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

Joining us this week on "Capitol View" is Dave Dahl, long time state house reporter for WTAX Radio.

Welcome Dave.

- Bruce, thanks for having me.

- Hey, thanks for coming.

And also Raymon Troncoso from Capitol News Illinois.

Welcome Raymon.

- Thanks for having me, Bruce.

- We are taping now as the legislative session is drawing to a close, they have five days and counting and a lot of stuff needs to get done.

A lot of stuff has been done and a big bombshell dropped yesterday with the indictment of Tim Mapes, former Chief of Staff to former house speaker, Michael Madigan.

The issue according to the feds is that, he was given immunity to testify before a grand jury and went to the grand jury and said he knew nothing essentially.

And the feds presumably had emails and stuff showing that that probably wasn't the case.

And so, he's now been charged with perjury and this is linked to an ongoing scandal involving former speaker Michael Madigan and Exelon in which a number of other folks have been indicted.

It seems clear that the feds are trying to get to Michael Madigan and one of his closest people has said, no, I'm not gonna testify.

To what I know, that's what the charge is.

I'll throw it out there, Dave, how shocking is this and what effect might it have on any pending legislation?

- Well, I think if you're following the drip, drip, drip, it's not shocking but it is significant.

And if you were to go after the old state Capitol clausal like the local TV stations do here and explain the story to the man on the street and record their reaction, 10 out of 10, wouldn't be able to tell you who the heck Tim Mapes is.

100 out of 100 wouldn't but he's the right hand man, chief of staff, the man who makes things happen, the man who holds the figurative giant key ring full of keys for Madigan, you've gotta go through Mapes, he's gatekeeper.

When Madigan was speaker, Mapes was a gatekeeper.

And so, presumably he would know everything there is to know about then speaker Madigan.

As you said, the allegation is that even though they granted him immunity, he lied anyway which shows allegedly what lengths people would go to to presumably protect someone, presumably the speaker.

You've gotta think that they're still going at Madigan.

I'm not sure how much help Mapes has been to them.

But I think, when you look at, you know this is the inner most of inner circles in terms of the importance Tim Mapes has to the operation.

Will it really lead to an indictment of Madigan?

I don't know, they haven't pinned anything illegal on him yet, allegedly.

Will it affect any pending litigation?

I think already the energy bill's here which someone would call a bail out but they would appear to be favorable to big energy.

Those are taking on water.

And I don't think they've got a great deal of support here.

This doesn't help.

- Yeah I mean, let's be clear here.

He is risking prison and others around him have as well.

Mike McClain being one of the chief folks, former legislator, lobbyist who has indicated to WBEZ Radio in Chicago that he's not gonna flip.

He's not gonna cooperate.

And so, there seems to be at this point in time, if there's anything that is discernible from what happened yesterday, it seems to me perhaps, just how tight a wall Michael Madigan has built around him had built around him.

- You wanna ask these guys, would you flip on your own mother?

They might.

They won't flip on Madigan though.

- What do they call it?

Flipper, flipper faster than lightning?

And I'm dating myself.

- You've got your own bar too.

(Bruce laughing) - I would say, it was the dolphin thing.

The Exelon Bill, because this does connect with Exelon.

Exelon was seeking, you can call it a subsidy, a bailout, or a rescue of the environment from global warming because they say they need a bunch of money to keep their nuclear reactors running in Illinois and without it they'd shut them down and we would then have to rely on carbon spewing coal plants, carbon spewing natural gas plants, energy plants, folks who work at these nuclear plants would lose their jobs, it would be bad.

I mean, they seem to have a decent hand here.

The governor has said in his initial roll out, $70 million a year for five years for a total subsidy of 355 or thereabouts.

- Which is more than a ComEd paid in the deferred prosecution agreement.

- [Bruce] Yep.

- We have to understand that the line going through this whole thing, this investigation, a grand jury matter, which we just mentioned has now resulted in the indictment of Tim Mapes, chief of staff to Mike Madigan is the ComEd wanted to grease some legislation its way.

And this would be an example, the bills that we're talking about this year in the general assembly are bills that could be seen as being favorable to ComEd and its parent company Exelon.

So what's changed there?

Other than the fact that ComEd is $200 million poorer to escape prosecution.

You know, you had another energy bill that is gonna be good for the energy companies.

- Yeah, fair enough.

Will it actually happen?

Again, we've got five days left.

This is one of the major things that's left on the table.

We have Exelon, we have the budget.

We have a budget 'cause, hold on, stop, let's talk about the budget for a second.

Has anybody been talking about the budget?

I haven't heard much, what do you think, Raymon?

And what are you hearing about the budget?

- All we know about the budget right now is that the shell bills that will eventually become the budget have passed in both chambers.

And that kinda gives leeway to the general assembly to basically pass them in a single day without much input or public inquiry about what actually goes into the budget.

All we had were the proposals from Pritzker a few months ago about the tax changes that are gonna presumably be in the budget but really nobody knows what the meat and potatoes of this is actually gonna look like.

Or even as proposed suggestions of what it's gonna look like, is gonna be a surprise to the public when we finally get to see it.

- Yeah, we might not see it until the very final day.

Legislators may not see it until the very final day.

Is this any way to try to figure out how to spend how many billion dollars it is, it's in the $40 billion range, I think.

How rational is this that we do our budget process every, I mean, this is not unique.

We budget to wait until the last second and stuff and that's true.

But to this degree for going on this long, is this a rational way for folks for the lawmakers to pass a budget and for people to understand what's really contained in it.

- It's a annual thing.

They don't say it's a rational thing but it's an annual thing.

- You just said, rational or irrational?

I'm sorry-- - I said that but they don't say whether it's rational, they don't say it's rational but it is annual.

- It is annual, fair enough.

And I'm sorry if that's a loaded question perhaps it was, maybe it's just me but I'd like to see a little more transparency when it comes to legislative processes but that doesn't always happen in Illinois as we all know.

Speaking of transparency, let's talk about legislative redistricting maps.

They have been released here in the last week and everybody's happy, aren't they?

- Sure.

(Bruce laughs) - Okay, well, where are the rubs, Raymon?

What are the issues here?

- Well, the issues are is that, the maps that we've seen so far, even the Democrats are saying that these aren't the real maps.

These are what they're calling draft maps that they're getting public input on.

And so far the public input has pretty much been anything but positive.

Really, what the maps, the draft maps are based on is five years of aggregate data from the American Community Survey.

That is data from the census bureau, it is considered to be accurate to a point.

It lets you get to the general approximation of how many people you have but when you get to what we call block level data, the demographics of a district, how many actual people live there, it gets more and more inaccurate as you drill down in specificity.

And for a lot of communities, especially the Black community, the Latino community, the Asian American community, in Chinatown and Chicago has expressed a lot of concerns about this.

It's very inaccurate and it can lead to a lot of people losing the influence they currently have in the general assembly.

- Yeah I mean, speaking of accuracy, it wasn't that long ago where the new census numbers came out and there had been projections from the census bureau that Illinois was in a ton more trouble but it turned out that we actually were in terms of population loss.

There had been a lot of doom and gloom that had been based in part largely on projections because every 10 years and so, five years out, seven years out, where do we think we are?

And it turns out the number is wrong.

And so, we don't have a complete census because the pandemic, it's an absolutely unusual year.

And so, what's going on here of course is that, if they don't pass a map, there's a deadline of June.

What is it to do it before it gets punted to a bipartisan commission?

- Yeah, that's the June 30th deadline, the Democrats who are running the map making process like to tell you that June 30th is deadline.

It's only the deadline for you know, the only thing that turns into a pumpkin on June 30th is the Democrats grip on the power here.

So it's in their interest to get it done.

They don't wanna wait for the census because it doesn't come by the June 30th deadline, that's all - Right and so, if that doesn't happen, if they don't get it done by June 30th and I would wager that it probably will because the Democrats have the power, then it does get to this bipartisan commission and eager to make the call.

Meanwhile, we have a lot of progressive groups, I think there were about 20 that signed a letter saying that, you know, along with lines of Raymon was saying that this is under-counting folks, there's communities of color that are being left out which is not a good thing.

Would they perform these progressive groups that signed a letter prefer a bipartisan process?

It sounds to me like they may not be trusting Democrats.

- So, what a lot of these groups are asking for is something that we've seen in other states that have similar constitutional deadlines, is to ask for relief from the courts.

The COVID 19 pandemic offered extraneous circumstances that courts would take into consideration for not per se, violating the constitution but for bending the rules a little bit and how these constitutional processes play themselves out.

So you can presumably because California has done it, Oregon has done it.

Michigan is another states with similar deadlines to drawing maps that Illinois has and the courts have granted some relief saying, you know, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, you can wait to draw maps for the census data to be released so that they're accurate and that they accurately portray vulnerable populations so they get the representation they need.

- And that's an excellent point, why didn't we ask for this relief two months ago, three months ago, a month ago.

I mean, why are we here?

Why didn't we ask for relief?

- It's a good question, I'm not sure anyone knows the answer.

- Well, I'm not sure that, I'm guessing and this is just a guess on my part that the folks that have the power kinda like the way it is, and so, that's why it's gone the way that it is.

Let's talk about some of the specifics in the map here.

One of the state Supreme court maps that just came out, this hasn't been done in a long time.

- And that one dropped just the other day.

The legislative maps dropped on a Friday night.

And it was Tuesday, not even three hours before first of the last four hearings that they unleashed the Supreme court map box.

- And arguably, the Supreme court map is more important really than some of these legislative maps because it is the Supreme Court.

They get to make calls on stuff like the you know, extending the deadline which that didn't really happen apparently or maybe a federal court could have done that.

But the Supreme court is important.

I mean, of course, in any state, I mean, amongst other things here in Illinois, it decides stuff like pension questions, you know, really big stuff.

And they redrawn it after Kilbride didn't get retained.

So it appears to be frankly, in some folks' view, a blatant attempt to keep the court democratic.

Do you think so?

Do we think so?

- Leader Tim Butler certainly thinks so.

You know, leading Republican at the maps hearing yesterday that they had, he brought this up, he said that, Kilbride who had in a previous decision kept map of registering control in the hands of Democrats and in the hands of Madigan in 2016.

He says, this is more of the same.

He says that since they lost Kilbride, now Democrats are gonna be able to draw these new districts and maintain a majority that will make a favorable map decision to them.

That's what Butler's claiming.

That's what Republicans in general are claiming because if you look at these maps and no way are they favorable to Republicans or bipartisan control in the judiciary or in the legislative sense.

- Yeah and the legislative part, let's talk about that for a second.

I think what's gotten a lot of attention partly because we're all here in Springfield and so, we pay perhaps more attention to central Illinois than than other regions of the state.

Is the redistricting that has given I think Senator Doris Turner a much greater leg up than she might otherwise have had, would have enjoyed with the prior map.

There had been a lot of speculation that she might not be able to the, Avery Bourne or the Republican as currently in the house.

Was he apparent to the Senate seat which had been held by Andy Manar before he stepped down and is now filled by Doris Turner?

Also we've got, the map put Avery Bourne and I believe Mike Murphy into the same district, fair?

Or political?

Or a mixture of both.

- Well, whatever the reasoning behind it, the maps do seem to be more favorable to Democrats by placing a lot of incumbent Republicans into the same districts where they're now gonna be having to compete with each other for a space that previously they could share.

And no matter how that ends up, it's going to be favorable to Democrats.

- Strangely there aren't that many Republicans to begin with yet, hardly any Democrats face the fate of being mapped in with a true competitor.

There was at least one case where a Democrat was put into what would be called a Democrat district along with an incumbent Republican but I asked one of the members of the redistricting committee, how was this not a coincidence?

Yeah, how can you claim that it could be a coincidence?

And he said, "Well, people who can just show up "at hearings."

- And there were hearings-- - [Raymon] Yeah.

- Look yeah, I mean, I think what it boils down to is they do it for the same reason that a dog does a certain thing, because he can.

I'll tell you all fear what the thing is.

- No, that's fine, you can go on Dave, are we on a 30 second note-- - Family show?

- The social one, stop.

- Family show.

Just say, because he can.

- Because you can.

Other things that still need to be done before the end of the session, we've talked a bit about Exelon and there's a position trying to get some money for the nuclear plants.

The other thing is cannabis and this has been something that has not been working out as promised or planned since we legalized recreational marijuana starting January 1st of 2020, if I have my date right.

Was it 2020 or 2019?

- The members passed it in 2019-- - It's all a blur since then.

- It is a blur since hey opened those marijuana shops, I can't remember a darn thing.

But they have legalized recreational marijuana with the promise that it would, the licensure mechanism, would allow folks of color and folks who have been disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs to benefit from this by getting into the business, opening dispensaries and grow operations but it's turned into a disaster.

The first round of licensings under this bill resulted in insiders and folks who are weren't of color on getting all the licenses for getting in the lottery to grant the licenses.

Raymon break it down for us.

What's happened here and where do we go?

- Well, first, there were 75 licenses that were supposed to be given out by May of 2020.

Now we're over a year since that deadline has passed and no new licenses have been given out.

The only people who've been, by the way making an absolute killing in the marijuana business have been big businesses that were already in the medical marijuana businesses who are able to parlay those licenses over to recreational dispensers.

Now, this new process that was supposed to as you said, have a social equity lens in mind and give people in Black and Brown communities you know, the power to get into this industry and make a lot of money for local communities.

And that hasn't happened.

Lawsuits have dragged on the process.

The pandemic dragged on the process.

And right now what we have is a trailer bill that has currently passed the house, it's waiting to be heard in the Senate, that's supposed to rectify the problems with the original 75 licenses that went to a lot of as you said, people with some connections to the scoring firm behind how those licenses were measured for who is worthy of a license or not and also offers an additional 110 licenses.

We don't know, not everyone was happy with this.

There was some bipartisan support but also bipartisan opposition from some Democrats that felt like it wasn't in the social equity spirit, the bill was intended but really, it just seems like, it hasn't gone the way it was supposed to.

- No, it hasn't gone the way it's supposed to.

So we're gonna have now, if this passes because it's passed out of the house now and the Senate has largely dealt with this already, they're I think probably further ahead on this than the house has.

So presuming this passes, we will have a new lottery to grant licenses.

What guarantees are there that Black and Brown people will win this lottery?

I mean, is there any guarantee?

I mean, I look at this sometimes and I think there's some belief for one reason or another that if we have a second lottery that the folks that qualify for it will be socially, what is it?

The social equity applicants, the Black and Brown people.

Is there any guarantee of that?

- No and that was the nature of the dispute between representative Shawn Ford, the Bill Sponsor of Chicago and representative Carol Ammons of Champaign-Urbana.

She basically pointed that out, there is no guarantee in this bill that Black and Brown communities are gonna be able to get into the marijuana industry and bring in local money.

And she said, you know, what guarantee do I have for my constituency that that money is gonna be going to our Urbana rather than going to you know, an out-of-state owner who's partnered with someone in my industry.

And on the floor, La Shawn Ford basically said, there is no guarantee and it's impossible to make a legislative guarantee that this goes to Black and Brown communities.

But what this legislation does that will now go forward with those 75 licenses and now an additional 110 licenses is that we've increased the possibility that now Black and Brown communities, Black and Brown business owners will get into the marijuana industry.

Specifically, there's two new lotteries on top of the first lottery for 75.

These two new lotteries will give out 55 licenses each.

And the second of those gives extra points if you were someone who was incarcerated for a marijuana charge that later was granted expungement under the 2019 law.

That's to give people who have suffered from the war on drugs, a leg up in the process.

We don't have any data on how many people that actually is who've applied for these licenses that affects but the theory of this is, it's supposed to try to increase the number of social equity applicants that will actually win.

There was supposed to be a report a couple months ago from Toi Hutchinson, the cannabis czar that hasn't been released.

That's supposed to tell us who is applying for these licenses, how the industry is impacting Black and Brown communities but it just seems to be a sort of fog of war right now where nobody knows if this is working as intended - I'll be blunt, why does Toi Hutchinson have a job?

I mean, she is the de facto cannabis czar and she was hired to do that at a salary in excess of $200,000 after being a state Senator.

She was the architect of this, that didn't work.

And she hasn't come up with the report because really we pretty much all know what the report would say, it hasn't worked as you promised it would work when you wrote the bill.

Why should somebody like that, who has failed as a legislator to come up with a bill that work, why does, I guess the other question I have, not to be overly inarticulate, why do we need a cannabis czar at all?

Why are we paying anybody $200,000 to oversee a cannabis industry?

- Meanwhile, why not just fold it under EG or regulation-- - [Bruce] I'm sorry, Dave.

- Rather than have it run by some other department like EG or something.

- Well, we have EG.

We have Department of Financial and Professional responsibility.

We have Illinois State Police.

We have I think there's at least one other one, all of which are mentioned in terms of running a cannabis industry and then we have a cannabis czar that's supposed to be overseeing all of these folks.

And I would love to-- - Of course, I would quote our mutual friend Mayor Langfelder and saying, "That is a good question.

(Bruce laughs) - And speaking of good questions, the answer now is that we are out of time.

And so, thanks all for joining us on "Capitol Week", "Capitol View", I'm so sorry and we'll see you next week.

Thanks so much.

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