Daily Herald opinion: The bounds of party unity: Crespo’s stringent punishment suggests something more than a concern over ‘processes’

A veteran of nearly two decades in the Illinois House, Hoffman Estates Democrat Fred Crespo is no stranger to the chamber’s procedures or his party’s hierarchies. He is certainly familiar with financial issues facing the state, especially considering that — at least until two weeks ago — he chaired a budget appropriations committee.

But he also is not shy about expressing points of view that may differ from those of party leaders, especially on budget matters he considers important.

That “but”, as it turns out, may be politically fraught.

At this point in the budget preparation last year, Crespo was an outspoken critic of his party, complaining that leaders were not pressing hard enough to control spending, and he was among a group of Democrats whose dissent on the 2025 revenue plan led to a stalemate until Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch managed to get just the minimum 60 votes necessary for passage, despite his party holding a majority with 78 votes.

This year, Crespo continued to express concerns about specific spending proposals emerging in the budget, declaring during a particular debate in April that “at this rate, we’re just going to run out of taxpayers’ dollars to spend.” He did not expect his ideas to lead to what happened a month later.

With a May 31 deadline looming for the General Assembly to pass the 2025-26 fiscal year budget, Welch called Crespo into his office on May 14 to tell him he was being stripped of his chairmanship of an appropriations committee and banished from the Democratic Party caucus. The reasons? Crespo apparently circumvented Welch-established procedures by filing budget-related legislation and failing to communicate with leadership representatives.

In a meeting with our editorial board last week, Crespo said he was surprised by the Welch meeting and the action. He denied being uncommunicative with speaker’s staff or budget leaders and said he believed that legislation he filed proposing a system of temporarily setting aside certain non-critical funds until the impact of threatened federal funding cuts by President Donald Trump became clear was intended to spark floor discussion of his concerns.

He said he didn’t expect the bill to pass but that “this is how things are done” to initiate debate.

Welch, who denies that Crespo’s legislation alone led to his decision, nonetheless was apparently not impressed by the lawmaker’s reasoning. In an interview on the “Illinois Lawmakers” program, he told host Jak Tichenor that after the 2024 disruption, he created new communications processes for this year to address “the things that the members brought to me last May as concerns.” He outlined an array of new structures and assignments intended to “put together a budget that reflects the collective,” but said Crespo “chose not to be a part of those processes and to go on his own.”

Then, he added a reflection that gives the situation an ominous tone.

“To me,” he said, “this is a team effort … The Great 78 is only as powerful as working together. I tell them all the time, diversity is our strength, but our power comes from our unity.”

It’s that line that gives us the most pause. Perhaps Crespo should have been more attentive to procedural changes initiated by the speaker, but was that a sin so egregious as to cost him a leadership post and, worse, the right to share his views with his party’s caucus? Or is it more accurate to see that party “unity” demands that every member of Welch’s “Great 78” express views and vote in lockstep with the leadership and with each other?

To a degree, of course, that is how politics works — to the great discredit of the concept of political parties. But even within party structures, the diversity of points of view that is, as Welch put it, “our strength” ought to allow for members to operate with personal integrity and autonomy. The speaker may want the world to see — may indeed even believe it himself — that his actions were intended as punishment for some technical failures in following newly established procedures, but the severity, the timing and the object of them suggest rather an exercise of power and a show of force to anyone else who might deign to veer out of line from “the collective’s” point of view.

Crespo’s departure from party unity may have been uncomfortable for leaders, but it also serves to show that, stereotypes to the contrary, there is concern about spending controls within the Democratic Party and, beyond that, to demonstrate a sincere concern for taxpayer interests. On those points, it would seem he deserves not so much discipline as thanks.

We can understand an organization’s need to protect and enforce its processes, but the punishment inflicted on Crespo extends beyond that simple aim and dishonors the 18 years of service he has provided his constituents. Worst of all, it suggests a party concerned more for its unchallenged authority than for good government and the public interest.