SPRINGFIELD - Gov. Rod Blagojevich has always played by his own rules.

He's put controversial programs into effect without legislative input, shuffled state budget money to fund his favored projects, yanked the legislature back into session again and again. He's even refused to move into the Springfield mansion the taxpayers provide for him.

But last week's surprise announcement that he intends to unilaterally rewrite as many as 50 bills the legislature has sent him, to reflect his own priorities - has stunned even those who thought they'd seen it all in the past six years.

It has some in Springfield warning of an imperial governorship in the making.

"People who get elected and re-elected sometimes get the idea they're kings," said state Rep. Gary Hannig, D-Litchfield, part of a House Democratic leadership that has become the main obstacle to at ;tempts by Blag ;o ;jevich to ex ;pand the power of his office. "We're not going to agree to that."

Grudges

Blagojevich has been locked in a grudge match with much of the legislature on universal health care, which many lawmakers say the state can't afford.

The most recent move was last week. A bill before Blagojevich was designed to prevent college students from being kicked off their parents' health insurance policies. Blagojevich used his amendatory veto powers to rewrite the bill so that it would mandate coverage for people as old as 30.

Lawmakers said Blagojevich had abused an amendatory veto power meant to tweak bills that had minor problems, and had instead rewritten the legislation to do something significantly different from what was originally intended.

'Rewrite'

Further, Blagojevich an ;nounced he plans to do the same to other bills that don't do as much as he thinks they should. He even gave a public relations-minded name to the coming amendatory-veto frenzy: "Rewrite to do right."

"He's trying to look at these limited-scope bills and make them better," said Blagojevich spokesman Lucio Guerrero. "He's tried to go through the legislature, but everything he does gets blocked, so he's trying a different way."

That, some allege, is another way of saying he is doing away with the separation of powers in the state constitution.

"This is a move from the executive branch into the legislative branch," said Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson, R-Greenville.

Under Illinois' constitution, the governor has the power to issue "amendatory" vetoes, meaning he can suggest changes to a bill that the legislature sends to him. Lawmakers then can override the governor by a three-fifths majority vote to put their original legislation into law. They can accept the governor's changes by a simple majority, or do nothing and the bill dies.

When the power was written into the 1970 Illinois Constitution, it was to help governors clean up wording or technical problems in bills without having to start the legislation all over again. Courts have since ruled that amendatory vetoes can be used to substantially alter legislation but not to rewrite bills from top to bottom.

Hostile legislature

Guerrero, Blagojevich's spokesman, acknowledged last week that "there is some debate" about whether some of Blagojevich's amendatory vetoes cross that line. But he insisted it was a legitimate use of a constitutional power in the face of a hostile legislature.

"It's the realities of Springfield that force us to do this," Guerrero said. "He tried in 2007 to go through the process (to win universal health care), and he didn't get anywhere. With the gridlock happening in Springfield right now, nothing gets accomplished."

Others counter that such an ends-justifies-the-means approach to governing wasn't what the authors of the 1970 constitution had in mind.

"That is an absolute abuse of the amendatory veto power," said Dawn Clark Netsch, a former state senator and onetime Democratic nominee for governor who was a principal architect of the state's current amendatory-veto statute.

"The idea was that you keep the substance of the legislation but make some improvements," said Netsch, now a law professor at Northwestern University. "It was never intended for the governor to sit back and not participate (in the legislative process) and then say, 'Now I'm going to do it my way.' "

Overstepping?

It isn't the first time legislators have accused Blagojevich of overstepping his bounds for the sake of his agenda. In the past, he has unilaterally implemented programs involving such controversial issues as stem cell research after failing to get legislative backing.

During a debate over emergency funding for Chicago's struggling public transit system, Blagojevich produced a previously unmentioned plan to provide free transportation for senior citizens around the state and cornered the legislature into immediately approving it.

Meanwhile, legislative leaders have alleged Blagojevich has abused his power to call the legislature into special session, harassing lawmakers by calling them in again and again with no specific legislation to vote on.

"There's always been a tension between governors and legislators. The difference with this administration is they seem to feel less constricted by the (state) constitution than their predecessors," said Charles Wheeler, a longtime statehouse journalist who now runs the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield. "I think there are some serious constitutional questions involved."

The administration hasn't specified the approximately 50 bills that are awaiting Blagojevich's signature and might be "rewritten," except one: a measure that would outlaw campaign contributions from state contractors to the politicians who control their contracts. Blagojevich has said he wants to write additional provisions into that bill to make it stronger.

Critics say he's intent on using that process to bog down the bill and kill it, be ;cause it would outlaw a practice that has brought millions to his campaign coffers.

kmcdermott@post-dispatch.com|782-4912