(laid-back music) - Illinois lawmakers have a little more than two weeks left in their spring session and the big issues like the budget and legislative redistricting, still top of the agenda before adjournment.

I am Jak Tichenor, and this week's Illinois Lawmakers program begins with Amanda Vinicky, our colleague from WTTW's Chicago Tonight.

Good to have you on the program again.

- It is awesome to be back with you, Jak.

- We know, we've known for some time that the state's new fiscal budget is going to depend on the American rescue plan passed by Congress to supply about $7.5 billion in funding to the state of Illinois during COVID.

But there's been a catch with that on how we might end up actually being able to use some of that money.

Can you let our viewers know and our listeners know?

- Yeah, that $7.5 billion...

Welcome news, obviously.

I mean, I'd take it too.

But... (laughing) The problem being that it wasn't until really this week that the federal government sent guidelines on how that money can and can't be used.

And when you're counting on again, $7.5 billion for your budget, well, with two weeks left to go that's a tight timeline to figure this out particularly because one of really the biggest things that the state was planning and this is bipartisan agreement to spend those dollars on was paying back debt from earlier in the pandemic when Illinois, by the way, the only state to take advantage of a federal program for low interest borrowing to get us through the early days of the pandemic.

So what the issue is is can you sort of move that money around, make it fungible, okay, the feds said you can't use it to pay back any sort of debt, because that is a government service can Illinois sort of wiggle it, all right, use that money instead toward education and other actual service needs and then use the money that would've gone to that to pay down the debt?

Is that even possible, or might the feds look at Illinois' one particular situation because again only state to take advantage of this program and say, well, yeah, that was a COVID-related program.

So it counts going to be down to the wire because just as we know from Illinois government things don't move fast until they really, really have to; federal government operates in the same fashion.

So it's really sort of a, a pickle for the state of Illinois.

- Can it be worked out in the next two and a half weeks so we can meet that May 31st deadline?

- You know, again, I think it's tough because well, Illinois wants to hurry and get an answer from the feds as to more rules and guidelines and perhaps being lifted from those rules.

I'm not quite sure the feds are going to hurry (laughing) Illinois is in this situation.

That said, because there is this bipartisan agreement to use the money to pay down that COVID short-term debt, I do think that we could expect to see that they're going to figure something out.

This isn't going to be what ties up budget.

- It it's, it's, it's interesting because after May 31st you needed a three-fifths majority to pass anything with an immediate deadline or immediate implementation date, like a budget.

Are we concerned that it's going to go past that?

- I mean, again, Democrats have those votes can they stick together?

That is an entirely different question.

And what I think could really cause some consternation for the legislative leaders at that point for the democratic leaders, that is, would be you have some Democrats that are saying we've got to keep our spending in line.

Pritzker had promised to get a handle on the state's long-term budget and... And deficit.

- Oh, me too.

- The other Democrats who are ready to spend they say the pandemic is no time to cut services short.

- Amanda Vinicky thanks so much for your time on Illinois Lawmakers.

We always appreciate your expertise.

- It is my pleasure.

Thank you, Jak.

- Senator Republican leader Dan McConchie of Hawthorne Woods joins us now on Illinois Lawmakers for this week's newsmaker interview.

Senator, welcome to the program.

- Great to be on with you, Jak.

- First of all, I'd like to congratulate you on your election as a Senate Republican leader earlier in this year one of two new caucus leaders at the Illinois state house including speaker Welch in the house.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

You represent the 26th Senate district that's in the Northwest Chicago suburbs.

What led you into politics?

- Well, I actually, during college I did an internship and a summer program in Washington, DC and just really fell in love with, you know the chance to make a real difference in people's lives.

I mean, that, that really is what politics is about, right.

Being able to go out there and make policy differences.

That, that really excited me about that prospect of being able to do that, you know 'cause if we don't get our politics right really nothing else matters.

Right?

If government doesn't work for the people then the people aren't free to be able to pursue their dreams and livelihoods in the way they want.

- And what is your overall political vision for the state of Illinois from, from your perspective as Senate Republican leader smaller government, more efficient government?

- Well, definitely those things matter, right?

I firmly believe in the ability of people to be able to make their own decisions and lead their lives principle ways.

And the best way that that can happen is to government to facilitate really the boundaries around which society functions but allows people the opportunity to be able to work safely within those boundaries.

That's the way that I've always operated really believing in the spirit and in the ingenuity of the American people and what that can accomplish when you unleash them.

- We've got roughly two and a half weeks of the scheduled spring session left to go here.

During the month of May.

Before being elected Senate Republican leader you were part of a, an elite group in, in terms of making budget decisions for the state of Illinois.

One of the top numbers people when it comes to getting together to hammer out what's roughly this year about a $40 billion, $41 billion operating budget.

Where do things stand with the last few days of the session getting ready to tick by?

- Well, unfortunately the general assembly is very deadline driven and you know, we're still waiting on some numbers and things like that to come in.

We just got some new numbers this week that indicate that our revenue is much higher than expected there's money that's coming from the federal government, but there are rules associated with it that limits what exactly we can do with that.

And there's really been a lack of clarity so far as kind of just how much we're able to do what with that.

And so in some respects, we're having to wait for those things to be finalized in order for us to be able to make kind of final policy decisions.

But one of the things that really frustrates me in the current context is that we have a lot of reforms that are fundamentally necessary on a long-term basis for the state to do to get our fiscal house in order and on the right track.

And unfortunately with the free candy it seems that's coming from Washington DC there doesn't seem to be the appetite I wish there was here in the building to actually stand up and begin to do the hard work that we all know is going to be necessary soon.

- There's about $7.5 billion in federal money that's coming in under the new rescue plan.

But there, of course, as you said there are still many fiscal pressures on the state.

There was a, there was a new development this, this week that you kind of alluded to, and that has to do with the treasury department issuing interim rules on how money from the American rescue plan can actually be spent.

The rules that we're seeing this week say the money can't be spent for paying interest or on principle for government debt.

We borrowed what, $3.6 billion from the federal reserve to keep a this year's budget of float?

So this was obviously a big development with those rules.

- Yeah.

And I just had a talk with one of my budgeteers actually just a few minutes before coming on with you.

And there is outreach from the administration already back to Washington, DC.

To try to get clarity on that.

It's our understanding and our expectation that what the federal government did not want us to do is use it to be paying down old debts.

Things like our unfunded pension liabilities and things like that.

But the money that we borrowed from the federal reserve from the municipal liquidity fund designed to try to help us with cashflow issues during the crisis those were really in response to COVID, right?

And, and I do think at the end of the day we ought to be able to pay that back.

We're one of only a couple of States that actually borrowed money in this case.

And so it's my hope at the end of the day that we'll actually at least be able to pay off the debts associated that we incurred because of COVID.

- When do, when do we think we'll know about that?

Because as we know we've got till May 31st to actually pass a budget for the state of Illinois to have it take effect...

Immediately.

Or excuse...

Excuse me, on... July one, if it goes into overtime session then you need a three-fifths majority in both houses to pass a budget.

- Well, I'm hopeful that the federal government will get back to us shortly in regards to this.

It, you know, obviously we don't control what happens in Washington, DC.

You know, but it's a really big issue for us and with, you know, Senator Durbin being in senior leadership in the US Senate, it would be my hope that we'd be able to get a response back quickly to be able to allow us the level of clarity we need to figure out just how we need to be handling the budget here in the last couple of weeks.

- Now you've been a part of bi-partisan talks on budget making in years past.

Do the Republicans have a seat at the table this, this session?

- I think it's still early, too early to tell.

I mean, certainly the governor's office has, you know, made intimations in the past of wanting to be bipartisan.

But at the end of the day, when the rubber hits the road it's whether or not, you know when that final budget is drafted, usually in the wee hours of the morning of the last day is whether or not we're sitting there at the table helping craft something together.

Again, I've mentioned my frustrations both here and other places in regards to our failure to continue to get involved and really look at the fundamental structural reforms that we need to have happen.

And, and those are things that I'll continue to press for.

I do think that we can have a bipartisan budget this year if only because of the record amount of revenues above what it was that we expected both at the state level and with the federal money coming in.

But we still have very hard choices in the future.

- One of the things that made the capital budget work in the last couple of years ago there was Republican support for some of the business reform measures that went into that...

This year, though, governor Pritzker has asked to roll back some of that, like the franchise task, excuse me, franchise tax elimination.

All part of what he says, or about 923 bill, a million dollars, excuse me, in closing corporate tax loopholes... Those are things that Republicans fought hard to get on the table in the budget making process and the Capitol bill a couple of years ago; you don't want to see those roll back.

- Well, it was very frustrating for us to see the governor's introduced budget in which he was taking tax credits that he signed into law two years ago and then suddenly rename them corporate loopholes.

I mean, these are, that's ridiculous.

I mean... A political theater that is going on at the end of the day, you know, we do... Should not be billing back these type of credits that are helping create jobs across the state especially in some of our most destitute parts of the state.

This is vitally important for us to maintain these things for the business community and for jobs.

At the end of the day, I'm hopeful that the government that the governor will recognize the opportunity that exists because of, you know, just what's going on and what the federal money that we have coming and will abandon this at least for now in the effort of being bipartisan, actually coming together.

- One of the things that you, you've touched upon of course, is the, the need for public employee pension reform.

Will this... Will any of this come up in the final days of the session?

Because the last time I looked the unfunded liabilities were somewhere around $140 billion but the legislature's hands are kinda tied by some of the Supreme court decisions that have come about in recent years that say you can't really touch benefits that have already been earned.

- I don't suspect that we'll be doing much in regards to pension reform this year, but I, you know I continually ask for the Democrats to let's come down let's sit together, let's help figure this out because look at the end of the day, a pension is a promise.

And that is something that I do believe that our state workers, our teachers, that our state university employees, you know they deserve the fact that those promises have been kept, but we need to make some fundamental changes to the system in order to make sure that we can keep those promises.

At the end of the day pension reform is necessary not to reduce benefits to people who have earned them, but it's to make sure that the system is stable enough to be able to fulfill those promises going forward in the longterm.

Everybody who is honest about it will sit there and say that, yeah, we fundamentally need to have change.

There's going to be hard issues that come up.

But you know, just a couple of weeks ago, I sat down with a retired teacher who was telling me the types of things, the types of reforms she would support because she was worried about her pension being able to be there longterm.

You know she's a relatively recent retiree and is hoping, you know, to live for, you know, quite a while with her grandchildren, be able to enjoy life, but she has this nagging worry in the background.

Many of our state employees and our retirees have that worry.

That's why it really is a moral responsibility for us to get involved and actually address this problem once and for all.

- We've got about a minute left, Senator, and one of the last remaining big issues hanging over the state house is legislative re-districting.

Democrats have a view on how they want to proceed with that.

Republicans have a view.

How do you think this will play out in the last few days of the session?

- Well, I believe that it'll happen just as it happened years ago in which the Democrats decide to pop out a map at the relatively last minute, have very limited a number of hearings and transparency, and then just simply hope for the best in the inevitable litigation that will come from all sorts of angles going forward.

That is what, what has happened before I, you know we have tried to adjust that process this time by recommending an independent process that Democrats and Republicans have both said that they support.

But now when the rubber meets the road it appears that they're nearly interested in trying to jam through a map on a partisan role called a maximize their own power.

That's not the way you should bring together the sides in Springfield, and actually help people get restore faith in the process of what we have going on.

- And as you said, there will be inevitable, inevitably some legal challenges to that.

So this thing may play out for...

Months to come.

- That's historically, what's been the case, and this year you know, the Democrats are actually pushing through a map that is based on sampling data.

The real census data is not going to be coming out until later in the summer or early fall.

And so for them to meet the June 30 deadline for them to be able to have a partisan map process, they're actually using data that is, is like a poll in the election rather than actually counting the votes.

I think that's just absolute mismanagement of this process for partisan gain.

And well, the courts will ultimately have the final say in regards to that.

- Senator McConchie, we appreciate it.

And we will see this play out over the next few months.

Thank you so much for your time here on Illinois Lawmakers.

We'll be happy to have you back soon, sir.

- I look forward to it.

Thanks, Jak.

- We continue on Illinois Lawmakers with House Democratic Leader, Greg Harris House GOP Leader, Tom Demmer.

Thank you for joining us.

- Thanks for having us.

- I wanted to start if we could and talk a little bit about this change in leadership this session with a new speaker in the chair Leader Harris how does that change the way the house works?

- Speaker Welch has, you know, really emphasized you know, transparency in the way we do business in our caucus.

You know, he's empowered the committee chairs in a decentralized way, which is a little different from how we sometimes operated in the past.

So, you know, we're, we're also learning as we go through a post-pandemic session, which is so much, you know pent up need in this state.

So many issues that need to be addressed.

It's very much like, you know, a big gust of activity right now.

- Leader Demmer, what about your side of the aisle?

How have things changed?

- Well, this is certainly a year where we've seen a lot of change.

I mean, notably electing a new speaker after many many years, contributes to a change in the way the House operates; a different person who's building a different leadership team and bringing different voices to the table.

So that's had an impact in addition to the pandemic is returning to Springfield after a year where we were here very little, there was a lot of pent up demand a lot of things that didn't get done in previous years that are now being looked at again speaker Welch has indicated that he wants to turn the page and make this new day as we're getting towards the end of session and wrapping up there are still a few key issues that remain on the table redistricting, the state budget, using federal funds that are coming in.

I think that's an area for the speaker to be able to demonstrate with action that is really is a new day and bring both sides of the table to work on those important issues.

- You know, you mentioned the budget which looms large every year at this time of year you both are well-known as budgeteers for your individual caucuses.

How would you say things are going right now?

- Well, we've seen a better than expected revenue picture in the current fiscal year.

So, you know last year when the budget projections were made we were right in the middle of the beginning of COVID and boy, nobody had any idea what the economy was going to look like now.

So I think it's a positive sign that we've been able to outpace what our projections were.

I expect this week we might get an update for how that revenue picture will bleed into the upcoming fiscal year.

But, you know, there maybe wasn't quite as much pressure as we originally thought.

That's not to say we're out of the woods.

And there are certainly some significant financial challenges that remain just as there were prior to COVID, but there are some silver linings that we'll see.

- Leader Harris, your perspective?

- I agree with what a lot of Tom said.

I think we just gotta be very cautious though.

You know, the world as we know it has been changed by COVID in so many ways, and that includes how our economy is going to recover and function... You know, how fast, you know different businesses come back, hospitality, our tourism and convention businesses, how agriculture is going to return to normal with changes in demand for products both domestically and internationally.

So I think, you know... We'll have to be really cautious about, you know seeing like, oh, one month we're up, you know and that predicts a trend, you know, because things are changing real rapidly and so on, next month we're down.

So I think we need to be, you know, move cautiously.

But you know, clearly as, as Tom said, you know the last couple of months revenue numbers have been strong.

I think a lot of that has been based on the stimulus that president Biden has had and his bills.

And, you know, at some point that's going to sunset and then we have to see about people going back to work.

Well, we'll... We're also both looking at the federal dollars that are coming to Illinois.

It's a lot of money, but there were a lot of restrictions from the federal government and just yesterday y noon or one o'clock, you know I think it was, they finally released the rules.

So, you know, in the coming days, you know Tom and I and our teams and the governor's office are going to be, you know, pouring through those and trying to figure out how can we use that in the best way for the state of Illinois.

- I'm sure there's a delicate balance here.

You talk about the federal funding that's coming in to help with COVID relief.

But at the same time, the state is, is dealing with a budget that does not have additional revenue from a graduated income tax as voters did not approve that last year.

So where does that balance come in?

Leader Harris, I'll start with you.

- And then that's what we're going to have to go through.

We're going to have to look at the available revenues.

There are pressures.

I think both the Republicans and the Democrats and now the governor are supporting such as increasing funding for elementary and secondary education to begin to reduce the reliance on property taxes to fund our schools.

There have been increases in the Medicaid budget as a result of COVID.

You know, there were more people with more illnesses you know, we're gonna have to address that.

The governor has proposed closing loopholes on some of the wealthiest corporations; things that were given to them during the Trump years.

And I think if we need to close loopholes, we should do it on those who really have prospered while a lot of other folks have struggled during this time.

- Leader Demmer?

- You know, first I'd say that it is going to be a balancing act between operating budget and some of the federal resources that are available for us.

We know one of the biggest pressures that came out of the last year where we saw much greater than expected unemployment many new people who were not previously eligible for unemployment received unemployment.

We have a growing shortfall in our unemployment insurance trust fund which is paid into by employers all across the state large and small.

That's an area I think we need to give serious consideration to using federal funds to help fill that hole.

So we don't end up with businesses who have new costs on their books because you know, their industry or their business had, was shut down as a result of the pandemic, but, you know, kind of switch gears and talk about some of the quote unquote loopholes that the governor proposed closing...

I think we need to pay close attention to, you know, the concept of corporate loophole sounds good but we look at some of the actual examples of what the governor proposed...

It was, for example reducing a scholarship program for low-income families or it was reinstating a franchise tax on hundreds of thousands of the smallest businesses in the state of Illinois.

Many of the things that we're talking about were items that the governor himself signed into law as a result of bipartisan negotiations during the capital bill.

So we need to be really specific about what kinds of proposals we're talking about and, and not just look in the broader term of the corporate loophole.

- You mentioned earlier, the topic of redistricting.

That looms over everything else that is being negotiated at this point.

I wonder how this new congressional map new legislative maps are affecting the way every bill is, is being worked out in the legislature this year.

Leader Demmer, I'll start with you.

- Well first, we shouldn't be drawing legislative maps right now.

The United States census Bureau went through a massive effort to collect census data over the last year, the state spent tens of millions of dollars to collect it myself and many of my colleagues went around encouraging people in our communities to get counted.

We said it mattered for your community.

It mattered for your representation the maps that are being drawn right now behind closed doors don't use census data.

They don't use that count that we just went through so much effort to secure last year.

We should instead adopted bi-partisan independent commission that can draw legislative maps when the official data is available not use estimated data simply for a political partisan advantage.

- Leader Harris?

- Yeah, as much as I don't like to disagree with Tom, I will.

You know the constitution of the state of Illinois spells out how and when we should do the redistricting and that's the process we're engaged now in.

And we are using data from the census it's a different data set than, you know sometimes has been used, but you know we've been holding hearings, you know, dozens of hearings in every corner of the state of Illinois gathering input from members of the public, from special interest groups from the communities of interest, you know thoroughly hearing how people see their community and their region being represented.

And it's going to be hard work.

It's going to take a lot of work and more hearings to get this right but I think we'll get it done.

And I think we'll get it done on time.

- With less than a minute remaining I wanted to ask each of you, what are your priorities for the next two or three weeks as we're halfway through that last month in May?

Leader Harris?

- Getting a budget together, making sure that it's balanced making sure that we send the federal money out in ways that help the most number of people, you know in their homes and communities in the state of Illinois.

- Leader Demmer?

- I agree on the balanced budget, we have a big impact in all of our communities across the state from the pandemic.

Hopefully we can deliver some stability and relief to many of those communities.

And then I'd also add Leader Harris and I also work together with a bipartisan Medicaid work group.

We're working on a Medicaid legislation that hopefully can improve and support healthcare access for people in every community in the state.

- Certainly a lot of things to get through in the next couple of weeks before the scheduled end of session.

I appreciate your time Leader Harris, Leader Demmer.

Thanks.

- Thank you.

- Thanks.

- That'll do it for this edition of Illinois Lawmakers.

Thanks for joining us.

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