So-called ‘shell bills’ have become a common tool for lawmakers to introduce and pass legislation without the transparency and debate required by the Illinois Constitution.
Capitol News Illinois file photo

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Daily Herald opinion: The legislative shell game: GOP lawsuit draws attention to a practice that threatens faith in government

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The process goes by a variety of names, none of them particularly comforting:

Shell bills. Technical bills. Gut-and-replace bills.

They all refer to a procedure that has become virtually routine in the General Assembly for passing budgets and other pieces of controversial legislation in the waning days or even hours of a session without substantive debate or, just as important, the examination and transparency demanded by the Illinois Constitution.

The tool has been used by both parties in both chambers when circumstances were convenient, but last week, finally, a group of Republican leaders asked that it be prohibited by the courts. What a positive difference it could make in Illinois legislative practice if it were.

Here’s how it works: The Illinois Constitution requires that bills be read by title on three different days in each chamber before they can be passed, and there is a deadline for introducing bills in every General Assembly session. So, before the deadline, lawmakers introduce numerous bills with almost meaningless content, allowing them to be read a couple of times and sent to committee, awaiting an opportunity to have their content replaced entirely after the deadline, then read a final time and passed, with limited debate on the floor.

The process can have value for urgent, unexpected – and rare – issues that emerge late in a session. But more commonly, it has become a convenient means of pushing through difficult or controversial issues that lawmakers don’t want the public or their colleagues to look at too closely. These days, it is virtually rigor for passing annual budgets thousands of pages long mere hours from the close of session. But when Democrats used it last month to ram through a complicated controversial proposal clearing the way for certain lawsuits against Illinois businesses, that apparently became the final straw for Republicans.

Their lawsuit seeks to nullify that legislation and at the same time eliminate the “gut and replace” process by which it was passed.

“We have long discussed with our partners, members and constituents filing suit on this issue, even prior to me being in leadership this year,” House Republican Leader Tony McCombie, of Savanna, said during a news conference announcing the suit. “The caucus members brought forward this egregious example of SB 328, and said let’s move forward.”

SB 328, which passed both chambers on party-line votes, has its own issues, and Gov. JB Pritzker should examine them carefully before deciding to sign it into law. As he mulls a campaign for U.S. president that no doubt will turn on the question of adhering to constitutional foundations, he would be wise to consider the manner in which SB 328 was passed.

That, of course, can’t be a sole justification for vetoing the bill without making a grand gesture that would defy what has become several years of precedence and even the new fiscal year budget he has just signed. Nor are we prepared yet to stake out a position on the merits of the legislation itself. But it certainly should give pause to anyone with an interest in encouraging the public’s faith in our government.

Shell bill. Technical bill. Gut-and-replace legislation. Whatever you want to call it, this practice has exceeded its potential value as a means of addressing unexpected issues and become an all-too-easy means of deviously passing legislation in deliberate defiance of our state Constitution’s goals of ensuring full debate and transparency.

Whether the courts can or will eradicate it, we cannot say. But we are glad that Republicans have drawn new attention to it. With luck, if the courts are unwilling or unable to bring about change, a more-aware voting public will.