From the Bloomington Pantagraph

Blagojevich allies stall recall-election bill
By Kevin McDermott
SPRINGFIELD — Top Illinois Senate Democrats rode to the rescue of beleaguered Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Wednesday, stalling a recall-election movement that was aimed at the Democratic governor by angry lawmakers.
The issue boiled over in a raucous two-hour Senate committee hearing filled with competing shouts, insults and allegations between Blagojevich’s detractors and defenders. At issue was a recall-election bill that passed the House last week, but now is stalled in the Senate as a ballot filing deadline approaches.
The bill would let voters in November decide whether to change the state constitution to allow removal of politicians during their terms if enough voters demand it. The measure would apply to all state-level executive and legislative politicians — but its House sponsors have bluntly said it is meant for Blagojevich.
“I filed it . . . because our governor is not doing his job,” Rep. Jack Franks, D-Woodstock, told the Senate Executive Committee. “It was a response to the continuous state of dysfunction we’re in.”
Franks and many other House Democrats (as well as most legislative Republicans) have been furious at Blagojevich for what they say is a dictatorial and incompetent style that has gridlocked government. The recall measure passed the Democrat-controlled House 75-33 last week, largely on the strength of that bipartisan anger.
But both the House and Senate have to pass the bill to get it on the November ballot, and Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, and his top lieutenants are still in Blagojevich’s camp. There has been widespread speculation in recent days that Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago — Blagojevich’s top ally in the Legislature — would find a way to sink the measure.
The suspicion appeared to be confirmed last week when Jones allowed the bill to be picked up in the Senate by Sen. Donne Trotter, D-Chicago, a Blagojevich supporter who has publicly called the recall-election movement “stupid.”
That led Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn Blagojevich’s running-mate-turned-critic and a top backer of the recall bill — to publicly predict over the weekend that Jones was maneuvering to kill the bill. Jones on Wednesday took Quinn to task for those remarks as Quinn testified for the measure.
“For you to go out . . . and slander the Illinois Senate, I resent that,” Jones told Quinn. Jones repeatedly demanded an apology from Quinn, for his implication that “shenanigans are going on in the Senate.”
A short time later, Jones and other top Senate Democrats supported Trotter when he announced that, as the bill’s Senate sponsor, he had decided not to ask for a committee vote on it. Instead, he said, he would come back later with amendatory language to “make it better.”
“I did not pick up this bill to kill it,” Trotter insisted.
Nonetheless, the move may effectively kill the bill, since there is a May 4 deadline for the General Assembly to approve it for the November ballot. If the bill is altered in the Senate, it must then return to the House. The Legislature is scheduled to meet for just a few days during the next several weeks.
“It was whitewash, it was a travesty, they ought to be ashamed of themselves,” Franks said after the committee hearing. “I was concerned that would happen, when a person who did not support the bill controlled the bill, that he would try to kill it, and that’s exactly what he did today.”
The proposed new system would be similar to the one available in 18 other states that allow recall elections, including California, which booted former Gov. Gray Davis and replaced him with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003 under the process.
The measure is HJRCA28.