(enchanted upbeat music) - Welcome back to another edition of Illinois Lawmakers.

We're taking a closer look at how the legislature is shaping things up with just a little less than two weeks to go in the spring legislative session.

I'm joined with Rich Miller of the Capitolfax.com website.

Rich, thanks for joining us once again.

- Thanks for having me.

- We always look as we get into the last couple of weeks of session, and say, okay, what's left.

And usually we're talking about things like the budget some different budget news this year, though with better than expected forecasts and some good news from fed with federal relief.

What's left in the next couple of weeks in terms of how that money gets distributed?

- Well, I think if anybody had said a year ago that we'd actually, the state would actually have extra money laying around to pay off debt, $2 billion in debt, I think people would be shocked.

But the money has been coming in.

I think partly thanks to federal stimulus of the economy, obviously.

The house majority leader, Greg Harris just announced a few minutes before airtime here, that the state would pay back $2 billion that we had borrowed from the U S Treasury Department with state money instead of taking federal aid and using that to pay it back the way the state had originally figured it would do.

So that frees up billions from the federal government that Illinois can spend on other things.

- How significant is that?

Sure, how significant is that, that they're able to pay back that debt with state money rather than trying to, again, borrow from Peter to pay Paul.

- It's gigantic news because when it first came out that the federal government wasn't going to allow states to use federal money to pay off loans, everybody kind of freaked out.

Because it looked like it was going to blow a huge hole in the budget.

And it turns out that revenues are coming in quickly enough that the state doesn't need to do that, which is...

I've been covering Illinois government for a very long time.

And it's been a long, it's been quite a while since we've had like decent budget news.

It's odd.

It feels strange.

- When it comes to the budget too, I know that there was a lot, a big question mark over that $350 million in performance-based funding, evidence-based funding for education.

It seems like maybe that might make its way back into the budget?

- That's definitely in.

In fact, it was always in.

The governor basically just gave up trying to keep it out of there.

He said he always supported it, but he's got a funny way of supporting things sometimes.

Basically he didn't think that the state had the money.

He wanted another kind of a loophole closed, a decoupling from a federal tax break, and that didn't happen.

And so they found the money.

Again, legislators in both parties were adamant that that $350 million was going to be in the budget no matter what.

And he finally just consented to it.

- Quickly as we get ready to wrap this up, redistricting looms large over not just the negotiations over a new map, but over every piece of legislation that goes through over the next 10 days or so.

Do you think we'll see a map anytime soon?

- They better.

I mean, there are requirements in the constitution.

Hearings have to be held.

There have to be three different readings in both chambers.

And there's a hard deadline for the Democrats of May 31.

And the reason being in a house, they have 73 members which is two more than a super majority.

They are not going to be able to draw 73 districts that are safe for every Democrat.

So in order to get a majority vote, they have to adjourn by May 31st.

Beyond that, it takes 71.

- Sure, with that, of course, we're out of time.

Rich Miller of Capitalfax.com.

Thanks so much.

- Thanks for having me.

- House Republican leader, Jim Durkin of Western Springs joins us now on Illinois Lawmakers.

Leader, great to have you back on the program.

- Jak, I'm glad to be here, thank you so much.

- Historic changes in the Illinois House this spring after the departure of longtime speaker, Michael Madigan.

How has your relationship with the new speaker Chris Welch?

He promised a new path forward in the working relationship with Republicans.

How's it going so far?

- I think we've had some bumps in the road but I've known speaker Welch for over 20 years.

He's a resident of the West Suburbs.

He and I will agree some things.

We disagree on a lot of things.

But he's a very competitive person.

Right now, I will say that we're not, hopes of inclusion and transparency are things that myself and my caucus were hoping for.

And we're just not seeing that at this time in session.

We have two weeks left, we got very important issues on the table, but we're really not included on major issues that confront Illinois.

- Well, one of those issues that still, of course, the one that most of the public watches is the budget making process.

There was some help from the federal government this year with revenues, even though they are improving according to the Joint Commission on Governmental Accountability and Forecasting, the revenues are starting to pick up but you're still looking at what, something like a $1.5 billion deficit - That's what the governor's office has stated.

But what's important to know is that we are going to be in receipt of some $8 billion of federal stimulus money.

We've been told that there are restrictions on the use of this money, but what's more important that we need to figure out is what we will use this for, not what we can't use it for.

I know that we can't use it to pay down the debt that the governor took out from the federal government within the last year and a half, and also from a debt that he took out under his executive authority.

So there shouldn't be a collaboration, but I think more importantly there needs to be a public airing by the governor's office of how this money can be used based on what the treasury department has indicated through their letter to the administration last week.

We just can't take the position that this is a one-time hit.

Let's spend the money.

We need to be prudent.

We need to find out exactly what type of debt that we own in different areas within the state, starting with the Unemployment Trust Fund which took a significant hint at over the past year because of the pandemic.

That is money that is owed.

We're approximately $5 billion in a home with the UI trust fund.

So instead of creating new programs which I'm hearing whispers about, we should be focusing on austerity within state governments, living within our means and paying off people that we, whether it's debt service or paying vendors even at a greater pace.

So, but right now I will say that the negotiations that we traditionally have, have been unproductive.

And I know that things move quickly in the last two weeks, but we do have a complex issue regarding the federal stimulus money.

And there needs to be a public hearing of the administration of how this money can be used because now the governor's office is saying that they're gonna go back to the treasury department to get some type of exception to be able to use this money to pay off debt that the state took out from the federal government.

So give us a, let's haer this out.

Let's, this is the party.

The Democrats would talk about transparency within government, be transparent about this.

There should be at least a hearing before our revenue or executive committees by in the office, the governor's office of budget to give us what their thoughts are.

But also I'd like to hear from the governor what his priorities are with this money.

I know what our priorities are, I'd like know where his are.

- Well, one of the priorities that the governor mentioned earlier this year and has stuck to that is trying to repeal what he calls something like $932 billion, oh, $932 million.

Let me get to B separated from the M there.

And that has to do with corporate, closing corporate tax loopholes.

Some of those things were actually like the franchise tax removing that a couple of years ago, those were key issues when it came to business reforms that Republicans insisted upon when it came to passing a Capitol bill.

- You know, it's...

Since the governor lost the Fair Tax to vote, last November he has used this opportunity to lash out at people who opposed it.

Mainly Republicans, and people who support Republican interests.

And is specifically gone back and dangled whether it's the franchise tax and manufacturers purchase credit, the Invest in Kids Act and said that these are now corporate loopholes.

But when the bill was passed two years ago, in which we negotiated in good faith, the governor said that these are good business incentives.

These are job creation incentives.

But it's very difficult for me to believe that there's going to be any trust with the administration if the governor is gonna go back on not only just a handshake deal, but these were matters that were encrypted within state law.

And it's very, it's disappointing.

And I don't think the governor, I know the governor doesn't need to go there because we're looking at an additional 1.4 close to $1.4 billion of new revenue coming in this year than we had previously predicted.

So to me, this is more about, it seems that if he continues on with reversing and calling these things loopholes it's more vindictive.

And I think that that's unfortunate.

We should not be expecting that, nor should that come from the chief executive of the State of Illinois.

You've got to live by your word.

You've got to live by the commitments that you've made.

And if the governor wants to talk about finding ways to restrict finances within the state, he needs to start on a commitment he made or the statement he gave to his agency heads to find cuts within the agencies.

This is back in 2019.

I've asked them twice for other report on those cuts, and they still have not received anything from him.

So, but that was the governor unilaterally, same as in 2019 that we need to tighten our belts.

We need to have agency austerity.

We need to have cuts within the agencies.

We're still waiting for them.

So this is, again, this is unnecessary.

As I said earlier, I think the governor shouldn't be going down this road.

He should be looking prospectively, how we can fix this state financially, whether it's with our pension systems.

But I will say that spending priorities of the governor needs to be reexamined as well.

- One of the things I wanted to touch upon in this interview, leader is the House Republicans legislative agenda to re-imagine Illinois, a package of 81 bills based on four fundamental principles to try to capture the imagination and support of voters to crack down on political corruption, buckle down on ensuring financial responsibility, improving the job climate for the state of Illinois.

You've said earlier that the GOP is no longer the party of no.

Ethics reform has gotta be at the top of that list.

What do you wanna still, what do you wanna see this session?

And Democrats too are calling for some of the major principles.

- Well, we're two weeks out and there's been no discussion with the Republicans on ethics reform.

We have had blue ribbon panels.

We've had bi-partisan bicameral committees looking into how we can police ourselves.

Till this day, it's beyond disturbing that we haven't taken up or given a vote on something as simple as banning legislators from serving as lobbyists.

Or expanding the disclosures in the economic interests or giving our inspector general more flexibility to open up investigations.

I just want to know what it's going to take the Democrats for them to move off this.

We have, I believe eight former members, Democrat members of the House and Senate that have been indicted by the US attorney's office for various cases of corruption and bribery.

And we have another six people that have currently been indicted, relating to a large scandal that is going on in state.

I don't know what else it's gonna take to motivate them to do something simple.

As we've said, these are simple concepts.

It shouldn't be over lawyered which a lot of people do on this.

But I am afraid that I'm looking at a situation where the Democrats may be running out the clock and what I've seen them do before.

And that the household passed a version of ethic to form, the Senate will pass their own version.

And then there's no reconciliation.

And we kick the can down the road.

So Jak, I don't know what it's gonna take for the Democrats to work with us and to produce a simple product that is going to at least give the public some confidence that we're prepared to police ourselves.

- One of the things that, we've got about 45 seconds left, leader.

One of the things of course it's been in the news in past few months has been the disaster with COVID at the LaSalle Veterans Home.

You've talked about pressing criminal charges against those who may be responsible for the failures that led to the deaths of 36 veterans there.

- We've seen this before.

There has to be answers, there needs to be accountability.

Accountability doesn't mean that we're going to look at what happened and do better next time.

Families need accountability.

Family needs, families of these heroes, there needs to be an apology, but I'm not satisfied with that.

We have statutes in place that deals specifically with negligence within the long-term care industry that could result in criminal penalties.

And when you have 36 deaths that could have been avoided.

And I think it's very clear that this could have been avoided.

We need accountability, and it's gonna start with the attorney general office the same way that they did it a few years ago in plenty.

- Leader Durkin, thank you.

We wanna hear more about that as this situation plays itself out.

We'll be back to as the session unwinds.

Thank you so much for your time on Illinois Lawmakers, always appreciate it.

- My pleasure, thank you.

- [Jak] Yes, sir.

- The conversation continues here on Illinois Lawmakers with senators Terri Bryant and Dave Koehler.

Thank you both for joining us.

- Hi Jennifer.

- Hi, thanks for having us.

- Well, when you get to this time of year with the legislature, the big topic turns to budget, of course.

The bipartisan commission on government for fiscal accountability reports that revenues were better than perhaps expected.

Where do you see negotiations at this point?

I'll start with you Senator Bryant.

- Thank you.

Well, obviously we've had multiple bills go through this year that are increased spending or expanding programs that are already in place.

I think the good news is we have more money than expected.

And then I hope that we use that to pay down our backlog of bills and of course, to pay down some of our pension debt as we move forward.

- Senator Koehler.

- Yes, I'm on CADVA.

We meet periodically to just look at how the state of Illinois is doing in terms of its financial resources.

And I think that is good news that we do have a better than expected revenues coming in.

In addition that with the ARPA money that we have from the federal government.

I think we're in a much better shape than we anticipated a year ago, being so.

Part of the discussion we're having now with the federal government is of course, to see whether we can pay off the debt that we intended to pay off.

Many of us legislators thought that's the first priority we should have is, is to pay off back debt.

So we'll see how that goes, but we still have some budget struggles this year.

I guess I'm hopeful that we're gonna get to a balanced budget.

One of the things I think most of us can agree upon is that we'd need to fund the evidence-based school funding.

We can't leave our schools out on this.

- I wanna get to that in just a moment, but how much of this do you think will be a bi-partisan measure or will this budget be a Democrat or one party only budget?

- Well, I'll... Go ahead, senator.

- I hope it's a bipartisan budget because when we do, and I've been through both experiences where we've had a bipartisan vote and where we've not.

It always feels much better when we have a bipartisan vote.

I hope we can get there.

I don't know, I'd yield to my colleague, Senator Bryant.

- Well, I would say I've been a part of the bipartisan voting but I've also been a part of when we broke the budget impasse of bipartisan negotiations.

Unfortunately right now I don't believe there's bipartisan negotiations going on.

So it's difficult to have a bipartisan vote when there's not bipartisan negotiations.

So maybe Senator Koehler can help out with that.

And he's quite - I will try.

- I will try - Senator Taylor, you brought up some of the education funding.

There's been concern about whether that's $350 million in additional evidence-based funding could be included in this year's budget.

And now we hear that perhaps because of that federal funding, that hole can be filled.

Where do you see education funding in terms of pre-K through 12 at this point, Senator Bryant?

- Well, obviously we made a commitment to fully fund the evidence-based funding model.

We're I think this is our fourth year in, in the first year of governor Pritzker's administration.

He did not fund that.

We did find it, I believe last year and now it's good news that we're gonna be funding it again.

We made a commitment to fully fund that and it was gonna take seven to 10 years.

So I don't think that there's any excuse for not funding it, especially when we see the good numbers coming in that we see coming in.

So before we create new programs or expand existing programs, we have to fulfill the commitments that we have already made.

- Senator Koehler.

- Yeah, and I think this is a good example of a bipartisan approach to this.

I agree exactly with what Senator Bryant has said, this is a commitment we made, our schools are depending on it.

And we have to follow through with that.

And I think that DLC at the end of this budget process we will have that amount back in the budget.

- Pre-K through 12 is just part of the education picture, colleges and universities also had significant struggles through the pandemic in addition to some things that they were already challenged with.

In terms of higher education funding, Senator Koehler, I'll start with you.

What's that going to look like in the coming year and how are you going to work to make those schools whole?

- I think it was the same issue as we just talked about with K through 12.

We have to fund community colleges.

We have to fund higher education.

We need to really make sure that higher education is affordable for our citizens.

We know that during some of the budget struggles that we have a few years ago that we lost a lot of students.

And what happens is that once those students go out of state to a school, they tend to stay in that area.

And so we need to do everything we can to make sure that the Illinois students choose Illinois schools first.

- Senator Bryant.

- I would just concur on what Senator Koehler just said.

Of course we have to at the very least keep the funding for colleges and stable.

I don't know that we'll be able to give them additional funds but of course, if we're able to create policies that allow for new students to come in or for our students to stay things like the MAP Grant.

And I'm in conversations right now with SIU in regard to aviation program, and also some international students in particular about a hundred students that we could accept from China.

They're already in an accounting program and we're trying to make some virtual stuff a little easier for them.

I hope that the administration with SIU will help out with that, but all of our nine public universities I think are gonna be in decent shape with this budget.

And of course they can't go out and tax the way a community college can if they have to.

But, so we need to make sure that we're fulfilling our obligation to them.

- One of the other top issues that we've been reading and hearing a lot about has to do with energy legislation.

Whether it's subsidies for some of the larger utilities who are asking for help in terms of converting to clean energy or keeping some of their facilities open, as well as making more clean energy jobs available to areas that maybe have lower unemployment rates.

Senator Bryant, where would you start in terms of this energy legislation?

What needs to be included?

- Well, there are some competing pieces of legislation.

One of course is backed by a ComEd.

The other is backed by Ameren.

I lean a little bit more towards the Ameren approach and that's because it has the coal component.

Many of the viewers are gonna remember that we have Prairie state in St. Libory, and Prairie state bonded the money that was used to build that facility.

If the ICJIA plan that goes through, then Prairie State would close before those bonds are even paid off.

So whatever negotiations are going on, we wanna make sure that it includes a coal component to it.

Even if we began to move out of coal dependency, that's a little ways down the road.

So we have to make sure that we at least give places like Prairie state till 2045 to complete that process.

- Senator Koehler.

- Yes, and I agree.

I think we have to, this is a very complex issue.

I represent an area that has three coal-fired generators.

One is closed, one's due to close.

The other is on life support.

We cannot leave these communities behind.

We know that that coal is just pretty not competitive anymore in the marketplace, but a lot of these small rural communities downstate communities, this is the largest tax base for the school districts, for the local governments.

And we have to have them built into the transition so that these aren't forgotten communities.

One of the, I guess, the good news is that we're all trying to get to the same place, and that is a carbon free environment.

But there's lots of different avenues to get there.

I'm sponsoring a bill in the Senate, a Republican sponsored in the House for carbon capture and sequestration study.

This is one Avenue in which we can help our ethanol industry, some of our coal plants, whatever get to a carbon free future, but to do it in a way that we have not really seriously considered up to this point.

So I think that we have to just all work together to make sure we have a number of approaches for different areas of the state.

- With just a little over a minute or so remaining, redistricting and ethics remain top issues as well, especially in terms of negotiations on some of these larger issues.

Where does redistricting stand and Senator Koehler, I'll start with you.

Where should it end?

Is this a partisan only decision?

- It doesn't have to be, but it probably will be this year.

Let's be honest.

I think that redistrict and we've had a G over 20 hearings all over the state on this.

We're looking at how we protect the Voting Rights Act the federal government passed decades ago.

We're looking at communities that relate to one another.

I think the MAP will be out towards the end of this week, maybe early next week.

People can review it and we'll take some public comment at that point.

And I think we intend to pass the MAP before the end of the session this year.

- Senator Bryant.

- I would say that it is most certainly partisans.

And so Republicans have had no input and have not even been included into the locked room where the MAP what's is called the MAP room.

I would just call on Governor Pritzker to fulfill his campaign promise which would be to veto any MAP that includes that putting it together with politicians and lobbyists.

He called for independent MAP-making.

I'd like to hold him to that promise.

And if this MAP is not created by an independent group, then he should veto the map.

But we'll see there's, two weeks in the legislature is a very long time, even though it seems like a short time.

A lot of things can happen between now and the end of session.

- Two weeks, you're right remaining in the legislative session.

And with that, we're out of time.

Senator Koehler, Senator Bryant, thanks so much for your time.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- That's all the time we have.

Senator Bryant, Senator Koehler, thanks so much.

For Illinois Lawmakers, I'm Jennifer Fuller.

Thanks for watching.