House Bill 2827, a controversial piece of legislation that impacts Illinois families whose children are homeschooled is scheduled for a public hearing in Springfield this week. Witnesses are preparing to testify in person and more than 19,000 people have filed electronic witness slips in opposition to the legislation. There is rising concern that the supermajority will deploy their committee con games to ensure those in opposition are caught off guard, worn down, or worse, have their testimony negated.
The Citizen Participation Act declares that Illinoisans have the constitutional right to be involved and participate freely in the process of government and that right must be encouraged and safeguarded with great diligence. It goes on to state that “the information, reports, opinions, claims, arguments, and other expressions provided by citizens are vital to...the making of public policy and decisions, and the continuation of representative democracy.”
While the legislature must allow witness testimony and accept all witness slips filed for any piece of legislation scheduled for a public hearing, Democrats have found ways around the process. The supermajority has been abusing its authority through schemes designed to infringe upon the right of the public to share their perspective on legislation in public hearings.
Those con-artist-like tactics include:
- Postponing committee hearings or scheduling committees to meet very late at night or in the wee hours of the morning making it extremely difficult for witnesses to attend hearings in person.
- Assigning a bill to a subcommittee that will never meet, reassigning a bill to a different committee with a more friendly chairperson or realigning a committee by swapping out legislative members for those who will vote the “correct way.”
- Holding the bill in the Rules Committee, effectively killing the bill without it ever seeing the light of day or having a prayer of receiving a public hearing.
- Recessing committees to the “call of the chair” instead of adjourning for the week. Allowing the committee chair to bypass the scheduling process and set their own date and time for committee hearings without advance notice.
- Vetting legislation in partisan working groups instead of in public hearings.
- Playing the witness slip shell game. Stripping legislative language from a bill that has a large number of witness slips filed in opposition and moving the language to a “shell bill” with a new bill number. Since witness slips stay with the legislation based on bill number, the new bill now has no opposition filed against it. Often the switch is made without notice to the public, so they have little opportunity to file witness slips for a second time.
- The passage of the SAFE-T Act exemplifies this scenario, after subject matter hearings on the bill where witness slips were filed, the sponsor amended the SAFE-T Act language to another bill and sent it straight to the floor for a vote. No witness slips attached.
- The House Republicans’ request from earlier this year to include witness slip portability in the House Rules was summarily denied by the supermajority.
The Democratic leadership can explain away each one of these schemes, but don’t be fooled, their goals are to keep the public in the dark and prevent opposing views from being on the record, ultimately violating the right of Illinois residents to have a voice in state policymaking. A right, according to the Citizen Protection Act, important to the “continuation of representative democracy”.
We hope the Democrats who are leading this state, listen to the more than 19,000 people who filed witness slips in opposition to HB 2827, legislation that would threaten the freedom of homeschool parents to teach their children in a way they determine is best for their family. The bill is currently assigned to be heard in the House Education Policy Committee on Wednesday, March 12 at 8 a.m. It is unclear if the sponsor will call the bill for a vote at that time. Also unknown is whether Democrats will play their “witness slip shell game” by stripping the legislative language from HB 2827 and attaching it to another bill number, rendering the witness slips of opponents and proponents alike, null and void.
House Republicans are monitoring HB 2827 and will make every attempt to let the public know the status of the legislation. Those who have already filed witnesses slips for this bill may want to contact the chair of the Education Policy Committee to make it clear that you want to receive fair notice of when the bill is going to be called so you can exercise your right to oppose and provide testimony.
We urge House Democrats to conduct the people’s houses business with transparency and protect the rights of Illinois families to participate in their state government.
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