SPRINGFIELD – House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch made the extraordinary move of removing an appropriations committee chair on Wednesday with two weeks left in the legislative session and a tightening fiscal landscape.
Speaking exclusively to Capitol News Illinois on Thursday, Welch, D-Hillside, said he removed Rep. Fred Crespo, D-Hoffman Estates, from the Democratic caucus as well for lack of communication with caucus leaders.
Crespo has become a voice of dissent in the Democratic caucus against growing spending by the state, imploring fellow lawmakers to exercise fiscal restraint and not look to taxpayers to plug budget holes.
While he voted for the fiscal year 2025 budget last May, he was one of several Democrats to withhold their votes on a corresponding revenue package, helping to set up an all-night scramble for Welch’s House leaders to make sure the measure had enough votes to pass.
Welch told Jak Tichenor, host of the “Illinois Lawmakers” program, that he implemented new processes for communicating with leadership about the budget this year and Crespo “chose not to be a part of those processes and to go on his own” as lawmakers work toward a May 31 deadline to pass the budget.
“The breaking point was as an appointed chair of one of my appropriations committees, not communicating with the chief of staff, not communicating with the lead budgeteer – Leader (Robyn) Gabel – (and) not communicating with me as the speaker,” Welch said.
Crespo declined to comment immediately on Welch’s decision. He has represented northwest Cook County in the House since 2007 and was the chair of the House Appropriations-General Services Committee until Wednesday. The committee meets with various state agencies to hear budget requests.
Crespo’s excommunication from the caucus means he is barred from private meetings among House Democrats.
Brady Burden, a staff member on the committee who was also placed on administrative leave for an undisclosed reason, told Capitol News Illinois he worked with Crespo to put together some numbers on the budget to see where the state can save money. But Welch said his decision wasn’t because of Crespo’s independent exercise.
“If we're going to deliver things for the collective that's good for the state of Illinois, we have to follow processes,” Welch said. “And the chairman chose not to have any conversations with anyone, despite those processes calling for that.”
Gov. JB Pritzker told reporters Thursday he was aware of Welch’s decision but declined to say more.
Welch has implemented several changes this spring to processes in the House, including bringing on new top aides and revamping his budget leadership team with new members.
Read more: Governor’s office cuts revenue projections by $500M in latest downward estimate
Burden argued he communicated Crespo’s activities to his superiors on House staff “to make sure that nobody was being blindsided by it.”
“There was a level of secrecy to the project, but I think the concern was more that it didn’t get leaked until there was a finished product,” he said.
Crespo’s expulsion is the second time in the last two years Welch has kicked a member out of the caucus. Welch removed former Rep. Mary Flowers, D-Chicago, from meetings in 2023 following allegedly disrespectful behavior toward staff members. Welch then backed a successful primary opponent against Flowers in 2023.
While he ultimately voted for the budget last May, Crespo rose on the House floor during debate over the bill to criticize leadership in his party for not considering spending restraints, such as hiring freezes and limiting appropriations to state agencies to 95% of the funds they asked for to force the agencies to lobby lawmakers for the other 5%.
Crespo warned the state faced a fiscal cliff if lawmakers continue to increase spending.
He’s continued those warnings this year, criticizing House Democratic colleagues who have proposed bills that would require new state appropriations.
“You can ask for everything, you can’t have it all,” Crespo said in April as the House debated a bill that would require the state to establish a program for student teachers to receive stipends, but didn’t include any funding.
“We need to start prioritizing what we want; and at the end of the day, taxpayers are going to pay for this,” he said. “And at this rate, we’re just going to run out of taxpayers’ dollars to spend.”
The revenue plan passed the House last year with the minimum 60 votes despite Democrats holding 78 seats in the chamber. Crespo told Capitol News Illinois earlier this year he feared the FY25 revenue enhancements that were enacted to close a roughly $900 million deficit would limit lawmakers’ options to increase revenue as they consider the FY26 budget.
However, he later praised Pritzker’s introduced budget as one of the best he has heard since joining the legislature, saying he was glad Pritzker told lawmakers they must come up with spending cuts to correspond to any spending increases they propose.
House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, told Tichenor it is “really going to be a loss for the state of Illinois that he is no longer in those positions.”
Burden has been the leading voice of a House Democratic staff effort to create a legislative staff union. That is not currently authorized under state law, which previously prompted Welch to file legislation authorizing it. Burden and other staff members have filed a lawsuit seeking recognition under the state’s constitutional right to collective bargaining.
Read more: Speaker Welch rebuffs lawsuit from would-be staff union as ‘forum shopping’ | Would-be union of legislative staffers accuse Welch of undermining organizing effort
“That’s something I’ll be talking about with my counsel, about whether or not this is something that constitutes a form of retaliation,” Burden said.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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