House votes to lease Illinois lottery to finance construction

SPRINGFIELD - The Illinois House on Wednesday approved a lottery lease to potentially finance billions in construction spending, reversed controversial budget cuts and undid the governor's changes to ethics laws even as partisan critics accused Democrats of merely providing themselves political cover.

"It's all a dog-and-pony show," said state Rep. Rosemary Mulligan, a Des Plaines Republican. "They're placating everybody and they're lying. So what else is new?"

Democrats scoffed at the notion their motivations were anything but genuine.

When Republicans criticized them for not including any project spending plans with the lottery deal, Democrats said before anyone starts cutting ribbons, the state should first find out what the deal might be worth.

"It would be a real disservice to start spending money that we don't have, that we may never get," said state Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, a Chicago Democrat.

The 118-member House voted 75-38 to explore letting a private company collect losing lottery tickets for decades to come in exchange for at least $10 billion upfront.

However, this and other votes left legislative skeptics wondering if the deals were half-done or half-baked.

"I don't think people should be celebrating," said Danville Republican state Rep. Bill Black.

The House is only one part of the equation. The Senate was not in session and is not scheduled back at the Capitol until November. It remains to be seen whether any of Wednesday's moves will carry support with senators, who've often been at odds with their House colleagues.

For instance, the Senate now controls the fate of ethics legislation after the House overrode the governor's sweeping changes to a package they'd toiled on for months. The proposal's key provision prohibits companies with state contracts from donating to those who award the contracts. Blagojevich rejected the plan and instead added on numerous provisions that would limit some, but not all, government employees from serving the General Assembly and change lawmakers' pay raise system.

A Blagojevich spokesman said the governor was disappointed in the outcome.

Also on Wednesday, the House voted to tap dozens of special state bank accounts to come up with $221 million to restore Blagojevich's recent budget cuts.

And the House OK'd restoring more than $600 million in other spending, albeit without any funding to back it up. Blagojevich cut these programs because lawmakers sent him a budget more than $2 billion out of whack and told him to manage spending.

State Rep. Tim Schmitz, a Batavia Republican, questioned if Wednesday's moves weren't more of the same. "We're getting into the shell game again," Schmitz warned.

To the contrary, offered downstate Democrat Gary Hannig, "We want to give the governor a second chance."