First Reading

              ILLINOIS GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEGISLATIVE RESEARCH UNIT
Volume 23, No. 2
Graphs of Revenue Sources........................2
Graphs of Bills That Passed........................5
Abstracts of reports required to be
filed with General Assembly...................8
Inside this Issue
November 2009
Historical Look at State Revenue Sources
A look at the sources of Il­linois state government rev-
(continued on p. 5)
Photo by Kevin Jones, Legislative Research Unit
(continued on p. 2)
95th G.A. Had Broad Agreement on Bills That Passed
The Legislative Research Unit was recently asked about the winning percentages of non-appropriations bills enues since 1950 shows that increases in state spending have been made possible by several new or expanded revenue sources. These included individual and corporate income taxes starting in 1969; a state lottery starting in 1975; and higher tax rates on sales and some other rev­enue sources in later years.
Total appropriations from the “general funds” (General Revenue Fund, Common School Fund, and Education Assistance Fund) in nominal dollars—not adjusted for inflation—rose from $355 million in 1950 to almost $24 billion in 2005. No inflation index can measure the com­plex changes in products and services offered, and prices charged, over time—especially such a long time. But us­ing the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) as a very rough indicator of price levels, fiscal year 2005 appropriations were 8 times as high as fiscal year 1950 spending. (The Department of Finance’s An­nual Reports in the early 1950s reported spending, not appropriations. But appropriations have been reported in later years, such as in the Comptroller’s Detailed Annual Reports.) If also adjusted for growth in Illinois’ popula­tion since 1950, the increase was about 51/3-fold.
Total appropriations from all funds (including federal and other revenue sources) rose over the same period from $550 million to $59.9 billion in fiscal year 2005 before adjusting for inflation. Adjusted using the CPI-U, ap­propriations in fiscal year 2005 were 13.4 times as high as spending in fiscal year 1950 (9.1 times if also adjusted for population growth).
Figure 1 on page 2 shows the changes in amounts and sources of revenue from the major state revenue sources passed by the 95th General Assembly (2007-2008). Of the 9,816 bills introduced in that General Assembly, 1,100 (11.2%) passed both houses and 1,056 (10.8%) were en-acted. A random sample of approximately 20% of all bills that passed both houses (including those that did not be­come law after vetoes) showed the following:
• 86.8% of such bills in the House, and 92.2% in the Senate, were approved by over 90% of members pres­ent and voting.
• 85% of such bills in the House got 100 or more votes; 91% of such bills in the Senate got 50 or more votes.
• 68.5% of such bills in the House, and 81.3% in the Senate, were passed without dissent.
Methods Used
The LRU sampled each Public Act of the 95th General Assembly whose number ends in “0” or “5”. (Public Act numbers are assigned in the order in which the Secretary of State receives new acts, so this method should not cause any selection bias.) If a Public Act whose number ended in “0” or “5” made appropriations, the next non-appropriations act was sampled. In addition to 210 Public Acts, 6 of the 30 totally vetoed bills that died, and 3 of the