Illinois legislative session goes into OT; Senate OKs 4 new Chicago-area casinos

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SPRINGFIELD -- The new month brings new negotiators and new priorities to the table as Illinois officials try to piece together a state budget.

The Legislature's Republican minority will get a chance to influence state spending and taxes now that Democrats have missed a May 31 deadline to wrap up their business. Republican leaders favor lean budgets, so their presence creates a new hurdle for major health care and education expansions.

Many lawmakers were predicting the legislative gridlock would just intensify. Even one of the newly empowered Republicans didn't sound happy about the situation.

"I think June will almost be in some ways a wasted month because no one will feel any reason to get anything done," said House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego.

Still, Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, took a conciliatory tone.

"If we all sincerely sit down and work together, we can reach compromise," Jones said.

Before the Senate adjourned early Friday morning, it narrowly passed legislation to create four new casinos, including a publicly owned casino in Chicago. The $2 billion gambling expansion now goes to the House.

The Senate also concurred in roughly $300 million worth of business taxes that the House approved a day earlier. The tax measure goes to the governor's desk.

Both the House and Senate planned to return to work later Friday. The House is scheduled to work three days a week through June, but the Senate's plan weren't clear.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich faces a major new hurdle in his efforts to provide health care for the uninsured. Democrats already had shown little enthusiasm for the expensive plan. Now Republicans, who are even less inclined to support it, will have a say.

The Senate voted on a key amendment to the plan Thursday night, and it got only 29 votes -- not even a majority.

Blagojevich joined the Senate president in backing a plan to open several new casinos, including one in Chicago, and increase a variety of smaller business taxes. The $5 billion plan presumably would provide smaller increases for schools and health care, but supporters haven't offered any details.

The gambling portion of the plan passed the Senate 30-29.

It would let existing riverboat casinos, now limited to 1,200 gamblers at a time, expand to 2,000. The land-based Chicago casino could serve 4,000 people, and three other new casinos in the Chicago area would have 3,500 positions each.

The measure also offers money to help support the horse-racing industry and would allow electronic poker at casinos so that people could play against gamblers across the country.