(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) - Thanks for joining us on "Capitol View", I'm Fred Martino.

Upfront this week, a look back at the legislative session and a look ahead to some additional priorities.

We are so pleased to welcome Representative Sue Scherer to "Capitol View".

Representative, thank you so much for being with us.

- And thank you for having me today.

- Good to have you.

Good to have you here.

Let's start with the legislative session, what a busy time it was and your thoughts on the biggest accomplishments this year.

- You know what?

This was a wonderful session, we really did get a lot accomplished.

There have been years that it was not so good.

You know, I was here when we went maybe three years without a budget, that was horrific.

But some really great accomplishments that I think came out of this year, having been a teacher for 35 years in the public schools, education to me is a top priority obviously, but it's not just all about education.

Education ripples into the economy and jobs and people working and raising families and being educated.

So all those things being said, this was really a banner year for education.

We really put our money where our mouth is this time and put money in from cradle to college.

What that means is a huge smart start program which is for children in preschool.

And one of the main things there is we're really pouring money into the preschool programs.

And in addition to that, we poured money in the millions, extra funding into childcare, actually 100 million extra dollars into childcare so that parents who want to and need to go to work are able to get assistance with their childcare.

Another thing is we did a lot of job training that we haven't done in the past.

So a lot of money went into MAP Grants for colleges.

We fully funded K through 12 education.

The MAP Grant thing's a big deal to me because I was a recipient of a MAP Grant.

It had a different name back in the day but it's the same thing.

And you know, the state has more than got their money's worth out of that and the money that people like I have paid in taxes on the backend from that.

So I'm a firm believer in that.

My heart was broken when we quit funding our universities and MAP Grants.

So we are really upping the game, trying to get people to go to college at state universities.

And then the records show that then they come back, they live here, they stay here, they work here, they pay taxes here and it grows our economy.

So I'm really happy with where we've landed on education.

Another really tremendous accomplishment I feel is that we have totally addressed the problem of retaining teachers and getting new teachers.

Now, I don't know if this is gonna solve it but we are sure gonna try.

For the next three years, we are giving schools that are in hard hit districts that don't have teachers in classrooms.

We have funded that to the tune of I think $40 million for the state.

I know in my district combined it's well over $1 million for the Springfield and Decatur Public Schools which are the two school districts I represent and Harris Town as well in there.

But anyway, they have this money and they can choose to spend it however they see fit.

So for once the state isn't getting in there and telling you what to do as a local school district, we're saying, you know your district, you come up with whatever the people need to come there and teach.

So it can be, they can give them bonuses, they can give 'em signing bonuses, they can pay for their housing, they can pay moving expenses, they can pay childcare.

They can literally do pretty much anything they want, they do report back to us what they did with the money so it is accountable but we're empowering local school boards to decide what they think could really work to get teachers in their classrooms.

It's a three year program and we're gonna see how this works.

So I'm very excited about that.

Another huge thing is that our bond rating has gone up eight steps just in this year.

We are now an A rated state and back in the years when we didn't have a budget, we were one step above junk bond.

- Okay, so a lot of important things and we'll talk more about education specifically in the half hour ahead.

I wanna move on now to some of the most important issues that you're still working on for the next year.

- Okay, I've got, right now I have two really huge ones.

Well, three really.

So one of my main things, and I don't know if you got the press release, it just actually went out last night and- - [Fred] I did.

- About the insurance.

- [Fred] Yes.

- So let me talk about the other two quick 'cause they're quicker to talk about.

So one is, I have put in a bill to help Decatur Public Schools.

They had, two of their buildings got condemned and the students had nowhere to go.

So we need to change the law in what we do when there is a crisis closure 'cause it's not spelled out real well.

And so, that's one of my bills that I hope to get passed during veto is to help with Decatur Public School situation and have it work for the current school year to help that these kids don't have to go to school two weeks late in the summer next June.

Another one that I'm still working on is trying to get the funding for free breakfast and lunch for our students.

It's just heartbreaking for kids to come to school and that might be the only thing they eat in a whole day's time.

And yet we test them to death and publish those scores in the paper and nobody knows what their lives are like at home.

But then my third and probably biggest to some people, you know I always said whatever the bill is, if it affects you directly, that's the most important thing to you.

It may not be important to others but if you're struggling with your insurance companies right now and ghost networks, I have dusted off the bill that I ran, I think it was two years ago, it's an over 100 page bill colossal written by the Department of Insurance and the governor's office and we're gonna try again to pass that.

And we need to figure out a way to hold our large health insurance companies accountable.

I get calls constantly.

I don't have a doctor.

You know they say I have a doctor, they list all these doctors, I call 'em, they're like in Chicago or they're not taking new patients.

Well, that's not really allowed to be on that list.

So we call those things ghost networks and we've gotta do a better job of holding these companies accountable.

So this is going to be the biggest bill that I'll be carrying.

It would be marvelous if I could get that passed in veto session.

- Okay, let's talk about veto session that's coming up this fall.

What are the major issues in addition to the one that you just mentioned?

- Well, I feel like the main thing with veto this time, I hope are gonna be my two bills.

I really wanna get this insurance bill passed and I really wanna get this emergency school closure bill passed.

To me, those are both very timely and they need to be going right to the top of the list for veto session.

Veto session is kind of got two purposes.

One is for things like this, that come up that are like emergencies that need to be taken care of before regular session.

And the other one is if the governor did veto anything from the spring session to override the vetos.

- Yeah, as you mentioned Representative, you were a public school teacher for more than 30 years.

You've already talked about a number of education issues where you've had success.

Others where you're still working to get things passed.

We've talked about a number of priorities.

I wanna move to one that you haven't talked about yet and that is the opportunity for dual credit, earning college credit while you're still in high school.

What an amazing opportunity this is.

Tell me your thoughts on these programs and would you like to see these expand?

- Oh, I have a lot of thoughts on these.

I am gonna go back to when I entered college and there were my peers came and they walked in the door with all these credits called CLEP credits.

In Decatur, we knew nothing even about CLEP credits.

So my friends and I from Decatur walk in with zero credits, they're walking in with eight, 10, 12 credits before their college even begins.

And some of those were some of their hardest classes.

So you know it really was an unfair start right from the beginning.

But I will say this, I learned right out of the gate that things aren't fair and equal and that if you're from the suburbs, you had a much greater advantage before you even walked in the door.

So now I love the idea of dual credits.

My own children all were able to get dual credits and it's interesting because, you know I have four kids and from the oldest down to the youngest, my first child had I think six hours of dual credit, maybe even only three.

And that was my oldest daughter.

By the time I got to my youngest child, Tyler, he was able to get, oh gee, he either had 12 or 15 credits before he even went to UIS.

So there's so many advantages to that.

A, the money that you don't have to pay for all those classes.

We know how expensive college is.

B, you get right out of the gate, here's one of the, I think most important things, you know you can do it.

I remember being scared when I went to college.

I was afraid that I wouldn't be smart enough to be successful.

And that was because no one in my family had ever gone to college.

How would I know if I could do it or not?

And I ended up being on the dean's list but that was a very real fear for me.

Now when my kids went to school, they didn't have that fear because I could tell them my experience but not everybody gets to have that.

So now if you have dual credit, you can go and you can be like, "I know I can do it.

"I have already gotten an A or a B "in all these different classes "so now I know that I can handle it."

And not only that, but when you go to register for classes, you don't go in as a zero freshman, zero credit, you go in ahead of all the freshmen with zero credit so it's a much greater chance that you'll get the classes you need, at a decent time, and you're not paying extra money taking classes you don't even need just so that you're a full-time student.

- We'll have more of my interview with Representative Sue Scherer next week and we wanna hear from you.

Send us your letters, the email address is contact@wsiu.org.

Analysis Now and we welcome Jeremy Gorner of the Chicago Tribune and Charlie Wheeler, Emeritus Director of the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Thank you both for being with us today.

- Well, thank you for having us.

- Thank you.

- Good to have you both.

Jeremy, I see that a gun industry group is challenging the new firearms marketing restrictions in Illinois.

Tell us about this.

- Yes, so the National Shooting Sports Foundation, they're a gun trade organization obviously, and you know, they filed this lawsuit two days after Governor Pritzker signed it into law.

Basically what this law is supposed to do is that it allows anyone to sue gun manufacturers or gun dealers for shoddy marketing ploys.

So basically, if it's found that these gun dealers or manufacturers anyone in the firearm industry are marketing to children or marketing in such a way which make it easier for illegal sales to occur such as straw purchasing and then such marketing ploys may directly or indirectly lead to gun violence, then those victims of gun violence can sue the firearm industry because of their marketing of said firearms.

Now this has been, even when this was on the Senate floor, I know that it was, even in committee, it was warned by opponents namely gun rights advocates that this law could be contested in court because there's federal law that actually protects gun manufacturers and gun sellers from such lawsuits basically, because I mean, specifically a 2005 federal law that basically exempts them from litigation regardless of how they market their weapons and so on and so forth.

But you have the democrats notably Senate President Don Harmon who have said that they're complying with federal law with this new law that was passed on the state level.

However, the NSSF, of course begs to differ saying it violates the First Amendment and among just a whole host of other problems basically.

First Amendment basically as well as the Second Amendment were both cited in one lawsuit which is interesting because of all the gun rights litigation that we've seen, especially with the assault weapons ban, we've seen the Second Amendment being contested, not the First Amendment and the Second Amendment at the same time.

So yeah, so that's basically what's at play here.

- Yeah, it's gonna be fascinating to see what the courts say about this.

Another interesting one, Charlie, is an effort by Illinois on gun safety being challenged in a different way.

The Illinois Supreme Court has upheld the state's assault weapons ban but a federal test does remain.

Tell us about this.

- Yes, well, a week or so ago, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled four to three to uphold the assault weapon ban, it's called the Protect Illinois Communities Act.

And its history is interesting in that it was passed on the very last day in January of the prior general Assembly.

And it was passed basically overnight and signed almost immediately.

And that was one of the objections raised at the time of its passage.

The challenge was brought by Representative Dan Caulkins who's a Republican from Decatur and a Macon County judge said, "Yes, this law is unconstitutional."

It was appealed directly to the Supreme Court and in the Supreme Court ruling and as I said, it was four to three and they upheld the law.

And I'm gonna quote from the opinion here, is written by Justice Elizabeth Rochford who is the daughter of a former Chicago police superintendent.

And she says, "First we hold that the exemptions," because the law exempted certain people; law enforcement folks, military people, security guards, folks in those categories.

"We hold that the exemptions neither deny equal protection "nor constitutes special legislation "because plaintiffs have not sufficiently alleged "that they're similarly situated "and treated differently from the exempt classes.

"Second, plaintiffs expressly waived in the circuit court "any independent claim that the restrictions impermissibly "infringe this Second Amendment.

"Third, plaintiff's failure to cross appeal "is a jurisdictional bar "to renewing their three readings claim.

"Accordingly, we reverse the circuit court entered judgment "for defendants on the equal protection "and special legislation claims.

"We express no opinion on the potential viability "of plaintiff's waived claim "concerning the Second Amendment."

- Ah, very interesting and so, this, well, now we'll have to see if, that's the state Supreme Court, we'll have to see if the U.S. Supreme Court is interested is this.

- Waiting for now because the federal courts in the Southern District, there's been suits filed contesting this on Second Amendment grounds among others.

And on June 29th, the three judge panel of the Seventh U.S.

Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in six consolidated lawsuits challenging the ban on grounds that violated the Second Amendment.

The court has not issued a ruling yet but the gun advocates say, well, it's pretty clear that when the ruling comes down, this law is gonna get tossed.

And I would say, obviously, whatever the the Circuit Court of Appeals says, it will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and that's where the final resolution will come.

- Yeah, that's what we're gonna all be watching very carefully and of course, not only in Illinois but all across the country because certainly, with a lack of federal action in most cases, states are taking action.

So that's really where the effort is on gun safety.

Something we'll be talking about on this show I'm sure for years to come.

Jeremy, I wanna move to the veto session coming up this fall.

Governor J.B. Pritzker has vetoed to measure granting Ameren authority over transmission line construction.

What is this all about?

- So basically, you know, so first of all, it's pretty rare.

It's been up till this past spring session.

It's pretty rare for the governor to veto any bills.

And Charlie, please correct me if I'm wrong, I mean, the last one I remember prior to this session was, I believe it was early 2022 or perhaps around that time he vetoed a bill related to the school vaccine mandates.

So it's first of all, just to paint a picture, it's pretty rare for the governor to do this in general but in this case, he vetoed a measure that would grant existing utility companies, particularly downstate, notably Ameren, Illinois the quote, "Right to first refusal of transmission line construction."

Now basically, what this would do is give Ameren authority to build new transmission lines without going through a competitive bidding process under federal regulations.

And so the governor issued basically an mandatory veto.

He only struck down a portion of this bill dealing with that right to refusal for transmission line construction.

And you left the rest of the bill untouched, basically.

So this is gonna be something that I think gonna be pretty contested.

I know that Larry Walsh, he was the chief sponsor in the house trying to push this bill through the house.

It passed with I believe three votes to spare in the house during the spring session.

And he says he's gonna try to pass the bill over the governor's objection during veto session anyway.

He's stressed that the bill, he sees it as being beneficial to laborers.

In his view, the bid process opens up transmission line construction for all state companies.

- All right, well, we only have a few minutes left and there is another veto I want Charlie to talk about where again, just like that veto, we may see action on this in the veto session.

Governor Pritzker vetoed to bill that would've allowed new nuclear plant construction.

Charlie, give us an update on that.

- Yeah, well, this was legislation that came through this past spring session and it basically removes a provision in law that was put in I believe in 1987 that says that there can be no nuclear construction in Illinois until the federal government figures out what to do with the waste from nuclear power generation, the spent fuel rods.

And there's something like, Lord, like 11,000 tons of them up at the closed plan in Zion.

And the stuff has a half life, some of it of 24,000 years.

And so the idea is that they're developing a new kind of reactor, a small modular reactor they're called, instead of these big, huge massive structures that you may be seeing.

And the idea is to encourage these.

And so, we lifted the ban and Pritzker seemed supportive back in the spring and he said, "Well, the devil's in the details."

Well, he looked at the details of this particular bill and he says, and this is from his veto message, "There appears to be real potential "for small modular reactors "which in the future could safely provide energy "for energy consuming businesses "in area where their needs cannot currently be met.

"However," he says, "this bill provides no regulatory protections "for the health and safety of Illinois residents "who would live and work around these new reactors.

"And the vague definitions in the bill "including the overly broad definition of advanced reactors "will open the door to proliferation of large scale "nuclear reactors that are so costly to build "that they will cause exorbitant ratepayer funded bailouts."

And so, vetoed it because he didn't like it.

Now the margins by which it's passed in the general assembly were sufficient to have an override but the sponsor of the of the bill, Senator Sue Rezin, a Morris Republican, told a local radio station that she's heard that the, as was indicated, that the house is not gonna go along with it.

She's filed the paperwork but she doesn't think it's gonna go anywhere.

Meanwhile, the governor is talking about, "Well, maybe we can get together "and do something more along the lines "what I was talking about these small modular ones "rather than the huge ones and put in proper guard rails."

- Yeah, that's gonna be really interesting to see.

That seems to be something that there is an interest in some kind of a negotiated settlement on that.

So we'll be watching it during the veto session.

As usual, Jak Tichenor will be here with a variety of different programs covering the veto session.

Well my guests today we're Jeremy Gorner of the Chicago Tribune and Charlie Wheeler, Emeritus Director of the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here.

- My pleasure.

- All right, and thank you at home as well.

For all of us at WSIU, I'm Fred Martino.

Have a great week.

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