer to New York at 6%,’” he said, noting the state had to work to plug its deficit.

McCarter filed a separate bill, SB1058, limiting MCO administrative costs to 9%.

Executed contracts were set to begin January 1, 2018, with a four-year term and a four-year renewal. Losing bidders can file a protest until 3:00 p.m. on Aug. 14.