(dramatic music) - Welcome to "Capitol View," where we discuss the latest in state government and politics.

I'm Hannah Meisel with NPR Illinois.

Joining us this week is Brenden Moore, reporter for Lee Enterprises, which owns papers in Decatur, Carbondale, Bloomington, and the Quad Cities.

Thanks for being here, Brenden.

- Thanks for having me, Hannah.

- And also here is John O'Connor, reporter for the Associated Press.

Glad you're here, John.

- My pleasure, Hannah.

- Well, a ton has happened since we filmed last week's episode a week ago Thursday morning.

The Fourth District Appellate Court ended up filing its ruling declining to overturn the temporary restraining order in the school mask mandate case.

Brenden, that ruling came in around midnight that night.

Tell us about their legal reasoning.

They leaned heavily on the fact that a legislative panel didn't renew Governor JB Pritzker's rules earlier last week, right?

- Right, Hannah.

So the big word here is moot.

The appellate court basically said the point of the appeal was moot because, earlier in the week, the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, JCAR, which is a bipartisan, bicameral panel in the legislature, basically blocked the Governor or the Department of Public Health's new rule regarding school masking, and they basically said that we can't consider an appeal when the rule in question is no longer in effect.

So it was kind of punting the issue, if you will, on a technicality, and not that the ruling was unexpected regardless, but obviously that moves things along.

Obviously the Governor has now appealed to the state supreme court.

However, it should be pointed out that, in the meantime, most school districts have gone their own way.

Most have gone mask-optional in defiance of Governor Pritzker's executive order, which he says is still in effect even if the department rule is not in effect.

It's kind of complicated, but basically school districts have kind of taken this confusion and kind of decided we're gonna decide locally what we wanna do with masking.

- And John, I wanna remind viewers that Judge Raylene Grischow, who issued the temporary restraining order in early February, she agreed with the legal reasoning that masks and vaccines were a, quote-unquote, form of quarantine.

There's a longstanding state law that says only the Department of Public Health and local health departments have the right to impose quarantine, and only after a due process has been followed for folks who are put in quarantine.

Do you see the Illinois Supreme Court going after that weird legal reasoning that masks and vaccines are a form of quarantine, or do you think that...

I mean, no matter what happens, like Brenden mentioned, you really can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

The majority of school districts are moving to mask-optional or already have, and on Monday, the rest of the state, for the general public, the mask mandate is going away.

I mean, what do you see happening at the state supreme court?

- (laughs) That's a great question.

I had some moot for lunch yesterday, so it's a relevant issue, I guess.

I'm not sure.

As you said, it's an issue that's kind of moved ahead of its time.

I'm not sure that the Illinois Supreme Court is one to get into the weeds, so to speak, in terms of when you mentioned the legal reasoning at the circuit court level defining what a quarantine is.

On the other hand, it's a Democratic-controlled court and the Governor is a Democrat.

It's kind of a confusing situation.

It's almost like the administration was focusing on the legal fight and it kind of got blindsided by this legislative oversight commission that invalidated the rule to begin with, which made the legal fight moot, as Brenden pointed out.

At the same time, we've got a governor declaring that, in the rest of the state, we don't need masks anymore because the hospitalizations and new cases are dropping.

So starting on Monday, the 28th of February, most indoor places will not require masks anymore.

He had carved out the exception for schools because people are congregated more closely.

We're talking about schoolchildren.

We're talking about, without them, we might have to go back to remote learning, and nobody liked the remote learning that we had for most of last year.

It's confusing to the general public, and because the issue is kind of (indistinct) in terms of the pandemic easing, the court might say, might leave well enough alone.

- Yeah, sure.

I mean, I guess we'll see what happens and how quickly they rule.

That'll be an indication of whether they wanna slow-walk this.

Again, Governor JB Pritzker acknowledges obviously that COVID is on a swift downturn, thank goodness, from the omicron variant, but what he has said is that he still wants to keep this in place in case, God forbid, there's another variant, but we will see what happens there.

John, the attorney who has brought this about, Tom DeVore, he made himself famous along with State Senator Darren Bailey, starting in really the early months of the pandemic when Darren Bailey challenged the Governor's executive orders, temporarily became the only person in the state of Illinois who was exempt from the Governor's stay-at-home orders, and since then, DeVore has been on a legal run.

He has been filing cases left and right, a lot of them losing, but I would say in 2021, his streak kind of turned around.

Now, Tom DeVore, instead of running for the Fourth District Appellate Court, as he had been saying for months, he's gonna run for Republican Attorney General.

What do we make of this, and what are his chances there?

- I think he does feel some momentum on his side.

When you mentioned the circuit court ruling that masks are a form of quarantine, some of these legal reasons that were issued at the circuit court, this is kind of the argument that Tom DeVore and Darren Bailey, the state senator from Zenia who's running for governor, began with in 2020.

It's really the first check of the power of the executive of Governor Pritzker.

DeVore won some of those cases in 2020 on the circuit court level, but they never went beyond that.

He wouldn't pursue a decision that would affect the whole state.

Now, as you said, the tide has turned a little bit, and I think what we see is a person...

I don't know Tom DeVore personally.

I've spoken to him obviously a few times, but I think once you get a taste of the public arena, sometimes you like that taste and you feel like you can do more, and maybe he can take that momentum, the name recognition that he's built to a broader level.

This is a different issue, but he's also the attorney behind the Republican representatives, state representatives who are complaining about wearing masks on the floor, and I saw him.

They had been asked to remove themselves from the floor, and there's a lawsuit that we'll probably get to in a minute on that, but DeVore was quoted as saying, "You can't remove my representative, "my state representative from the floor," and that struck me as a quote saying, "No, now I'm really angry "'cause now you're taking my representation off the floor," and so I think that kind of plays into his interest in getting into the arena.

As far as his chances, it's tough to go from a downstate attorney or a Northern Illinois attorney or a Chicago attorney and catapult that into a statewide race, and, presuming he gets the Republican nomination, he's up against a real tough incumbent in Democrat Kwame Raoul.

- And if I can just add onto that quickly, it does kind of beg the question, does he really wanna win?

Because as you mentioned, Hannah, he was running for a, previously running for a circuit court seat in downstate Illinois, which, arguably you would have a much better chance of winning, being a much more conservative area than the state as a whole, and even with before he could get to take on Kwame Raoul, he has to take on a Republican in the primary for attorney general, Steve Kim, who is on the, quote-unquote, slate that's being funded by Ken Griffin and other big-money Republican donors, so it'll be an uphill battle for him.

I think Governor Pritzker has called him a grifter.

It's a term he's embraced.

I think he's selling shirts saying that the grifter wins, based on his recent court success, but it does make one wonder whether he really wants the job or perhaps maybe the attention that comes with running statewide.

- That's a good point, Brenden.

Let's get into that mask drama and that lawsuit that John mentioned.

That lawsuit comes from Blaine Wilhour, who is the state rep from the same area that Tom DeVore is from, but Brenden, first let's get into what happened.

What happened on the House floor last week and this week regarding masks?

There was a whole lot of just...

I mean, you could call it silly, but also a lot of very, very serious tension that kind of exploded at some moments.

I'm thinking of the confrontation between Republican Steve Reick and Democrat Lakesia Collins.

Give us a summary of what is happening.

- Yeah, so like the rest of the state, obviously, in the Capitol, you have to wear a mask indoors, and obviously you have to wear it on the floor.

That's actually in the House rules.

Some Republicans in the House objected to that rule.

Most of them had been wearing masks to this point, but decided they'd had enough last week, so a group of them, nine of them, were booted off the floor last week for refusing to put their masks on, and as you mentioned, Hannah, there was originally 10 that were gonna be booted off, so Representative Collins, who made the motion, included Representative Reick in that group of lawmakers, mostly downstate, conservative, Eastern Bloc group of lawmakers.

Obviously Reick is from McHenry County.

He has said, "I don't like the mask rule, "but I follow the rules."

It led to kind of some tension on the floor.

There was kind of a shouting match between Representative Collins and Representative Reick.

She felt shaken by what happened, and it kinda led to, I guess, earlier this week, a summit in Speaker Welch's office with the two reps and Leader Durkin, Jim Durkin, as well.

They apparently cleared the air, and there was a general hope that the temperature could be turned down a bit, that we could return to more civility in the chamber.

However, as soon as the reps both addressed the issue and the Speaker addressed the issue on the floor, three representatives were again booted from the floor for not wearing masks.

I believe it was Representative Wilhour, Representative Niemerg, Adam Niemerg, and Representative Dan Caulkins from Decatur.

So basically they wanna bring attention to the issue of masking.

They point out that our numbers are going down.

The Governor is gonna likely lift the mandate next week, and they don't believe there should be a mandate for those on the floor.

They kind of point out some hypocrisy maybe in a way, 'cause they would say, "Well, Democrats wear their masks in the chamber, "but you see them outside at social events, "even other parts of the Capitol "where they're in close proximity to one another, "and they don't wear a mask."

So they would say virtue signaling, whereas Democrats would say, "Well, you're just not following the rules.

"It doesn't matter if you don't like the rules.

"The rules are in place," and they would use the example of, if you're over in the Illinois Senate, if you're a man, you have to wear a suit jacket and a tie to get on the floor or else you'll get kicked off, and a lot of people don't like it, but those are the rules.

So that's kind of the situation there, although I'll point out that the situation this week was a little bit more smooth than last week.

There was big ruckus.

Republicans all marched off the floor after nine of their colleagues got kicked off.

The other day it was a quick vote and the reps in question left and they participated remotely.

- Except of course for Tony McCombie, who's from Northwest Illinois, who stayed on the floor.

Also, I wanna mention really quickly, the lawsuit that Tom DeVore filed on behalf of Representative Wilhour.

Courts are loath to get into...

It's a separation of powers issue, and courts are loath to get into, what are the House rules?

I think that that was one of the reasons that the Aaron Schock case fell apart, in fact.

But John, just really quickly, I mean, you've been covering this for a long time.

Have you ever seen the tension in... What's another time that you've seen the temperature in one chamber be so just like, ugh, toxic and difficult to manage?

- It ebbs and flows, I think.

If you asked me about Congress, I would say today compared to 20 years ago, 30 years ago, that it's a lot different, that it's much more partisan and much more toxic, to use your word, but I think that in the legislature in Illinois, it's still small enough and people know that they're gonna have to get together to get legislation passed.

Masks are one thing, but the zoning change for one of my cities is important too, and it's gonna be important to me in an election year.

One other time where it was really toxic was in 1995 when the Republicans were in charge and they took control of the House, as we all know and discuss on this program, for a two-year period out of 38 that were otherwise controlled by Michael Madigan, the Democrat, and when the Republicans took control, they had all this pent-up energy, all this pent-up demand, all this pent-up revenge, and they kinda stuffed it down the Democrats' throats, and it was an interesting time of seeing Minority Leader Mike Madigan on the floor making sarcastic remarks to the chamber, to the president.

It plays out that if the public tuning in sees this and they, "Oh, these people just can't get along at all," well, I guarantee you that, maybe not the two who were involved in the fracas last week, but even when there are harsh words said on the floor, they shake hands afterwards, and I'm not being trite there.

It really is kind of a, we know we need to get together eventually, and they're going to make their points, and do it in a fiery way, but it's still kind of a small town.

- Yeah, we hope, we hope.

We don't wanna turn into Washington.

But Brenden, I wanna return to right after...

The mask debate was also tied to this other debate, which I would honestly argue is a lot more important, over the legislative inspector general.

To refresh viewers' memories, retired judge Carol Pope had taken over, oh God, I think in early 2019 maybe, and of course she was there throughout a ton of federal inquiries, federal (indistinct) She just saw a lot in her time, and then there was an effort finally at ethics reform last spring, and a lot of folks thought it didn't go far enough, and Carol Pope especially had been pushing for more freedoms for her own office to investigate things and take on certain... She just wanted more power obviously to do her job, she would say, in the way that it should be done.

She didn't get that, and in July, she resigned, and in her resignation letter, she called the office a paper tiger, and she stayed on a little bit past what she said she was gonna stay on to see another inspector general, but yet again, that lapsed and the office was empty.

So Brenden, what happened with the fight for a replacement attorney general?

Sorry, legislative inspector general.

- Yeah, so obviously the LIG is kinda the cop for the legislature.

They investigate all kinds of allegations made against members in the chamber, so I guess we shouldn't be shocked that it's not necessarily highest on the priority list for lawmakers to get somebody in there to police themselves.

But basically there was an established process to pick a new LIG, so the legislative panel that kinda oversees this topic is...

It's bicameral and bipartisan, an equal amount of members, and it was one of the few things that was truly bipartisan in the legislature, or at least they tried to keep politics out of it.

However, so they interviewed, so they had a process and they interviewed a few candidates.

The Democrats objected to the Republicans' preferred candidate, and the Republicans I believe had issues with the Democratic preferred candidate.

So basically the Democrats, and this was going on and on for months, and eventually the Democrats basically said, "We're done with the process "and we're gonna appoint our own person," which they can do.

They can bring it to the floor and vote on it.

They had the supermajority votes to do it, so they decided to bring in Michael McCuskey, who is a retired judge from Peoria, and nobody has questioned his credentials or his integrity, but Republicans have been crying foul about the process, saying that he did not go through the process that these other candidates went through.

Judge McCuskey actually offered to be an interim and then go through the process to ease any fears, but Democrats decided, "This office has been vacant for a while.

"We have to put somebody in," and so they went ahead with it anyways.

It's one of those tricky situations in Springfield where the issue isn't necessarily the pick itself.

It's the process, and I think a lot of Republicans and just general observers were maybe troubled by that and by the precedent it might set for future fights on this issue and other issues.

- Sure, I mean, I have to mention the last time the legislative inspector general's office was empty, it was empty for several years between the first LIG, Tom Homer, and a temporary replacement.

There's just a lot there, which I'm sure we'll talk about on a future program, but John, finally today I wanna get to State Senator Tom Cullerton, or should I say former State Senator Tom Cullerton?

He resigned Wednesday morning and then took a plea deal in his case that...

He was indicted in, God, I think August of 2019, said that he had taken money from the Teamsters for kind of a do-nothing job, and he had maintained his innocence throughout.

So tell us about this plea deal.

It's not necessarily tied up with the other corruption scandal, but it's just another, I think, to the general public, it's like, oh, another one.

- It's one that turned up amid other investigations, and he will plead guilty.

He's indicated he'll plead guilty on March 8th when the sentencing hearing comes up, but he was a Teamster, is a Teamster, was a truck driver whose company closed, and John Coli, the former Teamster president who also pleaded guilty earlier to an extortion case and agreed to cooperate with the feds, is the one who told the feds, "I helped John Cullerton get this job, "and I didn't even believe it was legitimate," and the feds...

He's going to plead guilty to embezzlement, I believe is the charge, for making money for this, what was essentially a do-nothing job.

Little or no work is the way they say it, I think.

- Yeah, and at the time, Tom Cullerton was the head of the Senate's Labor Committee.

He was finally removed from that post, but it took a while for then-Senate President John Cullerton to remove him.

They're distant cousins, by the way, and finished out his term as head of the Veterans Affairs Committee.

But we are out of time today.

I'd like to thank my guests, John O'Connor, Brenden Moore.

I'm Hannah Meisel.

We'll catch you again next week on "Capitol View."

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