(soft music) (camera light sensor beeping) (soft music continues) (dynamic orchestral music) - Welcome to another edition of "CapitolView", your weekly look at the happenings inside and outside the Illinois State Capitol.

I'm Jennifer Fuller.

Our panelists this week are Brenden Moore of Lee Enterprises and John Jackson of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at SIU Carbondale.

Gentlemen, thanks for joining us.

- Glad to be with you.

- Thanks for having me.

- You know, at the risk of sounding like a broken record we're going to be talking about the same issue that we started with last week and the week before and that is the newly-enacted assault weapons ban which is now in some sort of question because we've had several more lawsuits filed over the last week, both in federal court and in state court.

So Brenden, I'm going to start with you.

Let's get up to speed here.

What are these lawsuits challenging and where do we stand?

- Yeah, so there are, well multiple lawsuits now on both the federal and state level.

On the federal level, obviously, you're seeing a challenge based on the second amendment and the interpretation of that.

There's been a bit of a change since the landmark Bruen decision last year and how second amendment cases are interpreted.

You have to show there's a historical analog of regulation and that's certainly open to interpretation.

So I think you see a lot of gun rights advocates that are bullish on their prospects, given the conservative tilt of the court at the federal level.

So that's more on the long-term, but in the short-term you're seeing at the state level, several lawsuits pop up.

Tom DeVore has filed a few of 'em in downstate courts.

State Representative Dan Calkins is also filing one in Macon County, and it would not surprise me to see more and more of those sprout up.

And that's kind of more on the short-term track where, you know, you can essentially get a downstate judge that might be a bit more sympathetic to the second amendment to the cause of these folks and issue a temporary restraining order which would get folks that are party to the lawsuit out from under this law, from complying with it.

And at the state level, a lot of the challenges center around the legislative process that led to the inaction of this law.

Long-term, I don't believe that the prospects are very strong there.

The state courts, especially as you go higher up have usually given the legislature a lot of leeway in terms of its process.

However, it does serve a temporary purpose for some of these folks because as this works its way through the system, they can get that temporary restraining order where they can still purchase these weapons.

And if you're a gun shop owner, you can still and you're a party to the lawsuit, you can still sell them.

So at least some temporary relief as those cases work through the system as the federal cases, which will take, probably take a while, work their way through.

- Sure, John Brenden brings up some of the nuance that comes with, especially these state cases in the terms of a temporary restraining order which would make sure that the plaintiffs in that case don't have to comply with the rule while the courts consider their challenge to it.

But in some cases, it's only that number of people in that specific county.

It is not a blanket order for the entire state.

How's the average person supposed to kind of figure out where we stand right now and what the law means to them?

- I think it is complicated and sort of a mess right now and the average person's not gonna take the time to keep up with all this.

And let me just try to simplify and say as Brenden just indicated, there's a bunch of state and federal cases, various jurisdictions, a good deal of jurisdiction shopping going on as to where these cases are being filed.

And so it'll go up two routes.

Number one's the state route and it will end at the Illinois Supreme Court and then it will go the federal route and there'll be different issues and different judges and different appeals and so forth.

But that one will end at the United States Supreme Court.

And the United States Supreme Court's going to have the last say so it's not over until that, and it's going take a while.

I would say going up the state channel different jurisdictions, different appellate jurisdictions, but when it gets to Illinois Supreme Court this is my speculation and hopefully educated speculation that I think it's unlikely that this will be ruled unconstitutional at this point.

The federal case will have to be decided.

And when it gets to that Supreme Court, number one, we know the current majority is not very friendly on gun control rules.

However, they've not decided on these specific circumstances of the outlawing of the AK-47, AK-47s AR-47s, AK-15-type things.

And until that ruling is rendered, nobody knows.

There's been a tremendous amount of assertion by state legislators and by sheriffs, and by the NRA confidently saying this is clearly unconstitutional.

There's no way to know that this is unconstitutional because the US Supreme Court hasn't spelled out what rules they will put up with.

And just another quick point on that, if you look at the precedent, starting with the Heller decision if they were, for example, to follow Scalia's clearly stated that not all gun laws are going to be unconstitutional, then even the conservative majority could go that route or at some part of the conservative majority.

Alito and Thomas on the other hand, certainly not.

And in the New York-Bruen case, they clearly invited further appeals on other limitations like automatic weapons.

So it's hard to say what the US Supreme Court's going to say, but it is not correct to say that this is absolutely unconstitutional.

- It seems that with so many questions that are still flying around about the constitutionality and how the law was enacted, we are seeing more and more calls to the federal level to Representatives in Congress and US Senators to enact some sort of federal law when it comes to weapons regulation in the United States.

Brenden, what's the temperature there?

The Illinois Congressional delegation, I would gather, given its Democratic majority, would probably lean toward more regulation.

But is there a chance?

- No, not right now.

It would be dead an arrival.

The House, I believe it was during the last session, did pass an assault weapons ban kind of modeled on the 1994 law.

It passed with very bare majorities in the Democratic-led House.

It didn't get taken up in the Senate.

Obviously need 60 votes for most things in the Senate, which was never gonna happen.

And now with the Republicans taking over the House any talk about gun control is gonna be filed away for another day, just not gonna happen.

So there's no appetite at the federal level for it right now, at least on the legislative side.

So it's really gonna be at the state level that you might see some of these laws enacted.

Governor Pritzker as he, you know, defends the law and states it's constitutional, his big thing is that, "Oh, well we're just the ninth state "to enact this," and that is true.

There are eight other states that have these laws on the books.

However, we are the first state to enact this law after the Bruen decision and there have not been any assault weapons cases decided since.

There are a few that are currently going through the process right now, so we might get some clarity soon.

But you know, there is a lot of uncertainty as to what the outcome might be at the federal level.

But yeah, in terms of gun control legislation it's gonna be a very sectional thing.

It's gonna be a very much, you'll see it in blue states where Democrats have power.

You will probably see the reverse in states where Republicans have power.

And the federal government will probably not do much in terms of enacting that type of legislation.

- John, this kind of approach where different states based on political ideology will have different rules on a hot button issue, we've seen some of this with reproductive rights, now we're seeing it with gun rights.

At what point does the federal government need to say there should be a law that governs the country rather than we're going to let the states handle this?

And does that get back to the Dobbs decision that let this issue be decided by the states?

- Well, I think your analogy to the abortion decision that Dobbs decision is absolutely on target.

We had that settled for almost 50 years with Roe versus Wade, and then all of a sudden the Supreme Court decided we would totally unsettle it and throw the whole thing back to the states.

And now we've got chaos at the state level and we've got more polarization and more conflict across state borders than ever before because there's now no federal ruling.

And the same thing is now happening by them essentially overturning the Miller decision which stood for all kinds of, since the '30s, as I remember it.

And the Miller decision was about sawed-off shotguns.

That settled the issue till Heller came along.

And as soon as they ruled that it is going to go back to the states, you have the kind of chaos that we have now.

Now the Congress could settle both issues with a federal law and a lot of people on the left want the abortion decision settled by federal law and the gun control.

But as Brenden says, in the current polarized with the House under the Republican situation, not gonna happen and it's gonna be the two major drivers of the conversation in 2024 for the presidential election.

- I wonder, Brenden, you know, this issue, the gun rights issue is grabbing headlines all over the place right now and has really since the first of the year.

But the legislature returns here in the next couple of weeks and they have some work to do.

How much will this uncertainty and the fact that this continues to have hearings and you continue to have suits filed, how much is that going to distract from the real work that the legislature needs to do between now and May 31st?

- And the governor and the legislative leaders have you know, said that the courts are where this issue is at now and that that's gonna be the proper venue and it'll probably stay separate from the legislature.

Legislature did what they thought was the right thing to do when they passed this law.

It's being challenged.

It's kind of, as we've discussed, it's kind of been chaotic the past few weeks.

Perhaps we'll see some order brought to that soon.

We could see some of those cases be consolidated and hopefully, you know, some order brought to that.

But no, in terms of the legislature, obviously, they're just beginning their new session and they have a lot of things on their plate, possibly.

The governor's gonna be giving his budget address in a few weeks and so we might hear from him how he plans to flesh out some of the ideas that he proposed in his inaugural address from Universal Pre-K to expanding childcare, to precollege, and a lot of other things that cost money.

The state has a little bit of money to work with, projecting surpluses in the next fiscal year, but obviously, still some fiscal troubles ahead, protecting deficits into the years after.

Still have that huge mounting pension liability, so there's a lot of things for them to deal with.

I think that some of the gun stuff and even some of the Safety Act stuff, 'cause remember that's before the Supreme Court right now, too, those will play out in the courts.

I don't think that we're gonna see a lot of action in those areas as those issues get decided.

- I wanna get to some of those issues that you brought up in just a moment, but John, I wanna kind of wrap up this part of the conversation on the assault weapons ban and the turmoil around this and other issues.

How does this compare in history to other times?

Do you see, you know, we always talk about politics being messy, but does it seem more messy now than it has been in the past?

- I think there, the best historical example is the whole fight over desegregation, particularly of schools and public accommodations.

And that took a long time and it's not really settled yet.

And in the south, particularly, there was defiance of the federal court decisions.

There was defiance in federal government.

Eisenhower versus Faubus, Little Rock 1957 looks very much like some of the things that, particularly, in the aftermath of the assault weapons decision, got all kinds of local officials saying they will not comply with the federal government and will not carry out the federal court order and so forth.

And so we've been there with this civil rights fight that really, really roiled the country and really hasn't gone away yet.

And so now we've added two more to that layer which is really states' rights and what are you going to do for a federal system and where are you going to have some national rules about what are peoples' civil rights, what are their rights to freedom of choice, or what are their rights to guns?

And I think the analogies are there and we've added one layer of conflict on the other.

- Certainly we could spend a long time talking about parallels and things like that.

So let's move on then, Brenden, you brought up some of the priorities that Governor Pritzker listed in his inauguration address.

And you mentioned, as well, these things cost money, things like Pre-K for all, things like free higher education, free childcare.

What do you see in terms of the legislative appetite to take some of these things on?

- Well, I think that there is certainly an appetite for, especially for the super majority Democrats to spend some money on new programs for their constituents.

The past few years, they have been fairly disciplined in terms of their budgeting, especially given the just huge trench of federal money that came in during the COVID pandemic.

I mean, the state got, you know, more than $8 billion, you know, just to spend on its own and that's not even counting, you know, other money that other levels of government got.

And a lot of that went towards one-time expenses.

And I think that there was kind of an acknowledgement that, you know, we gotta be responsible with this.

But it'll be interesting to see, especially now that the Democrats gained seats in the House and they, you know, only lost one seat in the Senate.

They feel emboldened after that last election.

Will they be able to maintain that fiscal discipline that they've shown a bit over the past few years?

Governor Pritzker has said that a lot of his priorities, it starts at the budget, that if there's money there, they would like to do some of these things.

But obviously, keeping in mind that the state still has a lot of, I guess, fiscal challenges ahead, and so they're gonna be very cognizant of that.

And you know, they, you know, so they say it'll kind of depend on what, how much money is there.

I mean, for instance, they've tried to increase the amount of funding for K through 12 every year, at least 350 million under the evidence-based funding formula.

That only happens if there's money there.

They've tried to increase math grant funding.

Again, that'll depend on how much is there.

There are some other things though that they could do that don't involve money.

The governor also mentioned and this this'll be big in 2024, if it happens, a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights and trying that in the constitution of the State of Illinois.

That could be passed this year.

And if it did, it would go to the voters in 2024.

And you know, that, you know, again, will be would be a huge campaign issue in that election cycle and kind of continue this theme of expanding reproductive rights in the state, especially as states around Illinois restrict them.

- John, one of the things that the legislature has to be looking for in some of these financial issues that Brenden's talking about are these predictions from economists that, you know, perhaps the US economy is due for a recession.

There's high inflation now and there are indicators that a recession could be on that horizon.

How difficult do you think they need to, or how disciplined do you think they need to be in terms of looking at next year's budget for a fiscal year that starts in July and ends the next June?

- Well, I think it's important to start with FY 23.

We're more than halfway through on that.

And they were very careful, as Brenden just said.

They were very disciplined in terms of the projected income and the expenditures.

And they've all come in better than the original COGFA predictions and the original predictions of the Governor's Office of Management and Budget.

And so I think that pattern is set, I think they'll do that again and be careful, and disciplined again.

Inflation's still with us, but it is going down some.

Whether we'll have a recession is still up in the air.

And how long it will last and what it would do to state income is yet to be determined.

So I think the record is, they've been careful and I expect that they will continue to be careful.

- Certainly.

Brenden, you mentioned a ballot issue that may come before voters in the 2024 election.

They may pass it this year through the legislature but because of the way the process goes it would take until 2024.

Another ballot issue that people are starting to rumble about is something that people thought was decided in a previous election, and that was the graduated income tax that Governor Pritzker really wanted to have passed in a previous election cycle.

The voters said no, but now there are rumblings that maybe that question may come back and there's even a Senate resolution from the GOP leader, John Curran, who says that the Senate will actively work to make sure that the peoples' voice is heard and they'll say, no this has already been decided.

So what is the future of this graduated income tax proposal?

- I mean I think it's always gonna be an issue that gets brought up.

I think even though the state has had a few really good years in terms of revenues because of, you know, just the economic activity after COVID, tax revenue has just kind of gone through the roof, but there are obviously still long-term funding issues for the state.

And the person that really brought this up was Senator Rob Martwick, a Democrat from Chicago who brought up that, hey, you know we still have this huge pension debt that we eventually have to pay down.

Not every year is gonna be as good as the past few years and we're gonna have to find, you know new revenue sources to pay for these things.

However, as you mentioned, Jen, the voters had their say in 2020 on this issue.

Governor Pritzker, it was one of the biggest issues he championed in the 2018 campaign.

He spent a lot of money trying to get it through.

Obviously, a lot of money was spent on the other side to defeat it.

And it went down with about, I believe about 53% of the voters said no.

My general feeling on this is that there isn't a huge appetite in Springfield to address that again.

The governor was asked about this at Davos last week and said that it was not a priority for him in the upcoming session, which may tell you that, you know, this is not something that he's looking to do or legislative leaders are looking to do.

So, and obviously the fact is that he has proposed having another ballot question about the the abortion issue on the ballot and I'm sure he would probably not want to crowd that question out, you know, by having two constitutional questions on the ballot in 2024.

But yeah, we will see where it goes, but until we start hearing the governor talk about it or legislative leaders talking about it as a serious possibility, I would probably put a pause on speculation on that.

- Sure.

John, when the framers of the Illinois Constitution put the document together a little over 50 years ago now they put these processes in place for ballot measures that would become constitutional amendments, and they made it more difficult than some states.

You see states like California where voters can have a ballot initiative on the ballot much more easily than in Illinois.

But over the last couple of years the legislature has taken it upon themselves to make sure that more questions are put to the voters.

Do you see that that is something that is a cultural shift in Illinois, that, you know the legislature wants the voters to make these decisions a little bit more often?

- Well, the Con Con was very conservative and very correct on that in my estimation.

They want the constitution and the Illinois constitution is the basic law and it's not loaded down with all kinds of things that ought to be legislative, not constitutional law.

And they succeeded in that.

And the fact that we only have 14 amendments I believe, 15 maybe, that's been passed, has held up well.

I think they have put out a couple of things and they haven't gone anywhere in terms of the graduated income tax, for example.

So I would say we're not going very far in the California direction and that's a good thing because it makes a mess of California government.

- Certainly something we'll keep track of, as usual.

We should let people know too, as mentioned earlier in this program, that Governor Pritzker would give his state of the state and budget address.

That's coming up on February 15th.

And you'll be able to see analysis from that right here on your public television station.

But for now, we're out of time here on "CapitolView".

I wanna give thanks to John Jackson and Brenden Moore for joining us this week.

You can find this episode and others online at WSIU.org and subscribe at our YouTube channel.

I'm Jennifer Fuller, thanks for joining us.

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