In an expedited session in Springfield, Hyde Park-Kenwood’s legislators voted for a budget that allows the state to borrow billions to keep state spending levels as they were last year and a bill that adjusts the tax framework of a Chicago casino Mayor Lori Lightfoot championed.

The budget will borrow up to $5 billion from the Federal Reserve’s Municipal Liquidity Facility program, which allows the central bank to buy short-term debt from states to make up for lost revenue since the pandemic. It additionally authorizes $1.5 billion more in borrowing from various state funds to maintain cash through the year.

"If we have to, we go to the Fed to borrow, but the hope is that relief comes from Congress," said Sen. Robert Peters (D-13th) in an interview. "The best way to put this for folks is that the state can’t print money." Between the pandemic, the recession and flooding, Illinois must disperse money to keep people housed and their businesses and nonprofits running. "I think it’s important for us all to put pressure on D.C. to get the relief that we need from them," he said.

Hyde Park-Kenwood’s state representatives also praised the budget in statements.

“This pandemic laid bare the institutional inequities deeply embedded in our nation, disproportionately hurting communities of color and devastating our local economy,” Rep. Kambium Buckner (D-26th) said in a statement, praising “a balanced budget that will fund the essential services and crucial resources we need.”

Rep. Curtis J. Tarver II (D-25th) also praised the budget "that protects access to essential services, including increased Medicaid funding, increased funding for homelessness prevention and funding for unemployment" in a statement.

Elementary, secondary and post-secondary education funding will stay the same at $670 million, but the Illinois Department of Public Health budget will grow 144% to $1.6 billion, including $900 million for contact tracing and testing.

“In order to support homeowners during the pandemic, I fought to suspend late payment penalties and tax sales on property taxes,” Tarver said. “I also worked to ensure that older adults, veterans and people with disabilities who are regularly required to reapply for tax exemptions have an application deferral during this pandemic. While there is still more work to be done on providing long-term property tax relief, these important measures provide direct relief that people need right now.”

The state is providing $636 million in small business grants, including $260 million to childcare providers, and $800 million in stability payments to health care providers, including nursing homes and federally qualified health centers. The Department of Aging will get $58 million more to raise workers’ wages, and DCFS will get $170 million, a 20% increase, to increase rates for foster care providers and hire 123 investigative staffers to address caseload growth.

The COVID-19 Emergency and Economic Recovery Renter and Homeowner Protection Act failed to pass.  The measure would have cancelled rent debt and suspended mortgage payments among those infected with the coronavirus or ordered to quarantine, paying landlords and mortgage lenders through a new housing relief fund.

But the budget does include $396 million in a rent and mortgage relief fund, funded with federal coronavirus aid money, with eligibility rules to be set by the governor and the Illinois Housing Development Authority. Peters said legislators made sure that communities hardest hit by the pandemic, including undocumented people and working class African Americans, will get funding.

"I was speaking loudly about what needs to happen around housing. I spoke up in our meetings when we caucused about it, but it was also just great to have people in the Black and Latino caucuses working together around housing on the budget side," he said, noting the historical competition between the groups for resources in Chicago. "I’ve got to give credit to the budget leads of both of those caucuses who knew this was something that needed to happen, who listened and were open to it, who helped get that done."

At his May 24 press conference, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said money for homelessness prevention and utility relief is also included.

“This budget, which cuts about $1 billion from the original proposed budget and holds spending to last year’s level in almost all areas, begins to address the financial upheaval we are facing, but unfortunately more hard choices about how to spend and save these dollars remain to be made,” Pritzker said. "And those choices will have to be made along the way as we deal with the unpredictable nature of COVID-19.”

Pritzker said the gaming legislation would benefit the entire state, calling it "a reliable funding stream to our historic $45 billion Rebuild Illinois capital program" the General Assembly passed last year. The Chicago casino, he said, would pave "a path forward for hundreds of millions of dollars annually to repair our schools, hospitals and higher education buildings across the entire state."

The bill creates a graduated tax structure for Chicago’s casino, with more going to the city and state as the casino makes more money.

It remains unclear where the casino will be located, though planning for other projects is underway at the former Michael Reese Hospital site in Bronzeville. Lightfoot had previously identified it as a potential casino location, though Ald. Sophia King (4th) announced stringent opposition.

“This moment is decades in the making, and represents a critical step toward shoring up our city’s pension obligations, as well as driving huge levels of infrastructure funding and fueling thousands of new jobs for all of Illinois,” Lightfoot said in a statement.

The General Assembly also approved the text of a constitutional amendment on the ballot this November asking Illinoisans if they want to replace the state’s flat income tax with a graduated one. It passed on partisan lines, with Tarver, Buckner and Peters supporting it.

The November election will also see a major expansion in mail-in voting under terms of a bill Tarver, Buckner and Peters supported. Local election offices will mail or email vote-by-mail ballot applications to any voter who has cast a ballot since 2018 and any voter who registered or changed addresses after the March 17 primary. Local election authorities could also implement curbside voting, in which motorists could drive up for a ballot and fill it out in their vehicles.

"This is a huge expansion of vote-by-mail, and it could have been even bigger," Peters said. "My hope is that we do this well this November and that we keep and expand this program in the future."

The legislature also passed a bill to create a limited oversight panel for Pritzker’s "Restore Illinois" plan to reopen the state after measures that would have temporarily delayed Freedom of Information Act law requirements and another that would have allowed the legislature to meet remotely during a pandemic were removed.

The commission will consist of 14 appointed lawmakers and the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to “participate in and provide input on plans to revive the various sectors of the state’s economy.” Tarver, Buckner and Peters voted for it.

The three also voted for a workers compensation omnibus that extends unemployment benefits and does not charge employers for unemployment benefits issued from March 15 through the end of the year that were paid out to those out of work due to COVID-19.

“Thanks to bipartisan support from the small business community and labor unions, there is less of a burden to receiving workers’ compensation benefits for essential workers and first responders,” Tarver wrote. “As we continue our recovery efforts, I will work to ensure that the needs of our workers and our small business owners are prioritized in Illinois.”

Tarver did not vote and Buckner voted present on a bill enhancing criminal penalties for aggravated battery of retail workers during state or local public health emergencies. Peters voted for it.

"I’m anti-penalty enhancement," Peters said, explaining that he supported an extension in disability leave for public employees that had been roped into the bill.

As Peters sees it, people who commit battery in a place of public accommodation are going to be charged for battery anyway; he hopes that the penalty-enhancement language — sold to legislators as a crime deterrent, the effectiveness of which Peters and criminal justice experts doubt — can be scaled back in the legislature’s autumn veto session.

Tarver was also one of six representatives to vote against a bill that allows bars and restaurants to serve cocktails to-go, which Sen. Sara Feigenholtz (D-6th), the measure’s chief sponsor, said would bring "much needed" relief to the industry and 300,000 jobless workers. The bill also automatically renews and extends liquor licenses and waives late filing fees for any business affected by the pandemic. Buckner and Peters voted for it.

Neither Tarver nor Buckner responded to numerous requests for comment about their missed, present and no votes.

But the goals the lawmakers expressed at the beginning of the year, from Tarver’s push to automatically expunge juveniles’ criminal records for marijuana offenses to Buckner’s proposal to establish state-chartered banks for the marijuana industry to Peters’ hopes to continue reforms of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and to end cash bond, remain unrealized after an abbreviated spring session held during a once-in-a-century public health crisis.

Moving forward, Peters wants to get more money for housing assistance and would like to pass legislation sealing individuals’ eviction records and limiting the grounds upon which landlords can evict tenants.

He looks forward to the Senate’s new ability to hold subject matter hearings remotely. He thinks DCFS needs to enact rules to allow parents to see their children in a time of social distancing. And he would also like to pursue bond reform and abolishing cash bail to limit pre-trial detention — legislative priorities the pandemic put a stop to.

"If we look at the Cook County Jail, we got so many people out who weren’t deemed ‘dangerous to society,’" he said, referring to the incarcerated people released as the jail became a coronavirus hotspot. "It kind of proved that so many of us had made about pre-trial incarceration."

Capitol News Illinois, a news service of the Illinois Press Association, contributed.