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. “Sometimes
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 that 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 which 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 which 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 that 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 that 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 31. And that
procrastination led to problems like a poorly drafted revenue bill which could
imperil some TV and film projects in Illinois.
A buddy of mine who’s been at the Statehouse for decades
grumped last week that the leaders tried to do a five-month session in five
days. That’s no way to run a railroad.