Southern Illinois lawmakers block 2-year fracking moratorium
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Sometimes winning in Springfield means never allowing a vote to take place at all.
Southern Illinois lawmakers blocked a last minute anti-fracking bill that appeared suddenly Thursday morning that could have blocked a potential $100 billion new oil boom in the region.
The bill, SB3280, would have declared a two-year moratorium on the use of fracking in the Illinois oil and gas industry.
The bill had originally set new rules and regulations for the use of fracking. It passed the Senate unanimously April 26 with the support of both industry and environmental groups.
Tuesday House sponsor state Rep. Naomi D. Jakobsson, D-Urbana, amended the bill in committee.
Three more amendments proposed Thursday morning gutted the bill's original intent and replaced it with the moratorium.
"It's a two-year moratorium! I'm for rules and regulations to do this right, I'm not for two-year moratoriums. We're going to have companies leave Southern Illinois," Phelps exclaimed Thursday afternoon.
Phelps and other regional lawmakers met with oil and gas industry officials throughout the day. Other than the pension bills, Phelps said this generated the most calls.
"You're talking about losing thousands of jobs and development of almost $100 billion," he said quoting industry figures that he accepted might be exaggerated a bit.
Still, he noted that right now, "(we) have 200 land men in Southern Illinois representing 10 companies. Hotel occupancies are up 20 percent in Mount Vernon alone."
Phelps, state Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro and state Rep. David Reis, R-Olney, immediately began filing requests for impact notes from various state agencies. The move is normally a legitimate feature of the legislative process allowing lawmakers to learn more how a bill could impact state budgets or other issues.
Sometimes though lawmakers file the requests just to delay a vote, particularly on the last day of session when they want to run down the clock.
Phelps admitted to that strategy noting they had filed every request they could.
"We're slowing it down. We don't want a two-year moratoria. We are getting cut out of the legislation."
He noted the sponsor was from a "very liberal district," representing the University of Illinois area. "She's totally against this (but) we've been doing this since the 1950s."
Had the bill passed Phelps said, "a lot of companies will fold up shop and leave Southern Illinois. That's a lot of jobs on this right now. We're hoping to come to an agreement before she runs the bill."
In the end the House leadership re-referred the bill back to the Rules Committee and the anti-fracking groups didn't even get their agreed-upon bill passed.