(upbeat music) - [Narrator] March, 2021 in Springfield, legislators are getting back to work with new leadership plus new requests from the governor.

- In the coming year, I ask that you support an additional $73 million for the unemployment system.

The work begins as pandemic continues with no clear date when Illinois schools and businesses can fully reopen.

From Illinois Public Media, this is the 21st At The Capitol.

(upbeat music) Hello, I'm Brian Mackey host of the 21st.

It's a mid day talk show heard Monday through Thursday on NPR stations across Illinois.

From time to time we're gonna be taking our program from the radio to TV to talk to Illinois lawmakers about what they're working on and how state government affects your life.

This week, lawmakers are still not back in the Capitol though they are holding virtual hearings.

After a year of pandemic disruptions, many are hoping they still have time for something like a normal legislative session.

The most important job of the general assembly in any session is deciding how to spend the money state government collects.

Governor JB Pritzker offered his ideas for that last month.

- Government cannot be bloated, but it must have the resources to provide for the needs of our States' residents.

- For the budget year that begins July 1st, Pritzker is calling for nearly $42 billion in spending from the state's main checking account, State money for education would remain essentially flat at nearly $9 billion.

Pritzker wants an almost 8% increase for the troubled department of children and family services.

And he would have Illinois make its full required pension payment of more than $9.3 billion, accounting for almost a quarter of the state's discretionary spending.

Missing from the proposal were income tax increases and deep cuts to education and social services that Pritzker and other Democrats said might be necessary if voters rejected a graduated income tax which they did last November.

Even so there is still a multi-billion dollar shortfall which Pritzker proposes to make up through freezing much of state spending, moving money around various accounts, and eliminating more than $900 million in tax incentives which he calls closing loopholes.

The big question now is will the legislature agree?

Joining us now talk more about the governor's budget proposal, and the work ahead for the general assembly is Senate president Don Harmon.

He's a Democrat from Oak park, and owing to the pandemic safety protocols, he joins me now remotely from his office in the Capitol.

President Harmon thanks for joining us today.

- Thanks for having me, Brian, glad to be with you.

- I wanna begin with the governor's budget proposal.

You have been arguing for years that Illinois needs a graduated income tax to fix the state's structural deficit.

In fact you sponsored the constitutional amendment that voters rejected last fall.

Do you still think Illinois needs a graduated income tax?

And if so when would be the right time to make that argument again?

- As you said, I sponsored this and I've worked on it for a long time.

I think as a policy matter, it's an important tool, but the message I took from the voters rejection of this proposal was they would like us to go back to the drawing board and make hard decisions about how we spend the money they send to Springfield.

So I expect we're gonna be going through that exercise, looking at difficult decisions but I do not anticipate any sort of a general tax increase nor do I anticipate we'll move quickly to put a fair tax back on the ballot.

- Do you think the governor made a mistake by not proposing deeper budget cuts or an income tax increase?

I mean those were things that voters were warned could happen if they rejected the graduated income tax.

- I think that the three alternatives were fairly clearly spelled out.

It was the fair tax, a significant tax increase on everyone or deep cuts in essential services.

I don't know how you force voters to consider things in relative priority, but the message I took was they want us to go back and look at the sorts of cuts to services.

It's incumbent upon us to try to protect those core government services that people depend upon even if they don't appreciate their value.

- Do you think though, the governor presented deep cuts to essential services in his budget plan?

I think a lot of people have looked at his proposal and said it was trying to have it both ways without doing revenue increases, aside from the closing incentives.

And you know also not necessarily slashing things to the bone.

- First of all, it's important to remember, we are doing better than we expected at least than we would've expected a year ago.

We also did utilize short-term borrowing to fix this year's budget.

And I think that carries over into the governor's proposal.

We're eager to find out what Washington finally does.

It seems like the Biden administration has embraced the notion that state and local governments need the same sort of support that businesses have been getting, but that's not a cure all for our structural problems.

It might help us get through this budget year, and that's an important thing to do in the face of a global pandemic and the economic upset that that has caused.

But I think we still need to tackle the genuine structural issues and that's gonna require harder conversations and more than one budget.

- Governor Pritzker is calling for essentially flat funding across a lot of state government, including education.

And as a parenthetical, I have to add as you know, that flat funding, when you account for inflation, actually represents a cut in, or at least less spending power than the year before.

That said many of your colleagues have spent a long time sweating out a new way to send state money to schools in Illinois.

And this would be the second year in a row of not following through on those increases for the neediest school children.

At least if the governor's proposal is adopted.

Will that aspect of the governor's budget fly with Senate Democrats?

- Well, if I know one thing for sure about Senate Democrats is that we are committed to fully funding and improving the funding for a preschool through high school education.

And I don't expect this year is gonna be any different.

I think many of us were disappointed albeit understanding in the uncertainty of a pandemic budget, why flat funding was a victory, but two years in a row is an awfully big pill to swallow.

And I think you'll see Senate Democrats push to live up to our commitment for those annual incremental increases in the education or the evidence-based education funding model.

- You also mentioned federal COVID relief.

If the US Senate approves what the house did, that would be seven and a half billion dollars to state government.

We've heard already from Republicans who say the money should be used to offer support to businesses in the forms of grants and property tax assistance and not to fund the normal operations of state government.

What do you think of that?

What do you think the federal money if approved should be used for?

- Well, I think first and foremost it should go towards pandemic related expenses.

And in particular the short-term borrowing that we undertook to get through this current fiscal year.

I think it would be wise to pay that off as quickly as possible.

I think paying off other unpaid bills to pump money into the economy is a wise use of that money.

But I do I think anything we can do to stimulate the economy and put people back in their jobs is money well spent.

- I wanna change gears now and talk about energy.

It was expected to be a big issue last session, obviously the pandemic had other ideas about that.

It's expected to be a big issue this session, you're on record is not being terribly impressed by Exelon's threats to shut down its nuclear power plants at Dresden and Byron.

But governor Pritzker has called for Illinois electricity to be carbon free by 2050.

And a lot of advocates say, if you don't have nuclear in that mix, you can't possibly achieve that goal.

And other advocates say even that is too long to avert the worst effects of climate change.

Would not losing 4.1 gigawatts of nuclear power lead to burning more fossil fuels in the short run?

- Well that's an awful complicated question yes Brian.

I want Illinois to remain a leader and a job center for clean energy jobs.

And those come in a variety of flavors.

The investment we've made in wind and solar over the last decade is impressive, it puts Illinois at the forefront, but I recognize that the nuclear fleet is a key component in a carbon-free energy program.

And one that has been a huge competitive advantage for Illinois and also a benefit to Illinois rent payers.

We are producers of low cost power relatively speaking, and we've been able to use that to pass savings through to customers.

From what we've seen in Texas recently, we have to also recognize the importance of investments in the resiliency of our infrastructure.

And that's always been a key component of Illinois plan.

So getting back to the nuclear plants, I don't see any reason why the plants should go offline.

This is not a debate over the plants themselves, it's a debate over Exelon's view of profitability.

And if Exelon can't run the plants profitably, maybe someone else can they've begun the process of spinning those off into a new company.

I've long thought that it's more a question of excellence, public market demand than the actual operations of the plant.

And we've gotta do all of this in context.

Exelon has been in the center of a federal plea agreement and that muddies the water.

Every headline you read is about Exelon paying $200 million to the federal government or asking the state for a bailout.

It's not a good place from which to begin negotiations, but I am very committed to the workers in those plants and to the communities that they support.

And I just believe that those plants can continue to operate profitably and sustain our energy market.

- We're almost out of time, just a couple of minutes left.

I do wanna ask you about redistricting.

Senator Durbin, Senator Duckworth, Governor Pritzker, all got about 55% of the vote in Illinois when they ran statewide.

President Biden did a little better than that, but in the Illinois Senate Democrats hold 69% of the seats.

Is that healthy for a representative democracy as we look at drawing new district boundaries?

- Well, I think the more important metric there is the the votes for members of the general assembly not just the statewide numbers, those can be used in ways to attack or to justify the current legislative map.

But I think you'll see that the legislative maps, the number of members of the general assembly are not much different than the total popular vote across all 59 Senate districts.

I am fully in favor of a fair legislative maps that represent the diversity of our state and reflect the communities of interest whose voices need to be heard.

- You know that term fair maps it's become very popular, Governor Pritzker is for it, the speaker of the new speaker of the house is for it, Republicans are for it, I suspect that under the dome, there are probably 178 different definitions though, of fair maps.

What are the essential elements of a fair map in your view in about 30 seconds?

- I think Speaker Welsh framed it very well.

A legislative map needs to reflect the diversity of our state in all of its flavors.

And I think that should be the principle we adopt.

We need to make sure communities of interest across the state are heard.

- All right.

We have been talking with state Senate president Don Harmon, president Harmon thank you for joining us today.

- Thanks for having me.

- In a moment we'll head across the rotunda to the Illinois house virtually at least and talk with the leading Republican lawmaker there but first a short break stay with us.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] News moves fast and so does your schedule.

Keep up with the 2I7 Today podcast weekday mornings.

It's 10 minutes packed with the latest news and weather from the WILLAM team.

Plus one deeper dive into agriculture, education, health and topics across Illinois.

Download the 217 Today podcast from Illinois Public Media, your source for quality trusted journalism.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the 21st at the Capitol.

I'm Brian Mackey.

We've taken our weekday radio show to television to talk about lawmaking and how it affects the people of Illinois.

Joining us now for a Republican perspective is house minority leader, Jim Durkin.

He's from Western Springs and is connecting with us from the James R. Thompson center in Chicago.

Leader Durkin, thank you for joining us.

- Brian, my pleasure, glad to be part of this.

- So let's begin by talking about the state budget.

The governor is calling for ending certain tax incentives which he calls this closing corporate loopholes, Republicans immediately objected.

Why is this tax money better spent on businesses and other recipients of tax expenditures as opposed to say education or human services?

- Well, you know what, the state of Illinois has struggled like many other States over the past year.

We've lost many businesses, many jobs, we need to ensure that people will be able to get back to work, businesses will be given the incentive to stay in Illinois to keep their doors open.

We've had too many people file for complaints or ask for money through the department of employment security, but more importantly Brian, the issues that the governor is now referring to as corporate loopholes, those are incentives that I agreed with him two years ago on a budget in which I negotiated with him which also accompanied a massive capital program and also expansion of gaming.

We took some tough votes for him in the spirit of being bi-partisan and getting past the problems we had under the previous administration.

I wanted to walk in with an open arms, but also to be a part of the process, not to be part of the party of no.

So he and I agreed on those.

That was part of the deal for me to put votes on something which he promoted, one he took a lot of credit for.

So I think that he is going back on his word but also none of these are corporate loopholes.

These are job creators.

They're not only good for small business, big business, but there's another provision in here, which is, I think it's very unfair.

Three years ago, we passed education funding reform, an historic bill under governor Rauner.

And we fought, I fought for a program called the tuition tax credit program which allows for low-income families to be able to choose a school outside of their public school district to be able to send their children, giving them a choice.

Tax which is not taxpayer funded per se, it's an investment by outside individuals who wanna see kids have an opportunity.

The governor's cut back on that.

We have a 75% tax credit that's involved with that, he is now reducing it to 40%.

That's a defacto destruction of the program.

I can't help to think but that is personal against the house Republicans, because we have not supported him on his previous budget.

And we've called out the errors of the FY20 budget.

We've asked for his cuts, for many times, he has not provided the cuts with us.

He's asked for spending, I will just say this, he said that spending is gonna be level but the problem is, it's level based on the previous year's budget, which was four or $5 billion out of balance.

So it's not really level.

So the governor needs to be realistic about how we got here.

We were in this situation of this debt because of an irresponsible plan that he, Mike Madigan, and John Cullerton passed, which was $5 billion out of balance, which was going to be backfield through his fair tax proposal, but also a bailout from the federal government.

So don't blame Republicans for the failures of his budget problems.

We'll work with them, but he can't go back on his word.

And that would be unfortunate because in Springfield, we say this often, "Your word means everything," and he's walked over it- - Though if I remember correctly, the governor did say even during the campaign that he opposed the sort of private school tax credit program.

But let me ask you about this idea that.

(both chattering) Let me ask you about this idea of bipartisan cooperation because during his budget address last month the governor said quote, "I asked Republicans in the general assembly for their proposals to close this year's budget deficit, I was met with silence.

Apparently their idea of bipartisanship ends when hard choices must be made."

End quote, what do you say to that?

Are the Republicans willing to make hard choices?

- We have been making hard choices, and that's why we are telling the governor to live within your means, accept responsibility off the budget that you pass last year against our objections and our warnings that it was out of balance.

But we've also asked the governor since he ran for governor he is the person who is responsible under the constitution to present a budget, to provide us with the cuts in which he had stated two years ago he was gonna ask of his agencies.

That is a start, that is a starting point.

And I will work with him when he provides me with those cuts.

But the fact is governor, you need to start by saying that we're going to live within our means, we're going to live within the revenue estimate that we are delivered on a yearly basis.

- Are there specific cuts that you are proposing in state government?

I mean, as I look at the department of corrections, for example in their most recent quarterly report, it's running at 67% of capacity from a decade ago when it was over capacity, the minimum security prison in Vandalia is at 47%, it's less than half occupied.

I mean, should we close Vandalia Correctional Center or other prisons in Illinois?

- You know what I think that that is something we have to look at a long-term basis based on different things that we've passed in Illinois on criminal justice.

But the governor needs to reopen and look at some of these labor contracts, the ones that are costing the state significant amounts of money, and we mainly with ASMI but I'm gonna have to tell the governor again I wanna see your cuts that Dan Heinz your deputy governor, promised in 2019 that he asked the state agencies to provide a six and a half percent cuts across the board.

I've asked him if not four maybe 10 times to provide that document to me, and I have not heard from him.

That's his responsibility as governor.

And if he provides it to me, he will have a partner to work on this budget.

But he is right now, he's in a bad place because the budget's unbalanced, he lost the fair tax.

He hasn't gotten his bailout yet, and he made some bad decisions but he's not willing to step up and take responsibility for this budget crisis.

- The state is directing something like one out of every $5 almost one out of every $4 towards the pension systems.

Now we get all kinds of questions about this, Wilbert and Rantoul sent us a text message saying, it seems our biggest tax burden is pensions times to phase them out and let state employees participate in 401ks like the rest of us.

I mean, versions of pension ideas still come up from editorial boards and interest groups.

And as you know, the Illinois Supreme court has unanimously rejected previous attempts at changes.

What can be done, what should be done on that issue?

- Well, you're absolutely correct.

Pensions is taking up approximately well, I look at it as 25% of our state budget and that's current employees also people who are retirees, that's maybe 2% of the population and we're putting 25% of the budget to support those systems.

We have to do something, I've talked to the governor about this.

Look I think that revisiting the issue of the constitutional amendment on the impairment clause, has to be on the table.

But in the meantime, we need to revisit and reconsider, president Cullerton's consideration model that he proposed a few years back.

Which he passed out of the Senate, which I had the votes in the house Republican side, but Mike Madigan decided that he didn't wanna take up the vote, but we have to do something.

And I would just say that doing nothing, it's beyond negligence, it's almost criminal of what we're doing because we are losing so many at places in state government that should be supported with this money, as opposed to this growing monster of our public pensions.

And that 9 billion is just gonna increase over time.

So I would say that let's have a discussion the four leaders and the governor about the constitutional amendment, maybe this one will pass.

Maybe the governor will realize let's get behind something that will pass as opposed to one that will fail, because that will tell you what if the constitutional question about opening up our pension system was put to voters that would be approved.

And I think the governor would be good for him to get behind what that actually is gonna pass.

So, but I also think let's revisit the John Cullerton model.

Let's get something before the court let them take another view at legislation that will modify our pensions, that we'll keep a defined benefit system, the ones that will save, it'll save our five pension systems for those current employees, and also those annuitants who are currently beneficiaries under the systems.

- I should also mention to viewers that as I always do when pensions come up, I am a member of the State University Retirement System by virtue of my employer, which is part of the UOI system.

The last thing I wanna ask you about is the issue of redistricting.

And we only have about a minute left in our conversation but the word fair maps is thrown around a lot.

The governor wants fair maps, the house speaker, the new house speaker has said he wants fair maps.

I think there are probably as many definitions of fair maps as there are legislators in Springfield.

There are presently 45 Republicans in the house.

That's 38% of the seats.

That's pretty much in line with the share of the vote that governor Rauner won two years ago, that Mark Curran won against Senator Durbin.

What about that is not fair and proportional in terms of representation?

- Well, I think it's really not so much that it's about the will of the people.

The will of the people twice have been stymied by Democrats in cook County to open up the process and take the map, making the map, writing out of the hands of the legislative leaders who draw the maps specifically for one reason, to main control for that decade.

To make sure that the map will be able to withstand any type of possible political change or some some action in the courthouse.

This should be done independently.

Every Democrat said in their election time that they support fair maps, everybody's for maps.

But the fact is when are we gonna do something about it?

We have time right now between now and the end of June to do something in a fair bi-partisan manner.

And that means taking it out of our hands.

We can put together an independent commission to make a recommendation to the house of representatives.

This has been done, there's plenty of people out there who have the knowledge and the ability to construct maps that are representative of the districts.

We've lost a lot of population over the past few years.

We can't rely upon what our census numbers were 10 years ago.

And there's a question of whether or not we'll even have census numbers to work from right now.

But I will say this, if we have an independent process I think that's gonna help any challenge that'll be done through the federal courts and the state courts.

- And we're gonna have to leave it there.

We have been talking with Illinois house minority leader Jim Durkin.

Leader Durkin thank you for joining us today.

- Thank you, Brian.

Appreciate it anytime.

- And a reminder to viewers to join us on the radio, Monday through Thursday at 11:00 AM for the 21st where we talk about the people and places of Illinois.

It airs on WILLAM580, and five other NPR stations across the state.

You can also listen to the show in past segments at twentyfirstshow.org, follow us at Illinois Public Media.

I'm Brian Mackey.

Thanks for joining us.

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