(bright music) (lens beeps) (exciting music) - Thanks for joining us on Capitol View.

I'm Fred Martino.

We have a lot of ground to cover as we continue our look at laws passed this year by the Illinois Legislature.

Topping the show this week, I am so pleased to welcome Illinois state senator, Dale Fowler.

Senator, thank you so much for being with us today.

- It's an honor to be with you.

Thank you so much for having me.

- Honor to have you, Senator.

And there's a whole lot to talk about, so I'm gonna go right into it.

And I wanna begin with a change to the Juvenile Court Act.

You sponsored legislation that now allows certain hospital and agency records to be used in court proceedings with abused, neglected, or dependent minors.

Tell us about this, and why you worked for this change.

- Absolutely.

It's very crucial legislation.

I actually worked with Representative Patrick Windhorst, sat at his house.

He carried it in the House of Representatives, I carried it in the Illinois State Senate.

And it is House Bill 1434.

And what this does, it's gonna free up opportunities for the court system to be able to have the records, as you mentioned, for abused, neglected, and independent minors.

Unfortunately, too often, minors are abused and neglected, and their medical records are needed in court proceedings, and they've been held up.

So unfortunately, what happens is the court would have to get approval from the head of a hospital in order to get these records.

So what this does, it alleviates a lot of the burdensome restrictions to be able to have these medical records in juvenile court hearings, so that someone, an attorney or a judge, can request these documents from the hospital, and not have to go through the burdensome procedures to be able to give these juveniles, so the records will be in the courts in support of these juveniles.

So this is really, this is gonna simplify the record process, and have those records submitted to court proceedings exponentially and efficiently.

- So important, and I'm glad we had a chance to highlight that.

I wanna move to another piece of legislation that was approved.

I know you sponsored a change that allows some new options for license plates for people who have disabled family members.

Tell us about that.

- Yes, absolutely.

There's license plates for disabled family members, and sometimes they don't have the access to be able to go to a handicapped area in a Walmart, or wherever it may be.

But also in this legislation, it gives the legislators that have become disabled, that have put their years of service in to the state of Illinois, that have the retired state legislative plates to be able to implement a handicapped plate for those legislators that have served the state of Illinois, and have become handicapped to have access to the resources they need to be able to park.

- All right.

Well, I wanna get to a timely thing that you wanna highlight, that I think is so important.

Something that people will enjoy, and also is an important part of economic development.

The weekend of June 22nd, the Southern Illinois Made Expo.

Tell us about that.

- Yes, that's gonna be July 22nd, 23rd at the city of Marion Pavilion.

This is something I created along with my staff in 2018 to be able to showcase and highlight the incredible Southern Illinois made products and manufacturing that we have right here in Southern Illinois.

When I became a member of the General Assembly, sworn in 2017, I started traveling around the district, and I was educated to a lot of these manufacturers that I really didn't know a whole lot about, and it's truly phenomenal what is made and manufactured and actually sent all over the world from out here in Southern Illinois, and then also we wanna showcase our destinations, our state parks, our Shawnee National Forest, and historical sites.

So we came up with the idea of having a Southern Illinois Made Expo, and we had our first one in 2018, then we had one in 2019 at the Pavilion.

Unfortunately, we were burdened by COVID.

We didn't have the 2021.

We were able to go back live in person last year, and then this year, we're gonna do it again, again July 22nd, 23rd.

And it's truly phenomenal to be able to bring all these companies and manufacturers under one roof.

And some of the correspondents that we get back from the thousands of people that attend is that well, we didn't know this was made and manufactured here in Southern Illinois.

And it also gives our manufacturers an opportunity to network with each other.

There's been a lot of major contracts, worldwide contracts, established from the Expo.

And it's just been truly phenomenal.

It's been a grand slam.

And we have three or 4000 people that have come through the Pavilion.

It's 10 to four on Saturday and Sunday, again, July 22nd and 23rd.

But also, it also has a purpose.

All the proceeds, 100% of the proceeds, has always gone to a veterans' organization.

The first few years of the Expo, it's gone to Honor Flight of Southern Illinois, and Operation Honor Guard.

And then this year, I found about the need to enclose the arena at Giant City Stables for our Veterans Equine Therapeutic Services, because what happens is the arena is not enclosed, therefore they have to suspend their program during inclement weather.

So I was able to secure a $200,000 GCO grant three years ago, and the grant process is just now coming to fruition.

But unfortunately, we know what happened with COVID, in materials and supplies.

That 200,000 has now grown to 280,000.

So the proceeds from this event are gonna go to Veterans Equine Therapeutic Services, as well as specialized equine services, the services for autistic children, and the disabled children.

So really supportive of that.

We have incredible sponsors.

We'll be taking donations at the door.

And a caveat too to this is gonna be phenomenal is we're gonna be calling this, it's gonna have a theme called Christmas in July.

So all these vendors are gonna have their Christmas packages and gift sets set up, where you can do your Christmas shopping in July with all these vendors.

There's gonna be over 100 vendors there.

And then the first 200 people that attend on Saturday and Sunday are gonna get a free Southern Illinois Made manufactured product.

- All right, very interesting.

Thank you for previewing that for us.

I'm sure a lot of folks will enjoy getting ready for the holidays, especially as hot as it is outside.

They'll enjoy thinking about cooler weather, too.

Well, we're gonna get to an issue affecting the entire state in just a moment.

We're gonna talk about higher education at length.

But before we do that, I do wanna have you touch briefly on a couple of other economic development issues in Southern Illinois.

And these are port projects in Old Shawneetown, and Cairo, and you have one other piece of legislation in Cairo that I know you wanted to highlight quickly.

- Absolutely, yes.

The Cairo Port Project.

There's 40 million, it's the public private partnership.

It was announced by the governor in the FY19 Capitol Bill, $40 million of public funds going into that, and they're scheduled over 200 million of private funds.

It's been a slow process, because it is a new construction with new permitting.

It is still flowing.

A lot of people ask about it.

It's one of the number one things that people talk about in Southern Illinois.

And the governor's always stated this could be one of the biggest economic development projects that Southern Illinois has seen in over 100 years.

So it's exciting, but it does still have momentum.

Then as you mentioned in Old Shawneetown, there's also a port being constructed there.

It's actually a former coal loading dock in Old Shawneetown, the Ohio River there.

And it's gonna be a conversion to offload fertilize and containers there as well.

And what's exciting about that project, since it's a former coal loading dock, it's already permitted with the Army Corps of Engineers.

So that's gonna be up and running, hopefully by sometime in early 2024.

- Okay.

Well, we're gonna move on now to higher education.

In June, you were at an event with Governor Pritzker at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

The event marked legislation to increase funding to higher education.

I wanna talk about that increase, where we are on spending more money, and your thoughts about this decision to do so.

- I'm extremely excited to see more funding going into high education.

And education, as a whole.

Also in K through 12.

But it's incredibly important that we continue to fund, especially with MAP grants, the increase of funding in MAP grants, as well.

And also, I was honored to have been selected this year, this last legislative session, as the co-chair of the Higher Education Committee.

It shows that we can work together in a bipartisan manner.

It's the first time in many, many decades that there's been a co-chair of both the majority and minority party co-chairing a committee.

So I really appreciate the administration on both sides of the aisle, bringing me to the table as a co-chair, but as you mentioned, it's so important that we continue to give our students the opportunity, and especially our students, our local students here in Southern Illinois, and the state of Illinois, as a matter of fact, to be having an opportunity to have the resources and the funding, as I mentioned, especially through MAP grants, to be able to keep them right here in the state of Illinois, because we have so much opportunity, especially in the 59th District that I represent, with all the opportunities for job creation, to be able to raise a family right here in beautiful Southern Illinois.

- All right.

Well, as a point of disclosure, WSIU is licensed, of course, by Southern Illinois University.

We should say that.

During the event at SIU Carbondale, you noted, I thought this was very interesting.

When you pulled members of your Student Advisory Council, more of those members were choosing SIU.

Tell me why you think that is, and what can be done in your view to continue that momentum.

- A great point.

Thank you for mentioning that.

Yes, my Student Advisory Council's been phenomenal.

I bring in about 100 students throughout the district, juniors and seniors.

And when I had my very first Student Advisory Council in 2017, I would poll the students.

How many are planning on going to college?

And I'd get a raise of hands.

And then I would ask, how many are planning on going to Southern Illinois University?

And then I was getting maybe a hand, snarks, some kind of chuckles.

And now, it's incredible.

Actually I had one of my local high schools that had 10 students at my Student Advisory Council, and eight of those 10 are now going to SIU.

I think it's a kudos to the administration for their aggressive efforts.

Obviously we're promoting Southern Illinois University, and our junior colleges, as well.

Especially to Southern Illinois University.

So we're seeing probably close to half of our students that are raising their hand that they plan on going to our, when they become, some of the juniors now are maybe anticipating going to SIU, but it's encouraging to see especially a lot of our seniors are now directing their educational efforts towards Southern Illinois University, so I think it's just accolades to the administration for their aggressive work, and to see SIU really prospering again.

- That was Illinois State Senator, Dale Fowler.

We'll have part two of our conversation with him next week.

We'd like to share your letters to Capitol View.

Email us anytime.

The address is contact@wsiu.org.

Analysis now, and joining us this week, Dave McKinney of WBEZ, and John Jackson from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled this week that a landmark criminal justice reform law did not violate the state's constitution, and this means Illinois is set to become the first state to fully eliminate cash bail.

Other states have partially done so.

Studies show that it is not expected to have a major impact on crime, but what are the political implications that could come about?

I want both of our guests to comment on this.

And John, let's start with you.

- Well Fred, I think this is a huge political victory.

It could be short-lived, but it's certainly a victory, for Governor Pritzker, for the Democrats and General Assembly, for the Attorney General.

The Safety Act is their act.

They pushed it through.

I don't think there was a single Republican vote.

And they're going to own it politically for good or ill in the future.

But they had to have the Supreme Court confirm that it was constitutional, contrary to what almost every Republican running for the General Assembly had said, and a fair number of states attorneys claimed that it was automatically unconstitutional, and it turned out the Supreme Court didn't agree.

So the Governor and General Assembly Democrats needed this victory.

We will see if the crime rates go up or down, and there'll be blame to go around.

We've been having this argument about law and order for 20 or 30 or even 40 years now at the national level, and in Illinois, so it'll be a Democratic legislation policy that they will of course have to defend in the future.

Undoubtedly, there'll be a tax on it from a law and order perspective that the Republicans will mount.

- Okay, Dave, your thoughts.

- Well, I mean for Pritzker, we harken back to the gubernatorial election last year.

His re-election.

Republicans skewered him for supporting this, and Democrats were supporting this, and he prevailed in that election quite easily over Republican Darren Bailey.

So really, I mean, he came into a second term, I think with a voter mandate in support of this, and I think one of the things to also take away from the court's decision, putting to rest the controversy around this issue, is that there were two down ballot state Supreme Court races last year that, had both of those swung the other way, and the court would've fallen into Republican hands, we might very well have seen a very different outcome in the Safety Act Decision that came out this week.

So that's something to think about.

Elizabeth Rochford and Mary Kay O'Brien are the two new justices who won those seats up in Chicago suburbs.

And again, they defeated Republicans who would've gained a majority in the court had the GOP won those races.

So proof once again that elections have consequences.

- Absolutely.

Wanna move on, but we're gonna still talk about Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

As you know, Dave, he wants a correction from the US Census Bureau regarding the state's population numbers.

Give us a sense of why this is so important in terms of funding, and also the state's image.

- Well, I mean, he's already more or less gotten the correction he's after.

I mean, this was, the initial numbers that came out showed that Illinois had lost 18,000 residents since the 2010 census, and that cost Illinois a Congressional seat.

But then the numbers were revised upward by about two percent, or roughly 250,000 residents, and what Pritzker's trying to do now is just basically ensure that all of the money that Illinois gets from Washington for things like Medicare, for affordable housing, for homeland security, initiatives where funding is doled out on a population basis, that Illinois is getting what it's due.

And so that's really behind what this push is all about.

The fact that the Census Bureau already has said that it was wrong in its initial assessment, that the state had been a net loser in population the previous decade, it kind of quells the narrative that critics of Pritzger, and critics of the Democrats, had been making that Illinois was, Illinoians were just fleeing the state in droves, because of the policies here that had been put into place by Democrats.

So this is really just all about trying to ensure that more money from Washington flows into Springfield by the Governor.

- Very important issue, and I'm sure one that we'll be talking about again.

John, I wanna move to you about another one that is making news this week.

The man being called the architect of the state's climate policy is becoming the chair of the Illinois Commerce Commission, which oversees utilities.

Tell us about this, and the important decisions ahead.

One of those decisions involves request for utility rate hikes, a subject of a recent email from AARP Illinois, urging its members to speak out about these potential increases.

- Well, this means that those who are concerned about longterm climate change, or extremes in weather, which we all know something about up close and personal, will have a friend and a strong advocate in this important position.

Most people don't really recognize Illinois Commerce Commission, but it's terribly important, particularly in terms of the electric bridge, and rates for utilities, and the drive for more environmentally friendly sources of energy, such as solar and wind, and even now, nuclear energy coming back again will continue, and carbon-based sources, particularly coal, will decline.

There is, of course, the question of the rate increases.

There's one for this end of the state for Ameren Illinois, and there's one for Commonwealth Edison in Chicago.

That's where the customers, the consumers, get involved, and there's always a tug of war, and this will be terribly important to see how they balance those two issues, and those two competing kinds of interest in whether the rates go up or down, or what the grid is served by whatever source of energy.

So it's obscure, but it's terribly important.

- Absolutely.

Another climate issue I want to talk about this week, Dave, a Chicago Sun Times editorial says Illinois should allocate more money for electric vehicle rebates.

Legislators actually cut the budget for the program despite enormous demand.

Tell us more about this.

- Well, I mean we're, if you're out on the highways, you're starting to see more and more of these electric vehicles popping up, but still not very many.

I mean, the governor has stated that by 2030, he would like to see one million electric vehicles on the state's roads.

And as I mentioned, there's a long way to go.

According to the Department of Energy, last June, Illinois had 36,000 electric vehicles registered, so you can see that there's just, enormous amounts of ground to make up there.

Now I mean there have been some successes toward that goal.

I mean, Pritzger has presided over two companies coming to Illinois to manufacture these types of vehicles.

Lion Electric in Joliet is one example, where they manufacture electric buses.

They came in recently.

And then the other, of course, downstate, Rivian moved into the shuttered Mitsubishi plant in Normal.

And they're producing electric vehicles there as well.

But Pritzger wants more.

And for people paying attention to his schedule, I mean, he's spent a fair amount of time here, a week or so, over in the United Kingdom, and part of the purpose behind this trade trip is to try to drum up support among manufacturers of components to electric vehicles based in England to consider Illinois for expansion.

So he's rolling out the red carpet to some of these companies abroad in hopes that they might also follow Lion Electric and Rivian, and come to Illinois.

As you mentioned in the lead in to this question here, I mean, the state had a program, it still does have a program, where you can get rebates of up to $4000 if you purchase electric vehicles, but demand far exceeded what the amount of money set aside was in that program.

And so there are people calling for the legislature to boost funding for this program to help spur demand for electric vehicles in the state, because as I mentioned just a moment ago, 36,000 vehicles is not really much of a dent toward that one million goal of the governor.

So I mean, there's a lot of work yet to do.

Pritzger's trying to make this a priority in his second term.

- All right, we'll see what happens.

John, we just have a couple of minutes left, but I wanna ask you about a very important topic.

The state ended the year with a surplus.

Tell us what Illinois can do with this money, and who gets to decide?

- Well, the governor and the General Assembly will decide, and this is good news for them.

They're not short, they're long, and have some flexibility.

So it's good news.

And it's particularly good for the governor, because he's made fiscal discipline, financial management, balancing the budget, really kind for his signature on the turnaround that he would contend that he's brought to the state, and this is something crucial, that they will have the ability to address unexpected kinds of things, like the undocumented people that were getting healthcare kind of popped up at the end of the last term, and those things do come along, so they can address anything like that.

They can pay into the rainy day fund, which they've now been doing at an unusual rate, for Illinois.

They can put more into the pension fund, so it gives them some pleasant possibilities there.

And they can go back to other programs that they refused to support, and add to those, or consider them.

But I think the governor's office of management and budget have been very careful about how they spend any new money that's found, and I expect that will continue to be their hallmark.

- Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see, isn't it, John?

Because you referenced one expense that really tied up the legislative session, and delayed the final passage of the budget, and that's that program on healthcare for some undocumented immigrants.

Just enormous costs that we're talking about that that program incurs, and will probably, as long as it exists, be an issue in terms of how to balance the budget.

- Well, I think they originally designated 220 million, if I remember correctly.

And then it started getting out of hand.

They kept adding to and more eligibility going down in age groups, and there were projections, particularly by the Republicans and others that it would go to 1.1 billion, and that would have really shot a hole in the 23 budget.

The governor and the General Assembly did pass some rules that gave him the power to put some caps on the age groups, for example, all of that, pushing it downward went back up to 62, I believe it is, and the number of people that can participate has been capped, and so they think they've got that under control, but we'll see.

- Yeah, we'll see.

We'll see.

To be determined.

John Jackson, Dave McKinney.

Thank you both for being with us on Capitol View.

- Glad to join you.

- Yup.

- That is our report for this week.

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

Thank you for supporting public media.

We can only do it with your help.

Have a great week.

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