(light music) (camera shutter beeps) (light music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to "CapitolView," I'm Jak Tichenor sitting in for Fred Martino.

Our guests this week are John O'Connor of the Associated Press, and Brenden Moore, State Government reporter for Lee Enterprises.

Good to see you both, gentlemen.

- Thanks, Jak, likewise.

- Thanks, Jak.

- It's not unusual, we've all been covering veto sessions for years, but the first week of veto session was probably more about what didn't happen than what actually did, and sometimes there's a lot of hype that goes into veto sessions.

What were some of the most significant developments last week as we look ahead to next week when lawmakers actually come back to the Capitol?

- Well, as you say, Jak, it's the first time that lawmakers have been back in Springfield since May.

That's not always the case, there are many times that we go into the summer, we have a special session, or we convene before this time of year.

And there were only...

This is called the veto session because it's traditionally reserved for handling rejected or amended legislation from the Governor.

But there are very few, I think there are only six vetoes this year of varying sorts, and so the first few days are, "Hi, how was your summer?"

And kind of sizing things up and counting noses.

Then the second week is when they, you know, get down to brass tacks, I guess.

It's also, you know...

There's no prohibition on doing other things during the veto session, including new legislation and one thing I guess that did happen this week was the House approved a measure by the Speaker of the House to allow legislative staff members, people who support the legislature from custodians to the people who analyze and write bills and tell members where they need to be at various times to unionize.

And the Speaker, Chris Welch, the Democrat from Hillside, is very pro-labor and his staff had been talking about organizing, and initially, from what I read, he was not engaged with them, but he then decided to introduce legislation, legislation to allow staff to unionize, he believes is necessary because the Labor Relations Act, the state law that governs these things, says that a quote unquote "public employee" is exempt.

And so they're taking this measure to cover that base.

But Republicans complained.

The Republicans, of course, are in a super minority, they have very few, they have 40 members of the House in a 118 member House, and they were voted down, but they argued that there's not an appetite among the other three caucuses, the two Senate caucuses and the Republican caucus in the House for this, and that maybe it's just a matter of the House Democrats with Welch in charge.

So the legislation did get approved by the House, it's moved to the Senate, Senate President Don Harmon of Oak Forest, or Oak Park, I'm sorry, is taking over the legislation, and we'll see, there's been very little talk, his spokesman says, "We look forward to the review of that."

- It's interesting because sometimes there are things that the rest of us have to do, but the legislature doesn't have to play by the same rules in some respects.

I remember years ago when, I think it was the outdoor smoking ban or the indoor smoking ban, there were still senators down on the floor smoking away in the middle of session when the rest of folks couldn't do it.

Brenden?

- Yeah, certainly.

I think that this is an instance where it's clearly in the law carved out where legislative staff have not been able to unionize.

That's not by accident, obviously.

It's kind of a unique situation because, you know, it's the legislative branch of government, historically when we've seen public sector unions, they've been dealing with executive branch functions.

And so obviously in order to facilitate a legislative staff union, they have to pass a bill and sign it into law that would basically set up the infrastructure, because the infrastructure hasn't been in place.

And I think an important issue here too is that we had an amendment that passed last year that many have dubbed the Workers' Rights Amendment that basically gives Illinois residents the fundamental right to unionize.

And so the legislative staff have kind of been under that banner of saying, "We have the right to do this, we should be able to do this."

And so in order to facilitate that, they need to pass something that would basically allow for that to happen.

Because right now there is kind of that tug between what's now in the constitution and what the law says.

So as John said, pass the House this is a big initiative of the House Speaker, and we're gonna have to see if it goes anywhere in the Senate.

There isn't as large of a push in the Senate among the staff to unionize, so I don't know that it's gonna be a high priority on that side of the capitol.

That can happen sometimes, it's not always Republicans and Democrats, sometimes it's House versus Senate.

So I guess we'll have to see if that's the case here.

- There was some action, or I suppose you would say a postponement, backers of a bill that would grant downstate utilities to write a first refusal to build billions of new dollars in infrastructure and transmission lines in their service areas, the backers of that pulled back, literally, last week about midweek to override Governor Pritzker's veto with that bill.

What happened?

- Yeah, so basically what's happening here is Illinois has this goal of getting to a hundred percent clean energy by 2050.

In order to do that, they have to build out a lot of new transmission in order to connect all those wind and solar projects to the grid.

Currently, the grid isn't really set up for that.

So we're gonna have a lot of projects coming down the pipeline in the next few years.

And the question is, who is gonna be the entity that gets to build those transmission lines?

Basically this bill would say that Ameren, which is the utility that serves most of downstate Illinois, would basically get first dibs on that.

So instead of going to a competitive bid process where other companies could try to get that business, it would just go to Ameren before anybody else.

The Governor vetoed it, as you mentioned, because he said this would stifle competition, ultimately lead to rate hikes for customers in Ameren service area, but obviously the utilities and the labor unions that backed this measure say that it's a little bit more complicated than that, that these are regulated monopolies and that no matter who gets the transmission line contract gets the bill that is gonna have a monopoly on that and that it wouldn't actually save rate payers that much.

So they say that we're not gonna try to override the Governor's veto, they did not have enough votes.

It only only passed with 63 votes in the House in May, you need 71 to override a veto.

So even as powerful as organized labor can be in the capitol, they didn't have the votes.

So the sponsor, State Representative Larry Walsh, Democrat from Elwood said, "We're not gonna try to override, we're gonna bring this back in the spring, we're gonna try to educate legislators about this issue and hopefully have a new bill."

Worth noting, though, the new piece of legislation, at least according to Representative Walsh, will be for the entire state, won't just be for Ameren.

This bill was just gonna be for Ameren.

And obviously when you say the entire state, that also includes Commonwealth Edison, which is the utility in the Northern Illinois and the Chicago region, which has kinda been on the outs in the State House for the past couple of years given the controversy involving former House Speaker, Michael Madigan, obviously ComEd was accused of putting Madigan allies on his staff and paying them what the federal government says was ultimately bribes to gain favorable legislation in the capitol.

Obviously some lobbyists and executives went on trial this past spring, were found guilty, the former House speaker goes on trial next spring.

So it'll be interesting to see that dynamic play out to see if this bill can come back, if ComEd will be included, and what might happen, given what is hanging over, given the outstanding controversy that will probably be playing out next spring in a courtroom in Chicago.

- Yeah, you make a good point because conceivably you could be in jury selection at the time that this bill is trying to start working its way through the committee process and you know what the headlines are gonna be because you guys are gonna be writing them, because there's a lot to take into consideration there.

In the meantime though, who does...

It fell short of the 71 votes you need in the House to get an override, who do the backers of this bill have to convince to get it over the finish line?

Now of course in the spring, if everybody's amenable to it, you only need 60.

- Right, so that's gonna be, well, even if you get to 60 though, you still need the Governor to sign it.

- Right.

- And that appears to be a heavy lift.

But in order to get this passed with more support, when it passed originally, it passed with all Republicans and a lot of moderate Democrats.

The folks that were on the sidelines here, or voted no, were more progressive lawmakers, liberal Democrats, those that are more aligned with the environmental groups that oppose this legislation.

So they're gonna be the ones that would need some convincing.

Although I should say as well, I've heard rumblings that Americans For Prosperity, which is a political action committee, a conservative political action committee, has also been starting to lobby lawmakers against this from the competition perspective of, you know, these utilities shouldn't be granted a monopoly, they should be able to be competitive and compete for these projects.

So it'll be interesting to see if you see some Republicans fall off on this, given some of that lobbying effort.

Again, it's gonna be a tough grind for advocates of this measure, but again, organized labor usually gets what it wants under the Capitol dome in Springfield.

So if they really start to twist some arms, anything is possible.

- John, I'm curious, there was another issue that going into veto session, as you said, quite rightly, there were not that many vetoes, Governor Pritzker has not had a long history of actually vetoing a lot of legislation, but one of the things that we were watching in the run up to veto session was Senate Bill 76 that passed with bipartisan majorities that would end a nearly 40 year moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants in the state.

And the wrinkle to this is what we're actually talking about, or what the bill sponsors are talking about, are the small modular reactors that have been showing some promise in Europe and they're trying to get those introduced in the United States.

What's going on below the sight lines in terms of trying to override that veto or the Senate sponsor, Sue Rezin, also has some thoughts about narrowing the focus of that bill, if I'm correct on that.

- Sue Rezin, she's a Republican senator from Morris, and she sponsored this measure.

As you say, these are small modular reactors that can go right on site of a manufacturing facility, for example.

Or as we phase out coal plants, this is very important to Southern Illinois, especially, the Clean Energy Act signed in 2021 requires the phasing out of coal-fired plants by 2045.

And these modular reactors could go at the site of these shuttered coal plants and according to Rezin, you've got a trained workforce there, you've got transmission lines, et cetera, et cetera.

The idea is we can do nuclear energy safely, and these are small units as opposed to the big, you know, cooling towers that you see if you're driving on Interstate 39, you know, past Byron or south of Bloomington, when you go past Clinton, you know, there's several in the Chicago area.

So she says that the environmentalists who oppose it say we've got solar, we've got wind power, we'll have what we need to meet our carbon-free goal by 2045.

Rezin points out that the Clean Energy Act itself includes $800 million to keep two existing nuclear plants viable.

So she says that's proof that nuclear has to be part of the answer.

The Governor vetoed it after he was told by the majority leader in the House, the Democratic Majority leader, that they were concerned that because we haven't had nuclear reactors for 40 years, the rules and regs have not been updated.

And of course there's always been from time immemorial the question of nuclear waste.

Rezin says, well, we're storing nuclear waste, the spent fuel rods, at the existing plants safely on site, the small reactors will have a lot less waste, and that waste can be stored safely too.

Democrats and environmentalists fearing the scary parts of nuclear power, and Rezin, the Republican, saying, "No, it's gotta be part of the answer."

- And it's seen as part of a jobs issue for a lot of folks, particularly, as you were saying earlier, John, a lot of the coal plants in Southern and Central Illinois are on their way out, and these are seen as one way of hooking right up to the grid.

And moving on from there, there is some potentially good news on the job front, I was reading in "Crain's Chicago Business," they're reporting that the new Stellantis battery plant will give Governor Pritzker more momentum to land more of the EV jobs and deals in the state of Illinois.

Brenden, you've been writing on some of these issues with the electric vehicle economy as we move further into that, what's the potential for the state?

- The potential's huge.

Governor Pritzker has said on many occasions that he wants Illinois to be the Silicon Valley of electric vehicles.

It was kind of a little bit of a slow start, almost two years ago now, the Governor signed the Re-Imagining Electric Vehicles Act, which was kind of a specialized version of the state's existing edge tax credits, which are used to attract businesses.

So these were meant to attract EV industry businesses, whether it is automakers or parts manufacturers, battery makers, et cetera.

And obviously the state already started with Rivian, in Normal, they have their North American manufacturing headquarters in Normal, producing the trucks.

But since it had kinda been slow going, a lot of other states were landing some of these battery plants and some of these other EV industry type businesses.

But in the past few months, we've started to see the fruits of the state's labor with regard to some of these tax incentives kinda being put to work.

A few months ago, Goshen, a Chinese company, announced they're building a battery plant in Manteno, and as you mentioned, Jak, just last week, Solantis, as part of the deal that ended the UAW strike, appears like they're gonna reopen the plant in Belvedere to possibly produce batteries and perhaps vehicles.

And then even last week, the Governor was also in Libertyville at EVBox, another company that builds batteries, and they announced that they're gonna be manufacturing a battery at their facility in Libertyville.

So there's been a string of really good news in the EV industry in Illinois, and many view this as kinda just the start, this is the future.

I think a lot of people are gonna be driving EVs in the coming years.

The state and federal government have incentivized it as a means of trying to decarbonize the transportation industry.

And obviously it's jobs, you know, and I think that it is perhaps, what we've seen in the past few weeks kind of goes against what the conventional wisdom is about Illinois, which is that it's a place that's not friendly for business.

And to be clear, obviously the state still has relatively high taxes, you know, has strong labor unions and maybe those are things that some businesses may not necessarily like, however, the state also has a great location, middle of the country, great transportation network, and a trained workforce, which the Governor has really leaned into that aspect of it.

So I think we're seeing the state really lean into its strengths and starting to attract some of these companies of the future and it's just the beginning.

Again, this was only a couple years ago that these incentives were signed into law, so we'll see in the next few years how many companies they can get large and small, kinda using that as kind of an attraction.

And in addition to that, when you have some of these bigger companies come in, there's probably gonna be others that want to come in to follow them, to be part of that supply chain.

- John, one of the things that's interesting too, the state is looking for some federal help to launch a major program, the National Semiconductor Technology Center, the Governor is really aggressive in that front.

There's a new private partnership that's working with private industry and public universities like U of I Urbana-Champaign, to try to get that $11 billion center in Illinois, which would really more than jumpstart the state's advantage in the semiconductor industry.

- There's no doubt that Illinois has always kinda been in the shadow of the tech industry.

The University of Illinois is right there at the top of the heap in terms of technology, but it's always kinda taken a backseat to Silicon Valley and some of these other places.

Pritzker, to his credit, he recognizes these things and particularly like with the electric vehicle industry, Illinois often is a follower, and it seems as if in these areas, the Pritzker Administration, other elected leaders are taking the reins here and recognizing some of Illinois' strengths and trying to capitalize on them.

- Got about a minute left.

One question I wanted to ask about, we were still waiting to see what the fate was going to be for the Invest in Kids program, that's a tax credit program for families who want to send their kids to private or parochial schools.

Anything on the horizon for next week in terms of that?

- The pressure that Republicans have put on this is paying off.

The Governor seems to have changed his mind, last week he was saying, "Look, public schools need money, I'm a public school backer."

And this is a program that allows parochial or private school parents to deduct $75 from their taxes, or contributors to the program, people who contribute to the Investing in Kids program, and Republicans say this is not a lot of money.

The Governor brags about increasing education spending by $2 billion, this program, I believe is $22 million.

So it seems like things might be turning around for the program.

It sunsets at the end of the year, that's the reason for the action around it.

- We are going to see what happens next week on that.

Thanks very much to our guests, John O'Connor of the Associated Press in Springfield and Brenden Moore of Lee Enterprises.

Thanks so much.

I'm Jak Tichenor, thank you for joining us.

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