(intense music) - Welcome to Illinois Lawmakers, weekly coverage of the spring session of the Illinois General Assembly.

I'm Jak Tichenor along with Rich Miller of capitolfax.com.

Rich, we've been covering the state house for a long time, and there's nothing in my recollection over the last 30 some-odd years that can top last week's announcement that former House Speaker Michael Madigan had been indicted on federal racketeering and bribery charges.

What is your take, sir?

- We don't have enough time.

It was a shocking indictment.

As I've been telling my subscribers, you know, he always claimed to have this high standard of ethics.

And yet, here he is meeting with some alderman who's talking about a quid pro quo, and then he keeps on meeting with him for another more than a year, trying to get business for his law firm out of Chinatown, trying to, you know, get his kid a contract with some not-for-profit organization.

I mean, I think it shocked a lot of people who took the man at his word that he was not like this.

And, he just came off as a little grifter, a small-time grifter.

- Now of course the Speaker has maintained, former Speaker has maintained his innocence.

He entered a not guilty plea to the charges this week.

The closest thing I can think of, this is like plate tectonics.

It's like there's an earthquake, and all of a sudden it sends tremors all throughout the political landscape of the state.

- Well, I think it would've been a lot worse if they hadn't gotten rid of him a little over a year ago.

Keep in mind, he's no longer in power.

He holds a couple positions.

He's 13th Ward Democratic Committee Person.

And, he's a Committeeman on the State Democratic Central Committee.

People have called on him to resign both those positions, but he's no longer a state representative.

And, he's no longer the House Speaker.

So, he has no control right now, really over anything major in Illinois government, Illinois politics, except maybe his (indistinct) - As you look at the situation, how, you know, Democrats were going into the midterms facing some pretty strong political headwinds, the crime issue was gonna be one that the Republicans were gonna beat on.

We know that they were going to use the ethics reform issue as well.

How are, or can we tell yet how are Democrats trying to change the narrative as they go into a very difficult year?

- Well, what they want to do in the House anyway is say, "Hey, we replaced him," right?

They're all on record voting for Chris Welch and not voting for Mike Madigan.

There is no public record of them voting for Mike Madigan a year ago.

And so, they want to use that to put it behind them.

The Republicans obviously don't want to let them put it behind them.

And, there's some Democrats who can't seem to let go of him either.

We saw that this week when nine House Democrats called on the governor to put a freeze on some capital projects that Madigan was associated with until they could be checked out.

And, in fact, one of those members told the Better Government Association that everything, you know, connected to Madigan is now suspect.

I'm not sure she really meant to say it that way because she voted for Madigan, you know, quite often over the years for Speaker, for reelection on Speaker.

- Yeah, and we got a very, very short time left.

There was some very strong pushback from Latino lawmakers whose projects were gonna be endangered by this.

- Not just Latinos, but people around that area.

Like, you know, they wanted the projects.

They went to Madigan, asked him to put it on his list and he did it.

So, we're like, why is this even an issue anymore?

And as, as we're speaking right now, I'm still waiting on the governor to respond to because the nine decided that nevermind, after that push back, you don't have to freeze it.

Go ahead and spend no money.

But, the governor has not yet responded.

Sorry.

- That's right.

Rich Miller.

Thanks so much.

We always appreciate your time here on Illinois Lawmakers.

Democratic House Majority Leader, Greg Harris of Chicago joins us now on Illinois Lawmakers.

Leader, good to have you on the program again.

- Good to see you again, Jak.

- You're sort of the institutional memory on the democratic side of the aisle in the House for many years when it comes to budget making, human services issues and the like.

What are the key goals in this spring session for your caucus one and what you hope to accomplish?

- Well, I think we, you know, first and foremost want to continue the hard work that we've been doing along with governor Pritzker in, you know, getting the fiscal stability of the state back in order.

You know, we have paid down, you know, billions of dollars in debt.

We have reduced our bill backlog from $17 billion to now we're on a 15 day payment cycle.

We are fully paying our pension obligations.

We have had our first bond rating increases in 25 years as a state.

So, we're really moving in the right direction, but we need to keep going.

'Cause there's more work to do.

And in this year, following on COVID and with inflation out there, we're gonna be focusing on, you know, tax relief for Illinois families.

We're gonna be focusing on additional resources for law enforcement and for violence prevention.

And, we know that we need to, you know, increase access to mental health funding and substance abuse treatment in all of our communities.

So, those are just some of the, you know, highlights of things we're working on.

- You've been leading a lot of the budget discussions here in recent days.

You were in a hearing earlier today.

I'm just curious, as the budget plan was rolled out by the governor last month, how closely is that document going to mirror the actual work product of the Illinois House?

- Well, there'll be some changes, obviously, 'cause of the House and the Senate both will have, you know, we're both having our own hearings right now.

You know, bipartisan hearings, both the Republicans and the Democrats in both chambers going through, you know, there's 12,000 individual lines in the state budget and they're going through 'em one at a time what the governor proposed.

And, you know, every year there are changes.

I'm sure there will be some this year also.

But I think, you know, House Democrats, Senate Democrats are, you know, really, you know, pleased with this budget because again, it keeps us on a path of fiscal stability.

We're putting a billion dollars into tax relief for families.

You know, we're adding 350 million into elementary and secondary education to help bring local school property taxes down, putting more money into higher ed, 600 million into scholarships so young people can afford to get to college if that's the path they want to go on.

So, a lot of good things, obviously there'll be some changes.

- There.

You know, there are several items in here that deal with temporary tax relief, like the grocery tax, the scheduled bump in the gasoline tax and the like, and some temporary property tax relief.

Just curious, with respect to, you know, the issue with gasoline prices right now being what they are, is there anything the Illinois House and Senate can do to, in addition to this temporary freeze of the escalator on that, is there anything the House and Senate can do to help people who are feeling the pain at the pump?

- That's one of the things that we're looking at, and that's certainly come up from a number of my colleagues and as we, you know, go through the next couple weeks of hearings and debate, you know, that'll become more clear what the direction is.

- One of the things that's been pushed for many years and we've made progress in terms of how we've reformed the state's school funding formula to try to drive more money to those schools that are in poorer areas of the state.

Just wondering at this point, property taxes drive so much of that.

And, we're always in the upper echelon of high tax property tax states.

Is there any possibility in this session of the General Assembly, Leader, for a more permanent, more effective, if you will freeze or change in the property tax formula for the state of Illinois?

- Well, the, you know, property taxes first off are basically determined at the local level by your county, by your city, by your school board.

There are things the state can do, though to help with some of these things.

And, one of 'em, you know, and you hit the nail right on that, Jak.

That, you know, if the state does more of it share of paying for local public schools that will enable, you know, property taxes to go down locally.

So, you know, we're putting another $350 million in toward public schools this year.

You know, so that, you know, local districts can have less pressure on their taxes.

And, the governor also proposed, you know, property tax relief, you know, refunding some property tax payments to folks across the state this year.

So, that's another thing we're looking at.

- You touched on this at the beginning of the interview, and I want to dig down a little deeper into this, talking about crime.

Violent crime, of course, is a major concern among voters heading into the midterm elections.

From what I've been reading Democrats are polling poorly on that issue in the state.

What are the House Democrats wanting to put on the table to show folks in a tangible way that you're committed to reducing the amount of violent crime in the state of Illinois?

- I mean, and sadly, you know, if you look at every state and you know, every major municipality you've seen uptick in some violent crimes, a big uptick, since, you know, COVID came along.

So, there are a lot of things we into as a state.

You know, we have put money in last year's budget for a new State trooper cadet class.

We're funding even more than the governor's new proposed budget.

We're told by, you know, police and prosecutors that, you know, a barrier to, you know, prosecuting some of the cases has been a backlog of DNA evidence and other forensic evidence that is processed by the State Police Crime Labs.

You know, we've built a new State Police Crime Lab We're getting that online so that, you know, evidence can get taken care of in a more rapid way.

We're providing support for local police departments to cover some of their expenses for things like body cams for officers, additional training for officers.

And really importantly, you know, first responders have borne really so much of the brunt of COVID that we put a lot of resources in our budget to be sure that, you know, folks who need additional support in mental health, substance abuse treatment, et cetera, especially those are, you know, unique to their profession have access to the right tools.

So, you know, providing additional resources to law enforcement is important.

But, the other thing we're doing is trying to put money into addressing the immediate effects of crime and also the root causes of crime.

In my neighborhood, we have what are called violence interrupters.

These are community based organizations, and they employ people, you know, who had may have been involved in gangs or crime in the past, who turned their lives around to help intervene, you know, help lead young people off to a better path.

And, the science and the data shows that those interventions have worked.

So, we're gonna be, you know, making that more available.

But in the long term, you know, we also know we need to invest in education funding as we talked about.

We've got to provide job training for folks, and job opportunities, so they see, you know, alternative paths for themselves.

And, we've gotta go and address some of the systemic inequities of lack of affordable housing of quality education, all those things that are, you know, influences that are a precursor.

- Last week's indictment of former House Speaker Mike Madigan on federal racketeering and bribery charges brought renewed calls for more ethics reform in the Illinois House and Senate.

There was an ethics bill that was passed last year, and the Republicans are saying, "We need to dig back, kind of reopen that whole thing again, look at the ideas of having maybe a statewide grand jury power for the Illinois Attorney General to investigate alleged public corruption and having the legislative Inspector General have the ability to issue subpoenas without the consent of the legislative Ethics Commission."

Do do either of these have a chance of passing this year?

- Well, I think, you know, the bill we passed last year responded to a lot of the things that we actually saw transpire both in the case you mentioned, and a couple others involving legislators where we did establish a statewide lobbyist registration database, where, you know, we put a revolving door for that prohibition into place.

And, we made prohibitions on elected officials being able to lobby other sections of government and a lot more financial disclosure.

Are there other things we can do?

I'm sure there are.

And, as we monitor these cases, as they go through our system of justice, I think we need to look carefully to see what are, you know, solutions that are really gonna work.

And, I think my colleagues and I are certainly, we know we have to keep working on this stuff.

- You're going to be retiring, sadly, at the end of this term of yours, and I can't let you go without asking about your time at the State House.

You were in the vanguard of so many progressive things like same sex marriage, Medicaid reform.

What stands out to you as one of the high water marks for what you've been able to accomplish there and over the years?

- Well, yeah, certainly Illinois was the last state that was able to pass marriage equality, you know, before it had to go to the Supreme Court.

So, I'm really proud of our state.

We were the only Heartland state to, you know, ever vote it into law.

You know, there were other court decisions, but on the West Coast and East Coast were where other successes were.

So, I'm really proud of Illinois as a Heartland state, that people came together to do the right thing for equality and respect for all of our families.

- Well, you've always been a powerful voice for those who don't always have a place at the table.

And, I think that's gonna be a lasting legacy, Leader.

Thank you so much for your time.

Really appreciate it.

And, we'll be trying to talk to you again before your term's up.

Okay?

- Well, I got a couple more months, so hopefully we'll do that.

- Excellent.

Thank you so much, Leader.

- Thank you.

- Up next on Illinois Lawmakers, Democratic Senator Cristina Castro of Elgin and Republican Senator John Curran of Downers Grove.

Senator Castro chairs the Senate Executive Committee, and Senator Curran is the spokesperson, a Republican spokesperson on the Assignments and Ethics Committees.

Thanks for joining us and taking the time out on what I know is a very busy day for you both.

I wanna start with the budget.

The governor of course said a few weeks ago, the state's economy's turning around, income's up and we're paying down our overdue bills and making our pension payments on time.

What are the key areas of the governor's budget proposal do you think need to be addressed when it comes to areas like education, social services and infrastructure in the next next few months?

- I guess I'll go first.

Thank you for inviting us today.

I think one of the things that I was pleased to see in the budget and obviously the payment on education, making sure we make our payment as well as the fact that we are making not only our traditional pension contributions, but also adding a little bit more.

I think there's a lot of conversations around the budget, in particular, on different aspects, but, you know, I am actually pleasantly pleased to see what the governor introduced.

You know, for my constituents, you know, increase in map funding is very important, making sure, you know, college is affordable for many students.

And also programs as you see, you know, investment in LIHEAP.

And also, you know, obviously there's going to be some kind of pauses on some of the taxes as far as gas tax, as well as groceries for a year to give some of our constituents who have been hit hard by the pandemic, a bit of a break.

- Senator, thanks so much.

Senator Curran from the GOP side.

- Very nice to be with you both this morning.

You know, we're in a period of time here where we have unexpected revenues, nearly $4 billion in unexpected revenues available, which is going to make the budget process certainly easier, but it's a unique opportunity for us going forward to address some long term deficits.

You know, Senator Castro mentioned education and the pension payment are two musts.

It's great to see that as a starting point.

We have real problems with the Unemployment Trust Fund.

And, you know, unemployment benefits have been taxed.

It's been spent going through the pandemic.

That is something that we must address in this budget.

The governor's proposal doesn't get us anywhere near where we need to go on that.

And, that's going to be a massive tax increase on business on employers if we don't do better in this budget process.

And then, I, you know, the Senator also touched upon some of the temporary tax relief.

I think we wanna take a look at how can we actually drive some long term tax relief to middle class families, lower income families here in the state.

So, I think this is an opportunity to, while we're talking short term, let's keep an eye on long term as well.

So, you know, we have work ahead to do, and I think we can get there.

- I'm curious, one of the things that always comes up every year, but other than the temporary property tax break that the governor's proposing, the permanent solution to property tax relief seems always to be elusive.

Is there any sense that there could be any more concrete action taken on that during this spring session?

- Well, I mean, education funding is the path to permanent property tax increase.

You know, we fund education in this state in a manner that is not followed by the majority of states in this country.

We fund it, you know, wholly, solely on local property taxes, just about.

This is an opportunity.

We are making the full payment on, you know, on the new funding formula, but we do need to look at ways to shoulder a greater burden of that education funding to provide longterm sustainable property tax relief for residents throughout the state.

- Senator Castro?

- You know, Senator Curran touched on a very important topic.

We've also looked at ways to, for efficiencies as government accountability and transparency in a lot of different aspects as people who always introduce various pieces of legislation.

And, I think we're always open to having those conversations.

Both sides have been working diligently on to reduce waste in government.

- You know, in addition to the property tax relief and the gas tax relief that the governor's proposing in his budget proposal for the spring, you know, at the same time, I just watched pump prices jump by about 30 or 40 cents here where I live.

Is there anything that the General Assembly can do to help, you know, give some relief at the pump?

- There are some proposals floating around on some temporary relief at the pump and pauses on fuel tax.

The balance there is, you know, you have to couple that with we have great infrastructure needs.

Right now, people are hurting at the pump.

Cost of living is becoming a real big concern for middle class, lower income families.

And, so it is an opportunity we have right now to provide some temporary relief or potentially permanent relief on gas prices, but there's only so much the state controls on that.

A lot of it is outside of our control, but we certainly have an opportunity to do our part.

- Senator Castro?

- I think that's, you know, I think Senator Curran is correct.

I mean, that's why we're looking at some of these temporarily freezes from the grocery tax to the gas tax, trying to give our families some relief here.

You know, the state can you so much.

Obviously, no one anticipated, you know, the what's going on abroad and with Ukraine and, you know, Russia attacking Ukraine and other aspects.

But, you know, we, as lawmakers, are working very hard to see where we can help middle and working class families work to give them some relief.

And, especially in the state budget.

- One of the things that, of course, that sent shock waves rolling through the capital over the last week was the indictment of former house speaker, Mike Madigan on federal racketeering and bribery charges.

And, that has brought a renewed call for more ethics reform at the State House.

Senator Curran, you serve on the Ethics Committee.

What are some of the things that you'd like to see before lawmakers adjourn on April the eighth?

- Well, we had a comprehensive package last year that we passed that was a good first step.

However, there was much more on the table that we had put forward to discuss.

Two items in particular, proposals that I've put forth last year and continue this year, that would address specifically, you know, what's going on with the former speaker and just corruption in government is one, an expansion of the statewide grand jury, which would get the Attorney General involved in investigating public corruption crimes.

The Attorney General has a statewide grand jury for limited purposes that he convenes.

We can expand that to public corruption and actually get our state's top law enforcement official involved in this arena.

Secondly, an expansion of state RICO.

So, the Racketeering Influence Corrupt Organizations Act.

These are the tools that the federal government uses to investigate public corruption.

Our local law enforcement officials don't have those same tools.

We need to equip and empower our local law enforcement officials with the same tools under RICO, state RICO that they have under federal RICO in routing out public corruption.

We are wholly reliant on federal authorities investigating corruption in this state.

We need to unleash our local law enforcement officials in this arena.

And, those are two proposals that we would expand the field in terms of being able to investigate in.

'Cause we know it's not just corruption at the highest levels.

We want to make sure we investigate it throughout all facets of government in the state to make sure people are getting fair, honest, and ethical government.

- Senator Castro, how would those proposals be received on the Democratic side of the aisle in the Senate?

- You know, I think one of the things that we have worked on and we continuously work on is ethics proposals.

As John Curran mentioned, we passed with bipartisan support a package last session.

You know, I think you, you know, I sit on the legislative Ethics Commission.

I'm actually pleased that we appointed a very strong Inspector General, Judge Michael McCuskey.

Despite some of the back and forth that went on there, he is someone who takes this role very, very seriously.

I think when it comes to ethics, we're always open to conversations to see how we can make it stronger, how to make it stronger.

And, we'll always entertain those.

- Senators.

Thanks so much for your time this morning on Illinois Lawmakers.

We certainly appreciate it.

And, looking forward to having you back on the program as quickly as we can.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

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