(soft music) (dramatic music) - Thanks for joining us on "CapitolView."

Upfront this week, my conversation with Representative Patrick Windhorst, State Representative in Illinois House District 117.

We are discussing the recent legislative session, priorities for the upcoming year, and much more.

Representative Windhorst, thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

Appreciate the opportunity.

- Good to have you here.

Let us start with the legislative session.

Your thoughts on the biggest accomplishments this year.

- Well, we started the session with a historic first for our caucus and actually for the House.

The House Republicans elected Tony McCombie as our House Republican Leader.

She is the first female to head a caucus in the House.

So that was historic and she did an excellent job helping us navigate through the session.

There were a lot of issues that passed this year that I did not agree with, and, of course, took exception to on the floor.

And that was part of a lively debate, of course, that we had.

But as far as terming things as accomplishments, we were able to get some bills through, even being in the super minority, only having 40 of the 118 members.

For myself, I was able to pass legislation assisting disabled police officers and putting an age cap at when they are able to be recalled to service.

And we also passed a bill dealing with juvenile court records to make sure medical records in abuse and neglect cases are more easily brought into the court system and admissible in court cases.

So those are a couple things that I look back on for myself personally.

Now there are areas where I hope we can work together going forward.

Biometric Information Privacy, or BIPA, is an area that's been highlighted by, not only business groups, by the Supreme Court of our state is an area where there needs to be some changes.

There are currently representatives working on those changes and hopefully, that will come forward soon.

- Are there other important issues that you're working on for the next year?

- Well, as you know, I'm a former prosecutor.

And the implementation of the "SAFE-T Act," as it's known, has just started the full implementation, started in mid-September.

So we are seeing how that is progressing, and the issues that are occurring in our court system, and with our criminal justice system and the police as it relates to that new law.

So I will be looking at that, not only through the end of this year, but into the spring session as an area where there may be more changes made.

I'm, of course, not only a former prosecutor, but I'm the lead Republican on the Judiciary Criminal Committee, so that is a large area that I've been tasked with.

- Okay.

Well, the veto session, as you know, is coming up this fall.

What are the major issues there that you're looking at?

- Well, there was a bill that was passed in the spring session regarding small nuclear reactors.

That bill passed the House and the Senate with a bipartisan vote.

It was vetoed by the Governor.

He had some concerns about the bill that he expressed.

My hope is that we can come back in the veto session and have another bill, either reconsider that by trying to override the veto, or pass another bill that will be signed by the Governor to allow that moratorium to be lifted for small nuclear reactors.

We have energy issues that are near the top of the list of issues that we're considering as a state and this is one area where we can, again, potentially be a leader in the country.

And so I think we need to look at that.

I think we will also see the BIPA issue that I mentioned earlier.

I think that is likely to come up, if not in the veto session, earlier in the spring.

My hope is that there'll be an ethics reform package that's brought forward as well, particularly, given the recent federal criminal cases that have been held and decided in the next year that are gonna be held relating to former Speaker Madigan's tenure.

- I want to explore that with you.

Republicans have called for state ethics reforms.

I talked about this with your colleague, Representative Dr. Paul Jacobs, got his opinion on it.

And I want to get your opinion.

What kind of ethics reforms would you like to see?

- There are a few things.

Some of them are in law and some of them will be in House rules.

First with the law, we need to make sure our Legislative Inspector General is fully authorized to conduct investigations as he sees fit, primarily authorizing what we know is called the LIG, authorizing him to subpoena documents for investigations without getting approval from the legislative ethics commission, which is made up of legislators.

So he needs to have that authority.

We also need to pass legislation regarding the revolving door where legislators leave the general assembly and then become lobbyists at the next day.

The prior effort at ethics reform put in a small revolving door provision of six months, but there was a large loophole, which said, if you left before the end of the general assembly, that six month provision would not apply.

So you could literally resign the day before the general assembly ends and two days, a day or two later become a lobbyist.

So it's really not much of a revolving door provision.

And then there needs to be some legislation dealing with local lobbyists, basically meaning legislators can serve as lobbyists to local government.

Of course, that allows legislators to exert some influence given their position in Springfield.

I think legislators should be banned from being lobbyists, period.

We should not be acting as lobbyists at all at the state or local government.

As it relates to the rules, one of the things that's been highlighted in these criminal cases is the power that Speaker Madigan had.

Basically, everything ran through him.

He controlled what was voted on, what committees bills went to.

Basically, just had complete control over the House chamber.

We need to reform our rules to allow for other members to have authority, basically, divesting the power from the speaker.

And that will allow for better legislation to come forward and will also prevent a situation where in the future someone can exert that power again and use it correctly.

- Following up on this, briefly, in some states there have been discussions as well about waiting periods for administrative officials before they can become lobbyists.

Do you think any work should be done in that regard as well on rules?

- There are some stronger rules as it relates to the executive branch than as it relates to the legislative branch.

In fact, the revolving door for certain high level executive employees exists where they're not able able to move not only for lobbying, but for employment purposes.

But I believe looking at the full spectrum of positions that exist, both elected and appointed positions of authority, and making sure that there's protections to avoid people using their position for their own personal gain.

- That's good to know and good context for this discussion because it sounds like there may already be a model that could be put in place for legislators that it already may be exists for administration officials.

- Yes.

- Okay.

Higher education.

I want to move to that.

As you know, it received a major funding increase this year.

What are your thoughts about that and how the money is being spent?

- Well, we have one of the best higher education systems in the country in Illinois.

We have a strong community college system.

Our universities are among the top in the country, both public and private.

So we have a lot to boast for our public education system and our higher education system right here.

But the main thing with the spending the money that I think we are really excited about here locally is the increasing enrollment of SIU Carbondale and the fact that that enrollment has been going up and we had a large growth this semester, this fall.

So I think we do also have to look at how the money is being spent to make sure it's being spent in a way that's improving our educational system, our educational outcomes, in essence, that we are attracting the students to our universities, that we're providing affordable degrees so that way people can come to our universities and obtain a degree without becoming too much in debt.

And also that we are using, make the best use of our community college system.

I'm a community college graduate myself.

And, you know, it was very important to me to go to community college, help me then go into the university.

But we can not only use it for transfer students, but also for the trades, for certificates in those programs which will help our workforce.

- Anything else that is needed to help state universities and colleges continue to increase in enrollment?

You referenced the increase, for instance, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, which, for a point of disclosure, is the licensee of WSIU.

- I think competing at the cost level for students is very important and that will assist enrollment continuing to go up.

So, you know, not only us in the legislator, the universities themselves need to look at ways that they can make and keep college affordable to continue to attract students.

As it relates to community colleges, dual credit programs are important.

We want to make sure that we're utilizing them to the full capacity that we can, that make good use of them.

And again, back to the making sure we're using our community colleges as it relates to the trades and getting certificates that allow people to go right into the workforce is vital.

- Major need for that.

Certainly there are jobs shortages in many of the trades in Illinois and really all across the country.

So a very important thing that we can't lose sight of when we talk about education after high school.

It is not just a four year degree.

It may involve a variety of training opportunities, including the excellent things that are available at our community colleges.

Well, I understand, speaking of employment, that Republicans have been working on licensing reforms for certain professions, making it easier to get a job.

Tell me a about this.

- Well, we have been looking particularly at the medical profession, nursing, and other medical professionals to make sure that when they are qualified to work and ready to work, that their licenses are processed and obtained in a timely fashion.

That's been one of the more frequent calls my district office has obtained over the last few months is concerns that people who are applying for licensure are not getting it in a timely fashion.

So myself, Representative Paul Jacobs is a doctor, Representative Dave Severin, we've been taking an effort to work with the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation to make sure that they're able to process the licenses as quickly as they can so that way the people who are qualified for licensure are obtaining those licenses.

It's become clear we need better technology, better tracking system, and also more accountability at the department to make sure that they're complying with their responsibility to do it in a timely fashion.

So I would say we've been pressing the administration to make sure they're doing what they should be doing on the licensure fund.

- That was Representative Patrick Windhorst, the Republican from Illinois House District 117.

We will have more of that interview next week, and you can watch the entire conversation right now on WSIU's YouTube channel.

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Email us anytime.

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Analysis now, and I'm very pleased to welcome Jerry Nowicki, from Capitol News Illinois, and Alex Degman, of WBEZ Radio.

Alex, Illinois legislative staffers would be able to unionize under a bill introduced by the State House Speaker.

You reported on this, bring us up to date.

- Right.

Thanks for having me.

So the Workers' Rights Amendment is what emboldened them to really take this step.

They started asking for voluntary recognition after that.

And the Workers' Rights Amendment, you might remember was in the last election.

Illinois voters decided that all workers, all of them should have the right to unionize.

So when that happens, they started asking for to just kind of gauging interest within their units.

They started circulating petition cards.

And at the time, 24 out of the 35 of the people that would be covered, said yes.

So they took that to Speaker.

He said, no.

Hold an election.

So the union went to the Illinois Labor Relations Board which said, no, we don't have jurisdiction.

Your employees are the general assembly, you're carved out of current state labor laws.

And the union knew this, they were starting to get a little frustrated.

So this went on for a little while.

And Labor Day, around then, they issued a letter to the Speaker, basically, calling him out, saying this is a very pro-union administration.

This is a very pro-union state.

You know, what's going on?

But late last month, the Speaker introduced a new bill that would essentially allow employees of the general assembly to unionize.

And it does that by creating the Office of State Legislative Labor Relations that would be led by a director appointed to a four year term.

And that person would basically be responsible for negotiating with the representative of the union's choosing regarding just things that you might expect in a union negotiation, wages, hours, conditions of employment.

It also gives the state panel of the Illinois Labor Relations Board oversight.

And this was a major sticking point.

The union also called out the Speaker's slow response and lack of voluntary recognition.

But one of his spokespeople, Jaclyn Driscoll, said that, you know, this is just taking some time.

This hasn't been done at a lot of places.

There are only a couple of states that have done this so far and they're looking there.

Plus, Speaker Welch wanted to make sure that all legislative employees, not just his, have the right to form a union.

She said that Illinois is on the cutting edge of this issue and the work that they're doing is building on what's already happened.

So I talked to members of the organizing committee about the bill and they said, they didn't say a whole lot.

There's not a whole lot that they're saying publicly right now as they look through the bill, but they did say that they look forward to working together in good faith, coming to an agreement.

And the Speaker's office also said that they're looking forward to robust discussions between now and the veto session, which gets underway later this month, but it's gonna be a pretty busy veto session already.

So we'll see how this fits in.

- But I would imagine that even if it doesn't get taken up in the veto session, this is not going to go away.

- No, certainly not.

And now the, I mean, as they say, "the cat's been let out of the bag."

And this is not the final year of this general assembly.

So if it doesn't come up in veto, yeah, you can be pretty sure that they'll start to talk about it again in January.

- Okay.

Well, Jerry, another issue that gets a lot of attention, not only here, but all across the country, seven years after it passed, an abortion rights protection in Illinois gets its day in court.

And this is just the first in a series of protections being challenged.

Capitol News Illinois looked at this.

Tell us more.

- Yeah, so that was my colleague, Hannah Meisel, who did the deep dive on that one.

And it was essentially this protection for healthcare providers under the "Health Care Right of Conscience Act."

And the question was, does a, say crisis pregnancy center that believes there are no benefits to abortion have to convey to their patients that, you know, the procedure could help you in this way, X, Y, Z as the law says, you know, you must convey those benefits as a healthcare provider.

So it sort of came to a question of what standard of care these crisis pregnancy centers look to have to fulfill under the law.

And, you know, their argument was, we don't believe there are benefits.

We exist to try to get people not to have an abortion, at least these specific plaintiffs, I think there were a handful of them in this case, so that they're literally existing not to get people to have this procedure.

And then the law says, you know, you must at least give them a neutral sort of accounting of the benefits and cons of abortion rather than just saying, "Oh yeah, bad can happen.

These things bad can happen, X, Y, Z."

So there's no real timetable for when that's going to be heard, or pardon me, when there's going to be a decision.

There was a bench trial two weeks ago now.

So it will probably have some type of bearing on other challenges that are out there, as you said, specifically one that allows Illinoisans to sue so-called crisis pregnancy centers if they are found to have used deceptive practices to get people to usher people away from having an abortion.

- Such an interesting story.

And like so many that have been happening lately, dealing with hot button political issues, it's just another reminder of the importance of kind of protecting as much as possible the justice system and the courts from the influence of politics.

The notion that, you know, laws can be passed at the state level, at the federal level, but then there're constantly, and more frequently, being challenged in court.

And there's a lot of concern about this, about the political influence.

We've seen that all the way up to the Supreme Court and whether that really is something sustainable in terms of how our faith, our faith in our entire system of government, Jerry.

- Yeah, I think there was a recent interview with Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis where she says the courts don't have the power of the purse.

They don't have, you know, some of the powers that the governor has.

So the real authority that they have is trust from the people.

And, you know, a lot of these decisions you see are, they're ruled one way at the circuit court, ruled one way at the appellate court.

So it's sort of just comes down to who the appointee is, which, you know, isn't great for trust.

I don't think I have a great answer for how you build that trust up again.

But I think there's been, you know, a lot of reportingness to the financial influence on things at the highest court in all of the US as well.

So it's sort of, I don't know that I have a great answer for that one.

- It's very interesting.

Well, we'll move on now.

We got about five minutes left.

Alex, last week we reported on Biden administration efforts to make it easier for new immigrants to get work permits after requests from Illinois and other states.

Now Governor J.B. Pritzker has written a letter to the President saying it is time for the federal government to take a much more active role in the transportation of asylum seekers.

Of course, this comes as Texas continues to bus migrants to Chicago and other cities, putting a real strain on efforts to house and feed the growing populations.

- Yeah, you know, this letter, it was really strongly worded for somebody who's been so vocally supportive of President Biden for the last few years.

I was kind of shocked reading it, but again, I mean, the Governor's feeling a lot of pressure right now.

His administration's starting to butt heads with people in Mayor Brandon Johnson's camp in Chicago who think the state is making the city shoulder most of the burden.

And so far, I mean, the migrants are going to Chicago, the city largely has shouldered this burden.

Now to be clear, the state has provided about little more than $300 million in aid for the crisis overall.

The Governor's office just doled out $42 million that was set aside in this year's budget.

About 30 million of that went to Chicago.

But the fact remains, there are tens of thousands of people in Chicago, more arriving every day, that were bused there from the border, and they're staying there .

In the letter, Pritzker essentially accused the President of forgetting Illinois, using words like "untenable."

He used "mostly unsupported" to describe our situation.

And he had some suggestions like making a point person deal with all of this at the border, even though that person exists already, that's the Vice President.

And he also wants to see fee waivers for people applying for temporary protected status.

He wants the feds, as you said, to take over transportation, routing the buses that are taking people to Chicago.

He wants more data.

He thinks the feds can easily be at the southern border collecting basic information from these folks that are coming across.

And, you know, maybe share that with people, put it into some kind of a database.

And there continued to be more demands.

He wants more money for temporary housing, food, shelter, social services.

Illinois has gotten some already, but, you know, it's like the Governor said in the letter, it's not enough.

And he essentially said that a request for Medicaid waivers, housing vouchers are being ignored, and he needs more people to get accelerated work authorization like we saw a few weeks ago.

- Outstanding summary, Alex.

And I'm so glad you mentioned the financial issues, because very often this is framed in very short news stories as a problem for big cities, but it's a challenge for entire states and the country, because we're talking about huge sums of money and that affects all taxpayers.

So, of course, as states look to the federal government to help, very important.

Jerry, about two minutes left here.

The Illinois Secretary of State is recommending a policy change that is likely to be popular with some older voters, raising the driving test age from 75 to 79.

Capitol News Illinois covered this story.

Give us some context.

- Yeah, so it's sort of a change that went into effect during the pandemic, and now it was scheduled to end on October 1st, but the secretary filed emergency rules with a legislative body to say, you know, we'd like to continue this, A, and then B, make it permanent.

So the data he used was that the people in that age range, 75 to 79, experience fewer accidents, cause fewer accidents, than say the 16 to 30 range, and even most ranges below them.

So rather than have them reapply and pass this on the road driver's test every time, they get their license renewed, once they turn 75, that kicks in at age 79.

- Okay.

Something to watch for sure.

And we'll be seeing the decision on this soon?

- Yeah, so the legislative body will take, they next meet on October 17th, and all they really have to do is is not issue an objection and it will remain in effect.

- And it will remain in effect.

Alright.

Very interesting stuff.

My guests, Jerry Nowicki, from Capitol News Illinois.

Alex Degman, from WBEZ Radio.

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

- You're welcome.

- Thank you.

- Thank you at home as well.

Public media is only possible with your support.

For everyone at WSIU, I'm Fred Martino, have a great week.

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