(upbeat music) (lens clicking) (upbeat music) (dramatic music) - Thanks for joining us on "Capitol View."

I'm Fred Martino.

From the continuing influx of migrants in Chicago to the official start of the 2024 election season, it has been an extremely busy week in Illinois politics.

Covering the big stories for us, Dan Patrella of the "Chicago Tribune" and Alex Degman from WBEZ.

Gentlemen, thanks for being with us today.

Dan, I wanna start with you.

"Capitol Fax" reported that city records show another increase in the number of buses with migrants arriving in Chicago.

25 buses last week alone.

You reported on records that show Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker's administration sought migrant tent camp proposals before Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson took office.

Tell us about that.

- Yeah, this was something we sort of came across in just routine Freedom of Information requests and trying to figure out how the city and state have been discussing and figuring out how to address the migrant crisis.

And one thing that we discovered after the mayor had come out with his tent camp proposal, and the governor a little bit later had kind of expressed some public skepticism of the idea that at least formally the process got started with the state about three days before Brandon Johnson was sworn in, putting out a request for proposals for shelter for migrants.

You know, this is about nine months into the situation of migrants arriving from Texas and Chicago, and they asked for proposals for both indoor shelter and what they called outdoor soft-sided shelter, which I think in common terminology would be tents.

So, you know, it's interesting that the Pritzker administration really initially sought to portray this as just, you know, the city's idea and they were skeptical and they wanted to really pursue bricks and mortar kind of shelters when really all along they were involved in conversations about how to do this and actually went out and got the contract that made it possible.

- And not everyone is happy about this.

I mean, we tape this show on Wednesdays, and I happened to see some news coverage from Chicago with some protests about having these temporary facilities.

Last week we talked about your reporting, Dan, on the additional $160 million that the state is using from the state Human Services budget for migrant care.

What reaction are you hearing about that decision?

And is there a sense that additional funding is going to be an issue in next year's session?

- Yes, absolutely.

I think, you know, that was one thing that the governor was fairly upfront about is that they're going to hopefully want to backfill this money that they're diverting from other programs within the Department of Human Services budget when lawmakers return in the spring.

It's interesting that that topic was taken off the table during the fall veto session just here earlier this month.

And then right after the veto session ended, literally a week later, the governor came out with this announcement that the state was gonna be spending more money.

Another interesting thing that just came to light, at least for me yesterday, was a breakdown of the money that the state is spending from the governor's office shows that they're actually counting on about $40 million of that money to come in a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that hasn't been approved yet.

So they might actually need to shift a little bit more money around if that FEMA grant doesn't come through.

You know, I think there's some relief on the part of the city of Chicago that the state is stepping in and providing some more money.

And I think there's, you know, questions about whether it's going to be enough to keep this response going, especially if, you know, as you said, the buses have started to tick up again.

There's been sort of an ebb and flow of those arrivals.

So it's really unclear how much longer this situation is going to go on, but I don't think anyone is expecting it to end anytime soon.

- Yeah, I mean, I imagine we're gonna be covering this for at least the next year.

And Alex, of course, we've talked about this before.

There is real concern about how the migrant crisis will be covered nationally during next year's Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Speaking of big Chicago events, Alex, you attended a Democracy Forum featuring President Obama earlier this month.

Tell us about that event and thoughts on how Democrats should use President Obama to potentially galvanize voters.

- Sure.

Well, the Democracy Forum, it's an annual event.

It started off as the Obama Foundation Summit a few years ago in 2017, and this year it was a little bit of a bigger deal.

It was the 10-year anniversary of President Obama being elected.

A bunch of staffers came back to Chicago and used it as sort of a 10-year anniversary party.

The whole event this year was centered around ensuring an equitable world for everyone going forward, especially with concerns coming up like the rise of AI, and he talked about the government's role in all of this too.

But in talking about this equitable world, he toed a pretty fine line between what you might hear a lot of progressives today say about capitalism, that it's bad, it's evil, it's not good for the world, and the other idea on the other side of the spectrum that capitalism is great, the best system ever devised.

And Obama's idea is basically that capitalism has helped foster wealth and innovation that wouldn't have otherwise been possible, and you can't just eliminate poverty only by redistributing wealth.

But the bottom line here is he says there's room for both.

People and companies are perfectly capable of operating profitably while they consider the impact that they have on other people and the environment.

And he made the point that this attitude needs to go just beyond the United States.

It's gotta be a global effort.

Now in terms of getting younger people to galvanize around President Obama, older politicians are facing a reckoning this coming election cycle and in the future.

2028's probably gonna be the first election where millennials and Gen Z are gonna comprise a majority of potential voters.

And whether they actually vote remains to be seen, but President Obama is still able to harness some of that energy that he had in 2008 and still kind of toe this fine line between the past of the Democratic Party and, you know, what it was and what it's built on and how it needs to be brought into the future.

- So Alex, tied into this, how can Democrats engage in a general way with young people?

And what do you make of President Obama's former advisor David Axelrod saying that President Biden should consider stepping aside in 2024?

- Well, David Axelrod, he's known as a bit of a lightning rod who's not afraid to criticize his party.

And he does.

He does that pretty frequently.

And a lot of Biden advisors when they heard this, they kind of rolled their eyes a little bit because David Axelrod, he by and large supports Democratic Party policies and he largely supports the President.

And when it comes to the coming elections, Biden's age, and I think part of the reason that a lot of people are asking Biden to step aside is because I think President Biden is, if I'm remembering right, is gonna be 86 by the end of a potential second term.

And age is certainly a factor, but it's not the factor.

In order for Democrats to engage with younger people, younger people are more concerned that Democrats are actually listening to them, are actually hearing their ideas.

So they're trying to connect with young people in pretty interesting ways.

And we've seen this before.

This is not the first time that Democrats have turned to social media, but it looks like, at least in the past few months, President Biden's team has really gone full force into just hiring a lot of influencers, basically, a lot of social media influencers, and they're trying to get the message of Democrats to young people where they are, TikTok, Instagram reels, things like that.

And I don't know, I mean, a really good example of this, I don't know if you saw this, but there was I think one of the TikTokers who asks people what they do for a living while they're driving nice cars went to the Detroit Auto Show and interviewed President Obama for 30 seconds.

You know, it's not a really big policy point at that point, but it's just the idea of getting President Biden to be this kind of, I guess, hip person, I guess, if you wanna put it that way.

But they've got a long way to go because there is another presidential candidate who has really, really good ties into social media, and that's Donald Trump.

He absolutely blows Joe Biden away when it comes to social media presence.

So the Democrats have their work cut out for 'em.

- I'm glad you mentioned the effort though, because, as you're I'm sure well aware, President Biden won big among young people and it was key to his victory in 2020.

But recent polls, while many would argue it's much too early to be talking about polls, show that he has a lot of work to do in terms of getting that youth vote again.

And that's why I'm purposefully not bringing up numbers from the polls 'cause I think it is early to look at those, but knowing that they're working with influencers tells you they're probably looking at polls, right, Alex?

- Exactly, and they know, as you mentioned, young people were very instrumental in getting Joe Biden elected in 2020.

And now a lot of them are saying, "Okay, there you are.

"What are you doing for me?

What are you doing for us?"

And they wanna see some progress.

- And I think especially the Supreme Court decision striking down President Biden's student loan forgiveness program really, really hurts him among younger voters 'cause that was something that people who, younger people who voted for him were very excited about and something that he promised to do and tried to do and was thwarted by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

- Yeah, yeah, but some might argue that's another reason in his favor in terms of who makes nominations to the Supreme Court.

So this is, as elections always are, very complex, and it's interesting to talk about.

Dan, I wanna move on now to get some more information on the influx of migrants in Chicago.

You reported on Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson's efforts to help migrants leave shelters within 60 days.

CBS in Chicago reported that the 60-day limit can be a problem.

For instance, 60 days may not be enough time to get a work permit.

Tell us about Mayor Johnson's efforts and where you think this all goes from here.

- Yeah, you know, it's very interesting because it sort of was coordinated with some announcements from the state at the same time where on the one hand the state is stepping in with that additional money we talked about earlier.

A big chunk of that is devoted to trying to speed up the work permit application process to help people get jobs so they can support themselves.

But at the same time, the state is also cutting in half the amount of time that it's going to offer rental assistance to folks who are moving out of the migrant shelters and no longer offering rental assistance to the people who are arriving in Chicago now from Texas.

So it's really, you know, sort of a test of the rhetoric versus the reality of how long the welcome could be for, for folks who are arriving from these really, really desperate situations.

Like you said, there are questions about how long, how realistic I should say, the 60-day limit is because it's hard to find an apartment if you don't have a job and it's hard to get the work authorization within 60 days.

So it's really going to be a test of how well this coordinated effort can work and get off the ground.

You know, they've said if people are actively in the process of finding a place to live or, you know, have applied for work authorization and not receive it, there's gonna be some wiggle room in that 60 days.

But it's going to be interesting to see once the policy fully kicks in here in I believe February is when it would fully take effect.

They're sort of phasing it in for folks depending on when they arrived.

If that ends up with migrants back out on the street either in a homelessness situation or having to find shelter that's provided through some other means.

- And as is always the case, Dan, and I'm sure that it will be the case with this issue, it falls perhaps most largely on journalism to get answers about the success of a 60-day limit.

I appreciate your reporting on this, and I hope that in the future we'll learn more to find out what percentage of folks who are coming are able to get that work permit and are able to be self-sufficient, showing the success or failure of these efforts.

It will be very interesting to see.

And as we always say with this issue, there's no question that help is needed, but there are many questions by many different folks about how the care is paid for and how it's administered, how it works.

So we'll be continuing to watch it.

I have no doubt, Alex, that this will be one of the issues in the 2024 election.

Candidate filing started this week, Alex, and another milestone for this race, the big, we call it kind of an official start.

What are we learning from this first candidate filing?

- Well, the atmosphere was still pretty jovial, but I thought it was pretty funny the night before candidate filing, Sunday night, I drove by and Congressman Danny Davis, the Democrat from the Chicago area, was first in line because apparently he called dibs.

(laughs) If you're unfamiliar with what that is, that's the Chicago term for when you shovel out a parking spot in front of your apartment and then you put a chair there.

Well, Danny Davis had put a couple of chairs covered with a blanket, so he was first in line this year.

It's a chance for a lot of folks running to shake hands and say hello face-to-face and just kind of say hello not in a debate cycle.

And not everyone files on the same day.

People running have a week from Monday, so they have until the 4th to get their nominating petitions in.

And I think one of the more interesting congressional races that we're gonna be watching this year is in Southern Illinois' 12th District.

That's where the Republican nominees try to battle basically for the most conservative voters in the state.

Darren Bailey, who ran for governor as a Republican against J.B. Pritzker this last time around, is going up against Mike Bost.

And the weeks leading up to filing day have already been pretty intense.

Fundraising mailers are coming out from the Bailey camp a lot.

And I think we're learning so far that this race is gonna be one to watch because he is attacking Bost's conservative credentials.

And he told us on filing day that Mike Bost, that Mike Bost is not conservative enough for Southern Illinois.

You might remember though, he was reelected with 75% of the vote last year, and the district's always gonna be Republican.

And Bost, he's making the familiar case against Darren Bailey that he doesn't have the experience to get things done in Washington.

He hasn't been in politics for all that long.

He served a term as state representative, state senator, and then ran for governor.

And there's not a whole lot of, like, background knowledge, institutional knowledge, about how to get things done in Washington.

But from Darren Bailey's perspective, that's not a bad thing.

He's making the case that Bost knows too much about how all that works and how Washington works, and that makes him part of the swamp.

So this is gonna be... And we're still in this race waiting to see who, if anybody, President Trump is going to endorse in the primary.

So that's probably going to shake things up a little bit because, as you remember, President Trump endorsed both of them in their respective races in 2022.

As for other congressional races, we could have some tighter races in the 17th District in Western Illinois and the 14th District in Northern Illinois that covers part of the Chicago area, DeKalb and places like that, held by Democrats right now.

But they're probably still leaning Democrat, they'll probably stay Democrat, but that's gonna be a slimmer margin than most of the other congressional races which are gonna be pretty comfortably Democratic.

As for state races, we've got all 118 House seats up for election.

So if you are in Illinois, there's something for you to vote for locally, at least that one thing.

And then we also have 20 state Senate seats that are up for election.

Now, Senate terms are a little weird, and I'm not gonna try to explain how that all works, but just what you should know is that the people running this year were elected to two-year terms in 2022 and they're running for four-year terms next year.

- Hmm, okay.

Yeah, it's like you need some kind of a scorecard to keep up with all this- - You got flow charts.

- The election code is not kind to the state Senate, let's just put it that way.

- (chuckles) Okay.

Alex, taxes are always an issue in elections.

That's one thing we don't need a score.

We can count on that.

The "Chicago Sun-Times" had an interesting article this week highlighting more transparency in Cook County taxes.

Tell us more about this.

I thought this was really interesting.

- Yeah, I've been waiting for something like this.

I mean, things kind of like this exist, but not exactly in a way that's this user-friendly, I would say, at least in my opinion.

So Cook County treasurer Maria Pappas launched an online program called Where Your Money Goes.

And it's probably easier to just Google this.

Just go to Google and search "Cook County "Where Your Money Goes," and it lets you enter in your Cook County address.

And if you have a parcel number that works too.

And it breaks down exactly what you paid.

The most recent taxable year is 2022 that's on the website.

It breaks down exactly what your bill was and exactly where all that money went.

And, you know, obviously I wanted to try it, so I entered in my dad's address in Northbrook, that's in northern Cook County.

And sure enough, I'm not gonna tell you what he pays, but now I know exactly how much he pays Cook County, the village of Northbrook, School District 27, the Northwest Mosquito Abatement District, you know, all these various taxing bodies that yes, you pay money to and, you know, I never really knew where it went before.

And it also tells you how much this overall tax burden has increased or decreased over the last year.

And part of the reason that this was put into the fore is because there are a lot of people in Cook County that are, you know, notably angry that their taxes went up this year.

I think I saw something in that "Sun-Times" story that you mentioned that roughly maybe 70 or so, between 70 and 75% of taxing bodies in Cook County raised property taxes this year.

So this is Cook County's effort to show people exactly what their money is going for, even if they don't agree with it and they contest it, they can at least see where it's going.

- Yeah, and you know, I have to ask you about this.

Not commenting on this particular idea in Cook County where folks can enter their address and look at their property taxes how much they paid and where the money went, but in a general sense, Alex, I want to hear your thoughts on this, the notion of transparency and is this, you know, something that we're gonna possibly be seeing more of when you consider the inflation and the fact that inflation seems to be the main driver in hurting President Biden, hurting maybe other Democrats in terms of the argument for election or reelection in 2024.

Will transparency be something we'll be seeing as more of a trend to explain to people, "Here's how your tax money is being used"?

- Well, we can certainly hope for that.

I always am of the mind that more transparency is better than less transparency.

But it depends on, I guess it really depends on who the politician is, how long they've been in office, what they're running for, and whether they want to be transparent.

Government has run a certain way for a long time and there are a lot of people that think government can continue to run a certain way for a long time and everything's fine.

So those are the people that might be a little bit more hesitant to put transparency items out like this.

But I think in a general sense, you're probably gonna see more transparency efforts on the local level like this, just kind of kitchen table issues, your property taxes are going here, your property taxes are going there.

Because when you are more transparent on a local level, it's a lot easier to, like, bring that home to people.

You know what I mean?

So if you're talking about Cook County property taxes and, like, setting up a transparency tool, that's a lot easier than, say, a Congressperson who maybe you see in the district once every year or so explaining transparency about a trillion dollar omnibus bill at the federal level, or something like that.

So while I think it's a good idea, I just don't know if we're gonna see a lot of that coming up in the '24 election cycle, especially on the federal level.

It'd be nice though.

- It sure would be nice, and it's a reminder that transparency isn't just that the information is available but how it's available.

Having it available online like this, making it easy, some folks who advocate for transparency, they would argue that's real transparency where the information can easily be accessed and there isn't a, you know, Freedom of Information Act request or a lot of the things that we do in journalism that isn't really feasible for the average person.

So this is important stuff to highlight and talk about.

Thank you for telling us about that story because I wanted people to know about it.

- You actually make a really good point, Fred.

Fred, before we move on, you made a good point there.

You mentioned that we as journalists, we get information all the time by filing Freedom of Information Act requests.

And the Freedom of Information Act is available to everybody.

Citizens can use it, the public can use it, but it is an onerous process.

And I think one of the best pieces of advice I ever got in journalism was when I was just starting out and, you know, I was asking a reporter, "What do you do if, you know, somebody's pushing back "when you're asking for information?

"What do you do?"

And he said to me, you know, "A lot of times "they'll tell me to file a FOIA.

"And then I'll turn around and tell them, "'Well, I just did.'"

I just asked for public information.

Why do I need to file a form for it?

Why do I need to file an official form?

And granted, yes, there is a process that you go through with Freedom of Information and you have to follow it, but the idea is the same.

You're absolutely right.

Even though these tools are available to the public, it would be a lot better if we could just see it.

- Yeah, make it easy.

Make it easy for everybody.

Alright, just a couple of minutes left, Dan.

And finally, I wanted to get to this.

We learned this week that it appears a former Republican state senator and third party candidate for governor will represent himself in a corruption trial.

Tell us more about the developments involving Sam McCann.

- Yes, this is, you know, up here in Chicago, all eyes have been on the federal court where former alderman Ed Burke is currently on trial on corruption charges, but downstate in the Central District, U.S. District Court in Springfield, Sam McCann, a former state senator from the Springfield area whose district included part of Springfield, showed up to what was supposed to be the start of his trial on Monday with a motion to represent himself in court.

The judge was skeptical of this idea.

McCann basically said his court-appointed attorneys weren't doing a good job of representing him.

He didn't like the defense that they had come up with, and so he wants to do it himself because he truly cares about the outcome.

The judge went ahead and approved that motion, delayed the start of the trial 'til February.

So a little more time for him to prepare.

But it'll be interesting to see whether he leaves it in God's hands, as he told reporters outside the courthouse on Monday, or whether he comes back later and decides to hire professional representation or asks the court to appoint another attorney.

- Yes, well, and as you pointed out, the judge did not advise this to be a good idea, as judges don't normally do, right?

They don't say, "Represent yourself," so.

- Yeah, serious charges.

He is facing charges that he misused $200,000 in campaign funds on personal expenses.

So not small potatoes kind of things he's dealing with here.

- Yeah, interesting stuff.

Always interesting in Illinois politics.

That is "Capitol View" for this week.

Thanks to my guests, Dan Patrella of the "Chicago Tribune," Alex Degman from WBEZ.

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

Have a great week.

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