(exciting music) - Welcome to Capitol View, the weekly program where we talk about state politics and government and how it might just affect you.

Joining me this week on Capitol View is Jerry Nowicki, bureau chief for Capitol News, Illinois.

Welcome Jerry.

- Thanks for having me, Bruce.

- And also through the wonder of Zoom and the internet we have the incomparable, Amanda Vinicky, correspondent for WTTW Television in Chicago.

Welcome, Amanda.

- It is a busy and interesting time in politics, so glad to be here to talk about it.

- Busy and interesting would be an understatement.

As we tape this just within the past hour or so, word came out that Michael Madigan, speaker of the House of Illinois, is going to resign effective a week or so from now.

I'm so discombobulated I can't remember the date.

(laughs) Talk about titans in Illinois state government through the years.

This was somewhat expected, I think, given that he has went from the speaker of the House to just a regular member of the general assembly in January, and now he's out altogether.

Let's talk first about the timing.

Why now as opposed to earlier?

We've seen stuff on the internet of things moved out of his apartment near the Capitol, that sorta thing.

Is there any guesses about why now as opposed to some other time?

- I don't have any good guesses other than that he maybe had to think about his future, assess.

I do think that when he lost the speakership that was a bit of a stunner for him.

At least it stung.

Clearly he had been working the roll call and while it appeared that he didn't have the numbers to win another record setting term as Illinois House speaker, he didn't give in, he didn't give up.

So maybe he just wasn't ready, but I'm sorry, I have no inner knowledge.

Of course, he continues to have the weight on his shoulders of a corruption scandal that has led to charges against who is assumed to be his very best buddy and one of his closest confidants and that's of course is Mike McLean, a lobbyist, but who Madigan knows from serving alongside him back in the '70s in the Illinois House.

Madigan has still not been charged with any wrongdoing and from the statements that he's given, he never will be because he says there's no reason for that given that he had done nothing wrong, was not a participant in the bribery scheme, which CommEd has admitted to.

So beyond that, I think it would be pure speculation as to the timing of this, Bruce.

- I'm hearing you, what I'm hearing you, when I was listening to you, somewhere in the back of my mind I heard he's processing this.

After so many years as arguably the most powerful person in Illinois government, it takes a while to understand or to accept that you aren't where you used to be.

Just before we came on air for taping I read this statement that he issued and I was struck by a number of things.

He talked about Bruce Rauner.

He talked about Rob Blagojevich.

He sounds like a guy who-- It was a very eloquent statement, perhaps that's why it took so long for him to, you know-- He was busy writing!

It was his assessment of here's what I've done, here's who I am and here's what I stand for.

Jerry, what did you parse out from this?

I mean, in terms of the statement that he's issued.

- Yeah, so as far as statements go, usually when you get a statement from someone it's a couple of paragraphs, whatever, this was a whole-- It was like he was trying to write his own political obituary in a sense.

- [Bruce] The loquacious side of Mike Madigan which we've rarely seen.

- It was 800-- 850 words really tried to kind of sum up his own legacy.

The stuff you don't read about these days, as the CommEd scandal is ongoing and other things.

One thing that wasn't noted in there is his role as Democratic Party chairman.

I don't know if either of you know when his term is up, I don't.

I don't have that information off the top of my head.

But he still controls campaign coffers, as far as I can tell.

He'll still maintain, at least on the surface right now it appears he's still maintaining the control over that.

I don't know to what extent that will change in the future but that wasn't mentioned in his statement today.

So he's still Democratic Party chairman for Illinois as far as I can tell.

- He's even still part of Illinois politics, I mean he's no longer speaker, but he still has a lot of people who owe him favors, a lot of people who respect him, admire him and believe that he is responsible for turning the Democratic Party of Illinois into the powerhouse that it is today.

I mean, let's not forget that we Democrats control every statewide office that they right now has a majority on the Illinois Supreme Court, super majorities in both chambers of the general assembly.

And Democrats give a lot of that credit, particularly more recently because of Rauner, to Madigan.

And I think when you read that statement, you're right, Jerry, it was sort of trying to write his own political obituary almost in the sense that he-- One of sort of the rubs that you often hear about him is that what has mattered to most about Madigan is maintaining his grip on power.

Above and beyond anything else, that is his legacy, that is his tenure, his power, his winning races, more so than actually accomplishing anything.

When you read that statement, I think he tries to get in there and say, hey, wait this is what I've done.

And part of that is everything from marital quality to defeating Bruce Rauner.

I mean, that is what he sees as his legacy.

And he really in that statement says, you know, 50 years ago I entered this to help vulnerable people and that's what I'm in for today.

Mind you, critics, I think, would take issue with that and they would say, eh, we think in the very beginning you got in this to be a political boss and that has been your aim throughout your service.

- One of the things I find interesting too is that the Rauner thing, a lot of people give him credit for standing up to Rauner or whatever.

But I noticed as I was covering the budget yesterday that the three major players in the budget impasse are now gone.

None of the leaders that presided over that period that we all sort of look back on and just sort of, how did that happen?

They're all gone now with Madigan, Cullerton and Rauner.

So there's just a whole new political world in Illinois than that 2017 budget impasse that ended in 2017.

- How long do you think he's gonna stay head of the Democratic Party?

Because he, as both of you, rightly note, I mean, he hasn't disappeared.

He's still on the political landscape.

The results in last fall's election weren't necessarily what the Democratic Party had hoped for in Illinois.

And I think that that increased pressure, perhaps, on Mr. Madigan to say sayonara.

How long do you think he's gonna hold on to that?

Are we getting any kind of word about is this position there secure or is this going to be chapter two I hear by a-- I'm writing my political obituary for the party chairmanship.

Go ahead.

- Jerry?

- Yeah, I don't know.

I really don't know.

I mean, it could be that he's planning a transition.

I don't know if that'll be-- - You weren't in the meeting, Jerry?

(laughs) - You know, I mean, I think that what we need to keep in mind is so there have been those who say that he should step down from that role including powerful Democrats in their own right look to, for example, former state Senator, now Chicago courts clerk, Iris Martinez, who has been very vocal about that, but that didn't gain any steam, even as, again, all of this CommEd situation surfaced.

So, I mean, I think at this point he has that but regardless of that title, he still will have control of all of the money that he has fundraised in his capacity as leader of DPI and as speaker of the Illinois House.

And that's where the power is.

You don't have to be the party chairman nor speaker nor state rep in order to cut those checks.

And further, a part of his power also comes from just in all of those years, those decades of knowing and learning all of the players and the playbook of the state House, he knows where it's, to use sort of the mob term, where the bodies are buried.

And so no matter what role he holds, he is in a very powerful position.

- Sure, when I was reading through the statement, and again, it is lengthy and it was just released before we're taping this episode here, one thing that stood out because I'm a FOIA freak, you know?

We are journalists and records-- - A FOIA hero, Bruce, come on.

- No, no, no, I'm not gonna go that far.

But he trumpets and I will use the word trumpet, under my leadership, we passed the Freedom of Information Act in Illinois, and we strengthened it and we protected it from those who would tear it down and I'm sitting here frankly saying hogwash.

The Illinois lagged many, many, many states in terms its public records laws and its transparency.

So I guess that was my personal take because I am such a fan of the Freedom of Information Act.

And I saw that and I said, you know what?

You could have done a darn sight better.

- Well, I mean, beyond that, beyond I think FOIA, this also comes while we did frequently hear from Madigan during Rauner impasse, he got into the habit, it was interesting to cover from the state House, that he had a bunch of press conferences, but by and large, he is not one to be open with the media outside of having to use the Freedom of Information Act to get to any sort of documents.

He's not wanting to be particularly chatty.

I will say that he has given interviews particularly to public media through my years and public radio and also to the Illinois Lawmakers Program with Jack Titchener.

He did every once in a while but he certainly and particularly more recently, and again as the scandals got closer to him and potentially the, the prosecutors and the US attorney's office edged closer and closer to him-- He has gotten quieter.

(talking over each other) - Time out.

He said vicious attacks?

That's how he phrased it in his statement.

This is what's happening now are vicious attacks.

And I'm not sure they're vicious attacks.

I think that kinda comes with the territory.

And I didn't mean to cut you off, Amanda, but-- - Oh, no, no, go for it.

Again, critics would certainly say that he's been one to be quite vicious in his attacks as well.

And that is, once again, why Democrats have the super majorities they hold now.

And that is because he certainly did not hold back and would not have-- A journalist would have been fired and shocked with some of the statements put on campaign brochures, given approval by the DPI in order to win races against Republicans, so.

- He did what it took to win and he had people's backs.

And that's kinda, you know, if for nothing else that's what he's known for.

And I guess when I, you know, I didn't mean to fixate on FOIA here, but I'm reading that and I'm saying, that's not what I would have thought of as is his legacy is that I made government more transparent at Illinois.

Amanda, I'll start with you and then Jerry so you can get a little time to think.

Amanda what are you going to remember most about Mike Madigan?

In your mind, what is his legacy?

- Again, I mean, I don't think he's fully gone right now.

And even if he's not speaker, he is still a source of a fascination in his fingerprint.

I mean, he has been the speaker of the Illinois House really my entire life.

He therefore has a fingerprint on anything and everything that has gone on in Illinois politics.

Be that, again, detractors would say that's why we have a budget and a mess and underfunded pensions.

But those who are on the progressive side would say look at what that shrewd political playing has achieved not just in sheer numbers but also in advancing the progressive agenda, the democratic agenda.

I think Madigan will be forever known for his shrewd politics for a-- I mean, incomparable work ethic where-- And also he's a student of history, and I will say as somebody who has had the opportunity to interview him, he's very quick on his feet, he's very intelligent through those steely eyes but also he's funny.

(laughing) He can tell a joke.

- He's got that dryness too-- - Oh yeah.

- That is just hard to not like on some level.

I mean, regardless of how you might feel about his politics or the way he feels about public issues.

- And a family man who really appears to love his wife, Shirley Madigan, his children, although again, when there was a lot of thought that Lisa Madigan would try to make a run for governor, the line is that he wasn't going to step down which would have made her doing so an option and a lot of questions as to, hey, what sort of father does that?

- Okay, Jerry now you've had a chance to think.

(laughing) (talking over each other) - So I've thought of a good way to pivot there, Bruce.

'Cause I don't know that I have the hindsight or the forethought to something-- - [Bruce] Yeah, you're a newbie, so to speak.

You've only been here for two, three years.

- Yeah, I don't know if I could sum up his legacy but one of the interesting things will be to see-- We're going to see now the first budget process that Mike Madigan hasn't negotiated in decades.

So we had the budget address yesterday and we just got to figure out how Representative Welch takes his budget cues from Madigan.

Not necessarily Madigan is telling him what to do, but he's obviously learned this process under Mike Madigan and he only knows the process that existed under Mike Madigan.

So we'll see how that colors the budget negotiations going forward and whether maybe the speaker can be as resolute, not backing down as we knew Mr. Madigan to be.

And whether there's sort of interplay with Republicans that'll change or Republicans will now have to just-- I saw they switched their Fire Madigan campaign.

It's now Fire Pritzker.

So, you know, the whole dynamic is different now without Mike Madigan.

And I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of deviances from the previous ways we're going to see.

- You know, Jerry, I think you touched on a really interesting point in that without Madigan, the Republicans have lost their, you know, poster child for beating up the Democratic Party.

Fire Pritzker doesn't quite have the same ring to it, I think, that Fire Madigan came to take on in much of Illinois.

While I think there are certainly pockets of the state where people don't know who their own state rep or state legislator is and might not have thought much about who the speaker was, Madigan came to be a household name.

And I wonder as well, like you, how that is going to change the dynamic in the state House for the budget, and of course a very strange time because of COVID for session anyway, but also how this will sort of flip any campaign dynamics coming into 2022.

- Do you think he'll get a cell phone or an email account now?

How is he going to help folks if they can't get in touch?

- I mean, again, he still has money to pay aids, to keep the DPI running and going.

So however he's managed thus far as a modern man in the world, I'm guessing he'll still go that route and might have reason to be shy.

Again, he continually says that he has done nothing wrong, nothing illegal, nothing unethical, even.

But if I were him, I certainly would be cautious about anything that I say or write and whether the US attorney's office is going to try and be listening in or watching.

- Have we checked at this point, do we know how much money might be in friends of Michael Madigan's, his campaign fund?

Because as we all know in Illinois you can keep those campaign funds in perpetuity so long as you can demonstrate that how you spend the money is related somehow to a governmental purpose and is not spent on you personally.

And that has at least a potential to-- You can influence things if you, if you so choose, if you have a lot of money.

I haven't checked, I mean, is that any kind of a possibility that that is a way that he might be able to continue to have some degree of influence even after leaving the general assembly?

- I think that's maybe when Ken Bretfield's on here he might have a good answer to that question.

(laughing) - Yeah, I'm sorry, Bruce, I haven't checked.

And my fancy Zoom setup, I know every time I try and look at something my computer goes wobbly.

So I'll refrain from doing that, but I mean, tens of millions of dollars.

Less so by the way, however, because he is paying a whole lot of legal bills these days.

Which he can pay out of those campaign funds.

- Absolutely.

- Certainly this is a source of influence, - Right, and I believe Rob Blagojevich, one of Michael Madigan's biggest foils through the years, did exactly that.

It will be interesting to see if Mr. Madigan follows suit.

Which would not be illegal.

- Well he is as of now.

Thus far, he's already using those campaign accounts to pay insurance bills.

- Correct, absolutely.

Absolutely, yes.

We've got five minutes and we could talk about Mike Madigan for forever.

- There was a documentary about him even!

(laughs) - Is there really?

- Well he Policy Institute did one, so.

- Okay.

- A documentary, again, some would say that it was a politically biased one, but nonetheless, feature-length film.

(laughs) - Okay.

Yeah, you know, before we leave Mike Madigan, what do you do if you've had been this sort of a titan, this sort of pillar for so long, do you just walk away and not tell anybody anything?

You never get a cell phone, you never get an email account, you just go-- And nobody writes your biography, you don't do an autobiography, you just remain an enigma.

I wonder.

I mean, and if he wrote an autobiography, or allowed a biographer, would anybody buy it or read it?

Would you buy it, Amanda?

- Well, of course I would, but I don't know, I'm not sure that I'm an indicator-- (talking over each other) - A good indicator of if this is gonna make it as a best seller or not.

(laughs) - Okay, again, not to tease too much, but let's move on.

We just got a few minutes left.

The state budget.

The governor yesterday issued a state of the state slash budget address.

A lot of talk about COVID.

I think that the details were not necessarily discussed in his speech in so much as they were in the documents going forward.

One of the big things that struck me, education funding for K through 12.

I think there's something, $350 million we're talking about.

Jerry, what do you think?

Are we gonna be able to fund education to the degree that we should or not?

- So the evidence-based funding model calls for 350 million additional dollars each year to be driven towards the school districts that are furthest from adequacy, and that's not going to be in the-- The added 350 is not going to be in the budget for the second straight year.

So what that does is the schools that are performing well, the funding model doesn't allow them to get less money.

But the schools that are, say, 60% of funding adequacy based on a number of factors such as class sizes and such, they're going to, if not-- They're not going to get closer to advocacy and some of the schools in the middle might actually get further away as costs increase, for a number of reasons.

So, no, Illinois is a long, long way from adequately funding its K-12 schools and we're not going to get there with this budget, certainly.

As the governor said in his speech, I've had bolder plans for the budget.

This doesn't include them and I'd be lying if I said this is what I wanted to do.

But he says, he says there's no new income tax revenue needed.

He says we can move some money around maybe and push back some deadlines for repaying other funds, which is not necessarily balancing the structural issues.

And then the other thing is what he calls a $900 million in corporate tax loopholes and what the Republicans call either a corporate tax hike or an end to incentives for doing businesses in Illinois.

And adds things like a retailer's discount, there is a tax break for sending-- For a scholarship program to send kids to parochial schools or like private schools, and then there's a couple other hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate tax changes that the governor wants.

But they all need approval from the general assembly, so.

- Yeah.

One thing that he did talk about, he was talking about fairly small amounts of money in his address, but going to really important issues, I think one example, I think $70 million to the Illinois Department of Employment Security, which has had some real issues in trying to respond to claims.

And I'm not sure that we often see that level.

$70 million in a $41 billion spending budget, which is where we're at more or less, is itty bitty.

I guess what I'm leading up to is when you sweep funds, one thing that I look at is the marijuana fund.

And they're bringing in, oh, $600 million.

I ran the numbers and one thing that-- If they hold to the 25% of marijuana taxes going for R three social programs, that adds up to about $150 million.

And perhaps even more as the market takes off.

The optics of that were the schools aren't getting funded but the marijuana tax revenue is being spent for-- Here in Springfield, prisoner re-entry programs.

How does that look that the schools aren't, they're in severe need, aren't getting the money that they need and money's being spent on other things?

And quickly, Amanda, Jerry, whoever feels like it, is that a topic or is that an area that they're gonna look at?

- You know, I know we're about out of time so I will just say I would guess not.

He's had enough problems with the marijuana issue being scaled back.

He's invested a lot of his own capital in that R three program and I think he would defend it as going to vulnerable communities already hurt by the war on drugs and that this is necessary money, particularly in a pandemic.

- I think you're probably right and I wish we had more time.

Unfortunately, we do not.

So thank you, everybody, for joining us here on Capitol View and we'll see you next week.

(exciting music)