If you read the recent Tribune headline dealing with union leaders padding their pensions, you may have read about 'shell bills'.

With the unemployment issues in the state, I wish the legislature would get serious about making meaningful reforms.  At least they have kept clerks busy and employed filing their shell bills.

In the Illinois Legislature, there are deadlines for filing bills to be considered by the General Assembly.  As long as I've been following the events in Springfield, I've had to remember that there are a whole group of bills called 'shell bills' that may be amended at any time to affect all of us in Illinois.  Some estimate that as much as 10% of the bills introduced in the General Assembly are 'Shell Bills', and these are used by both parties in the legislature.

Here's how a shell bill works:
1.  A bill sponsor files a bill with a minor language change.  Usually by removing the word 'the' from a sentence in a law and replacing it with..... you guessed it, the word 'the'!  You can see House Bill 1690 introduced by Naomi Jakobsson as an example.

2.  Since the bill is filed before the filing deadline, it sits there waiting to be used.  They can even be voted on and passed out of committee before set deadlines so they stay alive for later use.   Legislators can then propose a floor amendment changing the bill into whatever it needs to be.

Shell Bills frustrate lobbyists and advocacy organizations.  Here's what the National Association of Social Workers lobbyist said:
Unfortunately, for those of us who try to track legislation, there are hundreds of "shell" bills in both houses controlled by legislative leaders. A "shell" bill is a bill with only technical changes that could be used at a later time for substantive amendments. We simply have no idea what might be amended onto these shell bills. So, while we think there is a "process" and deadlines for moving bills along, the reality is that we are in the dark about potentially significant legislation that might appear on short notice in a shell bill amendment. This isn't new, but it seems there are many more shell bills this year.

The Illinois CPA Society summarized the most recent session of the General Assembly "August 11, 2011
97th ILLINOIS GENERAL ASSEMBLY--7,169 bills introduced: 688 passed both Houses, 635 bills sent to the Governor, and 301 signed into law."


Looking up our local legislators in the house, and reviewing the bills they introduced, I found the following:
Naomi Jakobsson - 23 bills introduced, 5 shell bills (21.73%)  6 bills passed both chambers (26.08%)
Jason Barickman - 5 bills introduced, 1 shell bill (20%)  3 bills passed both chambers (50%)
Chapin Rose - 28 bills introduced, 0 shell bills (0%)  5 bills passed both chambers (17.86%)


How should we measure the productivity of our legislators?  Bills introduced?  Bills Passed?  Willingness to use Legislative Trickery to help their party's agenda?

I for one am tired of the Springfield shell games.