Refunding likely one-time surplus money to taxpayers while also bulking up reserves, shoring up state pension funds and paying off other debts is standard procedure in well-run states.
Last year’s state budget talks were dragged into the bitter fight between the Senate, the House and the governor’s office over a massive bill to regulate carbon-based power plants. As a result, the House hurriedly and angrily jammed an appropriations bill over to the Senate before it could be fully checked for accuracy. Both chambers had to return during the summer to fix the mistakes. And a week before the end of this year’s spring session, tensions started showing again. Top House Democrats and people in the governor’s office said they were blind-sided when the Senate Democrats unveiled a $1.8 billion temporary tax cut package during a late Friday afternoon press conference. The Senate Dems apparently wanted to lay down their marker before the House — which had not by then proposed its tax cut plan outside the governor’s temporary $1 billion tax cut proposal in February — reconvened the following Sunday afternoon. But the rancor quickly eased because people began talking to each other. The House unveiled its own $1.4 billion temporary tax cut plan by Wednesday and the talks began in earnest. “The last 24 hours have been a virtual model of cordial negotiation and give-and-take,” marveled a high-level official in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration at the beginning of the following day. By that afternoon, a deal was announced. Elements of all three plans made it into the $1.8 billion tax cut deal. The centerpiece of the Senate’s plan was sending individual-filing taxpayers a check for $100 and joint filers $200.
