Fifty-two years ago in 1973, W. Robert Blair was forced to make significant changes in the way things were done in the Illinois House of Representative in order to win re-election as House Speaker.
He had been challenged by State Rep. Henry Hyde.
Blair had been quite dictatorial during the previous two years, alienating many members.
The changes forced on him to win re-election went down to the level of the Appropriations Committee Chairman being able to hire his own staff.
While I don’t know if Blair called bills in their numerical order during his 1971-73 term before I was in office, I ran across a big difference in the way the House was run in 1973 and now.
Dating somewhere back in the 1990’s or 1980’s, the House Rules were changed to allow the Speaker the absolute power to call any bill at any time.
When I started, the Rules said they had to be called in numeric order.
That caused some frustration as day after day bills introduced before mine were called and, then, skipped over because the sponsor was not ready, but it did provide some predictability that is now completely lacking.
Bringing this to mine was part of the House transcript from April 4, 1973:
Of course, House members had to vote to give away this predictability.
But members of whatever is the party in control are pretty much sheep when the Rules vote comes up on the same day a Speaker is elected.
