April 21--Almost every year, lawmakers in Springfield vote on whether to phase out the office of lieutenant governor. And every year they do so, the legislation gets tangled in politics. Roughly $1.6 million annually that could go toward crucial needs instead gets sucked into a bureaucracy that Illinois does not need.
Just ask the current lieutenant governor.
Wait. Can you name the current lieutenant governor? We didn't think so.
Her name is Evelyn Sanguinetti and she was Gov. Bruce Rauner's running mate in 2014. She recently said she supports efforts in the General Assembly to dissolve the office she now holds. The dissolution would require a change to the Illinois Constitution. Lawmakers would have to approve putting it on the November ballot by a deadline of May 7.
Rauner, Sanguinetti and scores of Democrats and Republicans in the legislature pinkie-swear that they support government consolidation. They admit Illinois has too many layers of government -- more than any state in the country -- and that taxpayers are pleading for relief. They acknowledge the office of lieutenant governor is superfluous.
There's a reason almost everyone in the Capitol's corridors of power has long derided the office as "lite gov." We've noted that the Illinois Constitution gives lite govs two duties: Wait around in case the governor dies, quits, can't serve or is removed from office, and do whatever the governor tells you to do.
Several states survive nicely without this office. And no one even noticed when Illinois went without a lieutenant governor for a year during former Gov. Pat Quinn's transition to the governor's office in 2009 following Rod Blagojevich's impeachment. House Speaker Michael Madigan himself pushed legislation in 2010 to abolish the office.
So it will be interesting to see what happens, perhaps as early as Thursday, when two proposals to eradicate the office get called for votes in the House and Senate. Rep. David McSweeney, R-Barrington Hills, and Sen. Tom Cullerton, D-Villa Park, are sponsoring separate but identical bills that would phase out the office by 2019.
This is a bipartisan effort. An overdue effort. A please-do-the-right-thing effort. Enough with the delay games.
Lawmakers need to vote on this before the ballot gets packed with other initiatives. A maximum of three proposals for constitutional amendments generated by the legislature -- as opposed to the rare amendment proposal generated by citizens who petition -- can be on the ballot at one time. Voters have been waiting for four decades for a chance to vote on this issue. The first movement to eliminate the office began in the 1970s.
