(bright music) (camera shutter sounding) (bright music continues) (intense music) - Thanks for joining us on "Capitol View", I'm Fred Martino.

Upfront this week, about 10% of officers in the Illinois State Police are women, but there's a goal to triple that percentage by the end of the decade.

More from Alex Abbeduto of "Capitol News Illinois".

- [Drill Sergeant] Follow me.

- [Soldiers] Follow me.

- [Alex] In 2022, the Illinois State Police pledged to have cadet classes be 30% women by 2030.

But since signing the 30 by 30 pledge, the number of female cadets has stayed mostly the same.

Rebecca Hooks is the first woman in Illinois State Police history to become First Deputy Director.

She's been with the ISP for more than 20 years.

- I've had several mentors as I've gone up and as I've been in different areas and the predominance of these mentors have been men because that's who I was surrounded by.

And I've looked at positions in the ISP and thought, "Oh, I wouldn't be good at that", or, "That's really not my skillset.

I'm not interested in that".

But I never looked at a position and thought, "Oh, I can't do that because I'm a woman".

- [Alex] Hooks says to close the gap, the agency needs to highlight the opportunities at ISP.

- It's not just the Division of Patrol, which is wonderful, they do amazing work, that's the foundation, that's where we all start out.

But there's a lot of different avenues you can go into.

There's investigations roles, internal investigations, criminal investigations, Division of Forensics.

There's so many different opportunities.

- [Alex] Right now, only 10% of ISPs officers are women.

But Hooks and other leaders want to see law enforcement personnel look more like the communities they serve, which means including more women.

- I think law enforcement recruitment in general is down, but I think what we can do in the ISP is talk about how we do have a culture of inclusivity and qualify diversity and integrity, like all of these things and all of the different career paths can meet and merge together, and letting people know that this is a wonderful career with a purpose.

- [Alex] While only two of the 35 recent graduates were women, ISP is still working towards its 30 by 30 goal and is expanding its efforts by creating a new social media campaign.

- We need all different types of people, all different shapes, all different sizes, all different genders, it doesn't matter.

If you are a hard worker, if you're a person of integrity and accountability, there's a role for you at the Illinois State Police.

- That was Alex Abbeduto of "Capital News Illinois".

Well, WSIU is always working to increase the diversity of our team, and that includes recruiting students from throughout the region.

Over the past year, I've had a chance to work with Kaylee Wobig, a student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Last year she produced a documentary about gun safety that was broadcast on our "In Focus" program.

And coming up next, you can watch Kaylee's latest WSIU documentary.

She spoke with a team from SIU Carbondale who traveled to Australia last year for a total eclipse.

It's part of "In Focus Eclipse Preview 2024", that's coming up next at 7:30.

For on-demand viewers, search for "In Focus" on the PBS app.

And a reminder, special coverage of the eclipse on Monday, April 8th starts at 11 o'clock in the morning on WSIU TV, the total eclipse just before two o'clock in the afternoon.

And our coverage from Saluki Stadium at SIU Carbondale wraps up at 2:30.

Last week on "Capitol View", we talked with SIU System President Dan Mahoney.

Part of that discussion focused on the so-called enrollment cliff you may have heard about.

That's an upcoming decline in the number of high school graduates.

That means it's even more important to reach out to students now to prepare them for higher education.

WSIU is doing just that, and we're always looking for new ways to help.

For instance, we've partnered with Molina Healthcare to provide books to children.

We're hosting family reading nights, like this one recently held at the Carbondale Public Library.

And we're visiting high schools throughout the region to engage students in media production.

I've visited a number of schools in the last year, including this visit to Herron High School.

If you'd like us to visit your school or community group, just email us, the address is contact@wsiu.org.

Speaking of emails, thanks to Michelle of Springfield who recently sent us this message.

"Thank you very much for 'Capital View'.

I learn a lot.

This program is very informative for me about topics and issues that have direct impact upon my life and my loved ones.

Thank you for such knowledgeable programming."

Well, thank you, Michelle, our programming is only possible because of viewers like you.

More news and analysis now, I'm very pleased to welcome Hannah Meisel of "Capital News Illinois", and Charlie Wheeler, Emeritus Director of the Public Affairs Reporting Program, University of Illinois Springfield.

Hannah, you recently did a "Capital Briefs" segment on a number of ideas before the General Assembly this year.

Everything from guaranteed income to childcare assistance, tell us more.

- Yes, these are progressive ideas.

Of course we have a General Assembly that's not just controlled by Democrats, but increasingly, in the last few election cycles, progressives have gained more and more power in Springfield.

Guaranteed income, certainly a thing that's been talked about throughout the country.

Few places outside of the US have experimented with it and even in the US, Chicago for example, had a pilot program for guaranteed income.

I think it ended last year, and I think somewhere in Colorado also, or possibly California, excuse me for forgetting exactly where, but this, we should say off the bat, I don't think it's going anywhere, I don't think anyone is kidding themselves to think that this is going anywhere, especially in such a tough budget year.

But certainly, interesting to see where these progressives put some of their political capital and especially some of these people who are in rock-solid democratic districts, particularly in Chicago, they have nothing to lose by pushing this conversation.

This particular proposal by Senator Ram Villivalam from Chicago would guarantee a thousand dollars per month for certain Illinoisans, including new parents, those who've recently given birth or adopted children.

A very interesting idea.

Another progressive idea, actually, I would say a little bit less progressive, more classically democratic idea, extending this long existing, in Illinois, childcare assistance program, this is a program for low income families to help with the cost of childcare, which as we know, just rising all the time, hitting people in every single demographic group, income group.

- Okay, very interesting, different ideas, anything else you want to touch on in your "Capital Briefs" on any of that legislation that continues to be looked at in the General Assembly?

- Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of legislation that we're hearing.

We are in early April and there is seven more weeks of session to go before our scheduled adjournment.

There's all kinds of legislation flying.

I've been doing this for 10 years, I've seen all kinds of legislation being proposed and dying.

The backdrop to all of this is that it's a very difficult budget year, certainly the most difficult budget year that we've seen the Pritzker administration have to face.

And so, the governor proposed his preferred budget priorities in February, and so we're gonna continue to see that play out in the next few weeks before we get to May.

- It will be fascinating to see where these things go.

And certainly we will be discussing some of these ideas for many years to come, particularly guaranteed income, which as you pointed out, has been done in some places in the United States.

The most high profile place has been covered extensively, a city in California that looked at this, did it, and their data is still coming in, but many people think that this will be something that will expand as an idea proposed around the country, particularly with artificial intelligence potentially displacing more and more workers, so we shall see.

Charlie, speaking of ideas before the General Assembly, the "Chicago Sun Times" recently reported that Illinois residents strongly favor tough ethics reforms that are stalled in Springfield, tell us about that.

- Well, the discussion that you and Hannah had a minute ago about guaranteed income, I would be willing to bet that we enact guaranteed income before we enact the legislation that the "Sun Times" was focusing on.

It's basically an idea by former governor Pat Quinn who would like to allow citizens by initiative to propose constitutional amendments dealing with ethics, requiring lawmakers, for example, not to vote on things on which they have a conflict of interest.

Or if a legislator is indicted, stop his pension right then and there, rather than wait for him to be convicted.

And I can guarantee you absolutely that this will not see the light of day.

The underlying constitutional amendment, the language was introduced on March 6th by Ryan Spain, who's a Republican from the Peoria area, it was sent to the Rules Committee, and when the legislature adjourns sine die next January, it'll still be in the Rules Committee.

The people in this survey that Pat Quinn did overwhelmingly support the idea of having individuals gather together, by a petition drive, submit a proposed constitutional amendment to the voters but the legislature is not going to do that.

And part of it is that the only times that ethics legislation has been enacted in past years has been when the public pressure is so great that the lesser of two evils, from a lawmaker's point of view, is to go ahead and make these reforms rather than continue to put up with the public outrage.

And it's interesting.

- Let me get to that with you, Charlie.

Public outrage would possibly lead to actual legislation.

Is this a mistake to stall this kind of legislation until there is that kind of public pressure?

As you know, this is often fodder for political advertising to say, here's what's happened, an ethical lapse, and then in the ad say there's been legislation to address it and it's been stalled.

Is that a mistake to offer up the opportunity to do advertising like that by not taking action?

- On the one hand, you would think, yes, it's a mistake, but on the other hand, in the real world, no, it's not.

Voters, there's gonna be many more things about which they're energized than, let's say I'm running for reelection and you're my opponent, Fred, and you say, "Charlie Wheeler didn't vote for this ethics reform".

And in this particular case, Charlie Wheeler can say, "Oh, I would've voted for it, but it never got outta the Rules Committee.

I never had the opportunity."

That kind of a thing.

Some of these ideas percolate over time.

Hannah was saying how long some of these things take.

I started covering the legislature, now I'm gonna date myself as being ancient, 1971, and in some of those first sessions, there was very controversial legislation introduced that, of all things, would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Can you imagine that?

And the debate was, it was embarrassing to hear some of the lawmakers get up and talk about their idea of gay people.

And yet years later, we wind up actually authorizing gay marriage, so this stuff develops.

And this ethics, I don't think this constitutional amendment idea is gonna go anywhere.

And as a matter of fact, lawmakers will get up and they'll say, "Well, on this particular issue, I have a conflict of interest, but I'm gonna vote my conscience anyway".

- Yeah, such a good way to frame it, Charlie.

This is why we cover these things, that the importance on the substance that as time changes, things that are reacted to one way, later on we look back and say, "How did we ever have this sort of discussion on this?"

And so it's very crucial to talk about these things.

I think some would argue very crucial at this moment in time if we were doing a show on national politics to talk about lots of things that seem unimaginable, that are occurring on the national scene.

We do need to move on though.

Hannah, another story that continues to make news, you reported on the Prisoner Review Board chair and a board member resigning after a released inmate stabbed his pregnant ex-girlfriend and killed her 11-year-old son.

There were some new developments on this and another story this week in "Capitol News Illinois" about the issue, let's get the latest.

- That's right.

So last Monday, we are recording this on Wednesday, April the third, so last week, PRB members, LeAnn Miller and Donald Shelton, who was the chair and longtime board member, resigned from their posts.

LeAnn Miller had handled the case of this inmate who had been temporarily held at Stateville Correctional Center after his ex-girlfriend had complained that after he got out of prison, for an unrelated but still domestic violence charges, in the fall, that he was contacting her and violating the order of protection that she had against him.

And so he was temporarily held in February.

But the Prisoner Review Board, which of course reviews a lot of things, not just whether people get parole, but they review a whole host of things, which frankly might be part of the problem here, of the scale and under-resources of the PRB over many years, LeAnn Shelton had handled the matter and the board ultimately voted to release this inmate because they felt there was not enough evidence to keep holding him.

But the very next day, unfortunately, after he was released in early March, he goes to his ex-girlfriend's house in Chicago.

Like you mentioned, she's pregnant, she has both of her young boys with her, she's about to go get them off to school.

And when she opens the door, he breaks in.

And the 11-year-old tragically tried to save his mother.

He was a very promising dancer.

The whole thing is just so very tragic.

He has died.

LeAnn Miller, the governor's office announces last week, she resigns and then, several hours later, Donald Shelton also, his resignation is announced by the Governor's Office.

The governor has faced challenges with the PRB before, in 2021, Senate Republicans decide that this is gonna be their cause celeb and kind of remarkably, they, even being the super minority party, they break through and their fight at that time was, "Oh, Governor Pritzker is letting people serve on the PRB, the process, just like many other places, just like nationally, the governor, the president, appoints someone and then that person goes through senate confirmation".

But these folks were serving before they were officially confirmed, which is very common.

But the Republican's argument was that this is a job that's far too important for these people to serve without actually being confirmed.

And there's not a system of checks and balances there.

- [Fred] And so this week there was an update, what'd the governor say?

- He, of course, very much regrets that this situation happened.

He wants the PRB members to be more highly trained, specifically in issues of domestic violence, but he also blamed Republicans, of course, for quote, "Making the process for appointments too political", that's an argument that you may or may not think is a cop out.

But this is very a difficult agency to deal with.

This is very high stakes stuff.

And so Republicans are, of course, taking the opportunity to pounce again and say that this is a long-standing issue.

But I would point out that my colleague Jeremy Gorner of the "Chicago Tribune", he had reported a story, I think it was about six months ago, that said after the 2021 2022 kerfuffle on the PRB, that Republicans were actually very happy with the direction that it had gone.

And the PRB had started to release fewer and fewer people and show less and less lenience.

And so then for this to pop up, the Senate Republicans, Republicans in general in Illinois having so little power, they are gonna jump on this.

But it is of course very tragic and there clearly needs to be more training.

- And to me, what the ironies of this is that the three-person panel that LeAnn Miller headed consisted of Miller, a Republican, one other Republican, and an Independent.

So it's not a R versus D type of thing.

- Yeah, very interesting stuff.

We only have about five minutes left, so I'd like to move quickly to our remaining stories.

Charlie, last week we continued our primary election coverage that is raising questions about turnouts in November.

We have learned Governor JB Pritzker has donated $250,000 to get out the Democratic vote in Cook County, tell us more.

- I guess the question would be, in my mind, would be why?

The Cook County turnout, well, we won't know the actual numbers for another week until everything gets certified to the State Board of Elections, but the numbers were roughly maybe one out of every four registered voters in Cook County one supposes, or less than that, maybe one out of five in Chicago.

But in my mind, there's not that much danger in that if we don't get the voters out, our candidates won't win.

Joe Biden is gonna win Illinois widely, by a huge margin.

Most of the Democrats, I'd be surprised if more than two or three Democrats running for reelection actually lost 'cause Illinois is a very solidly democratic state.

But I think part of it is the money will help to energize people for when the Democratic National Convention comes to Chicago in August.

- Yes, something we've been talking about for a long time, this is gonna be high profile for the state of Illinois and for Chicago and the desire to make that happen with big turnout possibly in the fall.

Very interesting.

Hannah, I wanna move on to you now.

Educators are very concerned ahead of the election.

90% are reporting a serious teacher shortage in an annual survey, let's hear about this.

- Right, the Illinois Association of Regional School Superintendents has been doing this survey since 2017.

Teacher shortage, a thing that is happening nationally, Illinois is certainly not alone, became very dire, of course, like many things in the pandemic as we saw a labor market that had been thrown so far out of whack from pre-COVID.

In this survey found more than 90% of schools who responded, reported having a serious or very serious teacher shortage problem.

Now of course, a survey like this, very much could be a bit of respondent bias, and so maybe the teacher shortage problem is not quite as dire as that.

But still this is an issue that was pretty intractable because it would take several, several years to fix because you can't just poof, find a crop of thousands more teachers.

You have educators leaving the field.

Certainly I have many close friends who are teachers and they're coming up on their 11th, 12th year and they're wondering like, "Am I really gonna be still doing the same job when I'm 60 something"?

- Yeah.

And it's so hard, Hannah, especially in Illinois, because we already have extremely high property taxes and extremely high sales taxes in many places, so it's very hard to think about raising additional revenue for education or for anything else.

Charlie, as we wrap up, two minutes left, another concern for Democrats, roughly two thirds of Americans now disapprove of how President Biden is handling border security, including about four in 10 Democrats.

That is according to an Associated Press NORC Center Public Affairs research poll conducted in March.

Before you tell us about the poll, we should note Republicans stopped a bipartisan deal to address immigration issues including border security.

- Yeah, and in my mind, the kind of issues are gonna be for people, there's a great concern about border security, it's been exacerbated in Chicago because of Governor Abbott of Texas sending tens of thousands of migrants, most of the time, without advance warning to the city.

And it's caused consternation and it's caused divisions among the Black demographic and the Hispanic demographic about what should we do for these people.

And the issue, in my mind, is gonna be our voters, particularly suburban women, are there gonna be more exercised by what Donald Trump complains about the Illinois and the nation being invaded by these aliens, or by the fact that they're very concerned about the Republicans want to take away their reproductive rights, and that'll be the big issue.

And I noticed in Illinois, something like roughly one out of every four suburban voters voted for Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, rather than Donald Trump.

Now, as I said earlier, it doesn't make any difference here in Illinois, but what about in places like Milwaukee or Philadelphia or Detroit?

- Yeah, there it could make a huge difference and could even throw the entire election.

Interesting discussion today, we are out of time.

Charlie, Hannah, thank you both for being with us and thank you at home as well.

For everyone at WSIU, I'm Fred Martino.

Have a great week.

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