(bright music) - Welcome to "Illinois Lawmakers."

I'm Jack Tichenor along with Rich Miller of CapitalFax.com.

Rich, as we wind down the coverage of the spring session of the Illinois General Assembly, we've got a budget, we've got a tax relief package.

What are your major takeaways from this spring session?

- Well, they got it done, and they got it done basically on time.

They didn't bite off more than they could chew, which is what I think they did last year.

And as you saw, they kept having to come back in the session over and over and over again.

Hopefully, that is not going to be a problem this year, or an issue.

- At this point, like you say, the budget's locked in.

Is there any pressing issue that you can think of that still needs attention between now and the fall veto session after the November elections?

- No, (laughs) but I mean, this is Illinois, right?

So, we could always stand to improve things, although I'm not sure legislation is going to do that.

I think they did some pretty big things.

They didn't revisit the Safety Act, but they did throw a bunch of money at law enforcement, a couple of hundred million dollars not only for law enforcement, but for anti-violence initiatives, summer hiring, et cetera.

They did some fairly big things, but also things that were generally supported across the board.

Republicans complained a lot about the tax cuts being temporary, yet almost all of them voted for almost all the tax cuts, so-- - [Jack] No, go ahead.

- No, I mean, so, it was a productive session.

It was designed to try to counter the headwinds that the Democratic Party is going to be facing this fall.

The President cannot seem to boost his poll numbers, even a popular war isn't doing that for him, which is so odd.

So they have their work cut out for them.

They have some things that they can talk about at the doors with constituents at meetings and what have you, and I guess they just hope for the best.

- Will this be enough to protect Democrats flanks moving into the midterms?

- Well, the voters will have to make that decision.

I think you have in the House, this is the first election year that House Speaker Chris Welch is facing with his members.

And so he has not entirely new team, but he has a new team.

He's trying to do some different things.

And, they do have the map going for them.

They drew the district maps.

So unlike 1994, when the Democrats lost the Senate and lost the House, they had already lost the Senate in '92, the Republicans drew those maps, Democrats drew these.

It'd be very tough for them to lose the majority, even in an off year.

- Rich Miller, thank you so much for your expertise and your time here on "Illinois Lawmakers."

We certainly appreciate it.

Joining us now on "Illinois Lawmakers," Democratic House Speaker, Chris Welch.

Great to have you back on the program, sir.

- Hey Jack, always a pleasure to be with you, my friend.

- Of course, last week, Governor Pritzker signed into law, a new $46.5 billion budget for the state starting for the budget year, beginning on July 1st.

A key component of this budget is tax relief, upwards of about $2 billion in tax relief.

How is this one of the key framework pieces for the Democratic agenda in the spring session and moving forward?

- Well, Jack, this is a historic budget, and we're able to provide tax relief, as you said, almost $2 billion of tax relief because of the good fiscal management that the state has seen under Democratic leadership the last four years, and we've had four balanced budgets in a row now.

And instead of a $17 billion debt that we had under the prior administration, now we have a surplus two years in a row, and we were able to actually listen and respond to the concerns that we're hearing back in our districts when it comes to this record inflation.

We haven't seen inflation like this in almost 40 years.

And so it was important that, because of the condition that we find ourselves in that we were able to respond to the voters, and this tax relief is needed, especially at the gas pump, at the grocery store, property tax rebates.

Voters are getting what they asked their elected officials for.

- Republicans say, "Well, this is all good.

"You had more money come into the state's coffers "because of the economic recovery.

"There was also about $16.8 billion in ARPA funds "that certainly help the situation out."

Their key criticism is this is mostly temporary tax relief, and the cynical side of it would be from their point of view that this is an election year budget.

- Well, I don't think that anything we do the other side of the aisle will say something positive about.

They just can't find themselves capable of doing that.

And so, what should we look at to say that this is something good for our state, that this is something credible and a good thing?

Look at what Moodys just recently did, with a second credit upgrade in less than a year because of our budgeting.

And they talk about because of the good revenue streams that we put in place.

Let's remember that we made some significant changes before the pandemic that have been put in place that are really contributing to the state's revenue stream consistently, year after year.

And so let's look at what the credit agencies are saying about our state and when they explain why they've given us credit upgrades now, our third credit upgrade in the last year.

I don't wanna listen to political rhetoric, 'cause the same party that's saying tax relief is a gimmick voted for that tax relief.

I don't understand how something's a gimmick if you're voting in support of it.

You voted in support of it, because it was needed.

- Is this sustainable Mr. Speaker?

- Well, I certainly believe, because of good management and good fiscal responsibility, Illinois is certainly on a path of not just financial stability, but financial surety.

So I certainly believe it's sustainable, and we should be proud of that.

We've come a long way in four years.

We're much better off today than we were four years ago, and that's because of good management of the budget.

- What about the issue of public safety and criminal justice reform?

Republicans see an opening there for them going into the November midterm elections.

- Well, I think it's extremely important, and Democrats across the state think it's important that we're smart on crime, that we're not just using fear mongering and scare tactics when we talk about that.

All of us wanna live in safe communities.

You do.

I do.

Our neighbors do.

And so that's why we were very responsive this session with the public safety package that we passed through the General Assembly.

We know about carjackings and organized retail theft and those things being on the rise.

Crime is on the rise all over the nation, not just in the state of Illinois, and that's because of a pandemic that we've lived in in the last two plus years.

All experts will tell you that it's because of a pandemic, but we've responded to the issues that we've heard from the voters in the district, and our public safety package is comprehensive, but it's smart.

It deals with things holistically, rather than just lock people up and throw away the key.

You have to address these issues holistically, and that's what we've done.

- We've got about a half a minute left.

You're working hard to keep that 73 to 45 super majority over the Republicans by making sure that your candidates get through the primaries and through the general election.

From what I'm hearing, your mantra for your members is, "Winners do the work."

- There's no substitute for that.

There's a winning formula, and that's you gotta get out there and get back to the basics and knock on doors and have direct communication with your constituents and be responsive to 'em.

That's why we were able to put such a great budget together and a public safety package together, 'cause we listen to the constituents, and that's the same way you get reelected.

You gotta do the work.

If you're not doing the work, you don't see good results.

- Mr. Speaker, thank you so much for taking the time today.

I certainly appreciate it.

- My pleasure, Jack, always good to see you.

- Up next on "Illinois Lawmakers," House Republican Leader, Jim Durkin of Western Springs, good to have you back on the program, sir.

- Thank you Jack, glad to be here.

- Majority Democrats, as we know, passed a new $46.5 billion budget for the fiscal year that starts on July one, with around $2 billion, mostly temporary tax relief built into that.

This was not the budget that House Republicans or Senate Republicans would've wanted.

- No, a few things, let's just start with process.

Again, the Republicans were cut out of this, any negotiation on this, and this is a product that was brought upon by the governor and also the House and Senate Democrat Leaders without participation of any members of the House and Senate Republican Caucuses and particularly, our budgeteers.

But what we found out, it was dropped on us the night before, late in the evening, before the last day of session that the governor has been talking about how this is a true triumph of great fiscal management, of having a budget of this nature, and we've come to the conclusion very quickly that that's a lot of nonsense, that the governor, this budget is based on a massive, a massive $12 billion, over the past year and a half, federal bailout into state government and also is based on an inflationary sugar high of spending by Illinois residents through sales taxes.

So the governor has produced nothing, and the Democrats have produced nothing that affect any of this revenue income, which has produced this budget, but there's nothing in here that changes the structural problems that still persist in Illinois.

A $300 cut in property taxes for one year, that's an election year gimmick.

There's a lot of gimmicks in here that don't make sense, but it doesn't get to the root problems that we have at state government.

This is a governor's reelection campaign that is compliments of the taxpayers of the United States of America.

- The governor said last week on the program that the ARPA funding really doesn't factor into the overall base budget that the Democrats have passed, that this is sustainable, that this is something that will result in paying down state pension debt, putting a billion dollars into the Rainy Day Fund in addition to the temporary tax breaks for folks.

- Well, the temporary tax breaks are gimmicks, and they're not gonna make a bit of difference in middle class' day-to-day life.

And again, this is about him running a commercial for his reelection, that's all that's about.

But let's just say that the spending that the Democrats have done is at a level which we cannot sustain.

By the time the ARPA money runs out, we will have revenue will drop.

We expect to drop close to 6% and spending will continue, and it'll reach 10%, so we're back at the same old games that the Democrats have done over the years with budgets, spend more than we bring in.

This is a one year, every state in the union has got this gift from the federal taxpayers, all of us have paid for this, but this has nothing to do with any management that the governor can claim that is worthy.

Well, the governor can put a little money into the pension system, but it doesn't solve anything.

We're still $140 billion in the hole, so putting a half billion dollars in the system is not gonna change anything for purposes of fixing that problem.

He has not done anything to fix the property tax system, which is one of the major reasons why people and businesses flee this state, but by saying that we're gonna provide a $300 property tax break to citizens, it's laughable.

If that's his claim for reform and also helping out taxpayers based on spending that Joe Biden and the Democrats and J.B. Pritzker have done to raise inflation, then he's missed that mark.

- Republicans had a plan of their own put out there on the table, which would be, if I remember correctly, it was over $2 billion in permanent tax breaks for Illinois residents?

- Well, that was the Senate Republicans.

We were waiting for negotiations.

We were not part of that deal.

We were involved with the unemployment insurance trust fund.

That was a priority for our caucus, but J.B. Pritzker decided to short that by $2 billion, so he could use it to balance his proverbial so-called budget when leaving employers with the probability that they will have to pay more taxes, and their employees will lose benefits when it could have been solved.

It could have been solved in the month of May, in the month of April if we would've used that ARPA money, that the money is used what it's intended to be used for is to put it back and replenish the UI Trust Fund.

The governor stands on it.

He wants to keep that money for his own purposes of spreading it around and using it for whatever he can get out of it between now and November.

- With respect to the budget and crime and public safety in the last minute or so that we have here, what is the message that Republican will want to run on here in the fall midterms when the headwinds will seemingly be against the Democrats?

- Well, I'm gonna talk about the facts.

I'm not gonna talk about spin, but Governor Pritzker and the Democrats have turned their backs on law enforcement and victims of crime last year with the passage of the Safety Act.

It's irresponsible, it's illogical, but it is the worst and the most, I would say, detrimental bill to public safety in my history of the General Assembly, and I speak from a background of being a prosecutor in Chicago.

I understand the system.

But the fact is it's wrong, we're seeing problems with it right now, but when we get to the no-cash bail in January, Armageddon is going to hit Illinois.

- And that is something that is still in the out years or still next year.

- Next year, but look what's happening in New York.

They've had this in place for a few years.

The governor of New York has tried to significantly amend that bill because she realizes, one, it's not working.

There are dangerous people who are being left on the street, as of being held, at least given a bond hearing to see whether or not they should be held.

And secondly, the politics of it are working strongly against her as it did in Virginia, Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, so we're gonna tell the truth.

Let me also say that, I was a narcotics prosecutor in Chicago, and I take great pride in working on long-term and mass, very large investigations.

There's never gonna be an El Chapo prosecution in Illinois if someone, a cartel leader is picked up with multiple kilos of fentanyl and cocaine, which is pouring into the Chicago area right now, because they will not be subject, those people who are in possession of it will not be detained under this law.

Drugs are the lifeblood of the street kings.

Think about that.

We have busts on a regular basis, mountains of dope coming into Chicago, but the fact is the people who are responsible for delivering it are going to get a ticket saying, "Show up to court."

That's wrong, and it's gonna cause greater problems than people can ever imagine.

- Leader, thank you so much.

We're gonna have to leave it there.

We'll see how this plays out in coming months.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you, Jack.

Next on "Illinois Lawmakers," Democratic Senator Ann.

Gillespie joins us to discuss a major development in the area of state senior citizens' care and with respect to their families.

Senator, good to have you on the program.

- Thank you so much for having me, it's a pleasure.

- Your background is in the healthcare industry, and as we talk about the efforts to revise the Medicaid funding formula for nursing homes, where a lot of our residents live, this has been an area that's been under negotiation by a lot of parties for a long time.

What came together in the last days of the session to put this package together?

- You know, one of the fundamental things that really helped it gain momentum was the availability of data showing the trends over the last several years, where we have continually increased the amount that was allocated for staffing, but we're not seeing any improvement in the staffing levels as a whole across the spectrum.

So, we knew we needed to do something that was gonna align the incentives better to ensure that the money was actually going to where it was intended to go.

And so crowing up with a proactive approach of saying that the additional money beyond the base rate that we put in for staff now has to be aligned with proven meeting of the strive staffing level, so the federal set as a target was the key to making sure that the money is going exactly to where we want it to go.

- So as I've read, there's something like an additional more than $700 million a year that will go back into beefing up staffing levels and improved patient care at Medicaid nursing homes in the state of Illinois?

- That's correct, it's going to be going into staffing.

It's gonna be going into quality, similar to the way we did it for staffing.

We aligned the quality money to go where facilities had demonstrated they'd met star ratings under the Federal Medicare System.

And we also designated certain portions of the money that was to go directly to certified nursing assistants, to reward them for longevity and promotion.

And then we did increase the base rate as well and allowed for a phase-in period to help nursing homes start to do the work they need to do to staff up.

For the average nursing home they should be fine.

They should come out ahead under this program.

So a nursing home that is staffing according to the acuity levels of their patients, in other words, the patients' service needs, should be getting a higher rate of reimbursement under the new program than they would have under the previous program.

- Is this a permanent thing that's built into the base?

- Yes, it will be.

This will be an ongoing permanent part of the payment structure, which will help with the overall accountability on the part of nursing homes and doing it in a proactive, really cost effective way.

So rather than hiring a bunch more regulators to go out and inspect nursing homes to see if the staffing levels were appropriate, we're now aligning the incentives, so it's in the nursing home owners' best interest to meet the staffing target.

- One of the things I've read in this is that there would be another $85 million to subsidize annual wage hikes for certified nursing assistants based upon their years of experience, and there's a lot of high turnover there in that community.

- Yeah, there is.

And they are some of the most underpaid professionals in the healthcare sector.

And so getting them money tied to longevity, which is encouraging them to stay in the position, as well as promotion, which encourages their educational efforts and other things they're doing to raise their level of expertise are really things that we hope will make a difference in retaining.

- There's another $70 million or so that would be used to incentivize facilities that demonstrate upgrades and improvements in what they do in certain quality care measures.

- Yes, we've linked those to the Medicare star ratings program in the first year, and then we're gonna review it, and based on what the data shows us, the department was gonna have the Department of Healthcare and Family Services is gonna have the ability to tweak those ratings a little bit to make them Illinois specific.

- And I understand there's kind of a timeline built into this for how this will work out over the next, what, year to 18 months or so?

- Yes, there's an 18 month transition period to get to the other thing we did in the base rate is change from the resource utilization group payment structure to the patient-driven payment model that the federal government is using today under the Medicare program.

And those two things will have an 18 month phase-in.

- Ultimately, how many seniors will benefit from this, Senator?

- You know, Medicaid is the number one payer for seniors in long-term care facilities.

Roughly 70% of our seniors that are in long-term care facilities are Medicaid funded, and so this is gonna be a huge benefit for all of them, but it's also gonna benefit those that aren't Medicaid, because when a facility is raising their stamping levels, knowing that they have to make quality metrics for that larger portion, it'll benefit everybody in the facility.

- Senator Ann Gillespie, thank you so much for your time on "Illinois Lawmakers" and for your work on this issue.

It's very important, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Up next on "Illinois Lawmakers," Senate Republican Caucus Chair, Jason Barickman of Bloomington.

Senator, good to have you back on the program, sir.

- Great to be with you.

- You're one of the senior members of your caucus.

You came to Springfield as a House member back in 2011, then moved to the Senate in 2013.

How did this session, as a veteran from your side of the aisle play out in terms of the big issues like the budget?

- Well, look, every time it's an election year, I think there's a theme.

Politicians tend to try to appeal to voters during an election year.

I think that was certainly true this year, and that's been felt and reported upon, I suppose, from both sides of the aisle and all ends of the state.

So it's an election year.

I think what that means is whether you like the state making huge sweeping public policy changes or not will maybe frame your view on where this is going.

But this is a year where lots of big things did not occur.

I think there was work on the budget.

There was an attempt by Democrats to try to repair some of the damage that they may incur from the public in regards to criminal public safety.

But by and large, much of the big issues really got pushed aside until after the election.

It was an abbreviated session, much briefer than in years past.

And certainly the political leaders seemed to wanna get people back home in their district, so they could spend time knocking on doors and probably earning some votes.

- Yeah, it's all ahead of that June primary to get that locked down.

The Democrats basically said, "This budget invests in education, human services, "public safety, there's a surplus this year.

"The state's credit ratings are doing better."

What's to argue with what they actually passed?

- Well, look, you have to start from the standpoint that Illinois got lucky as a result of the COVID pandemic that we went through.

Illinois was a recipient of maybe some $16 billion in federal funds.

Those are dollars that we didn't anticipate receiving.

No one would wanna go through COVID again, but it's one of the windfalls the state received as a result of the federal stimulus dollars.

Now, the question becomes, how do you spend those dollars in a manner that is meaningful to providing long-term tax relief to voters and/or fixing some of the fundamental issues that have driven our state's finances into such difficult times.

I think, for me, I felt as though the Democrats fell far short on how we might use those funds.

Instead, they relied on one-time gimmicks that seemed to primarily try to appeal to voters in an election year, and they really grew the size of government instead of using these dollars to really address the root problems, they just grew the government.

- The Democrats tell me though, that if you look ahead without the ARPA dollars and that they're actually spending less in terms of the total GRF for the coming fiscal year.

- Yeah, look, I think everyone in government who spends more money and tries to convince the public otherwise, they've got a long hill to climb to be able to make that proof become a reality.

- You touched upon the public safety thing.

Of course, last year, the Democrats in the House and Senate passed the Safety Act and that has been a major talking point for the Republicans ever since.

Republicans wanted that repealed.

Obviously, that did not happen.

The primary criticism of the Democrats moves on crime and public safety since then, basically from your party, you said that you're basically nibbling around the edges of public safety reform.

What else needs to be done in your view to make this meaningful?

- Well, first of all, I wanna challenge your assertion, that it's Republicans using this as a talking point.

The criticism of the Democrats overreach here has really come from prosecutors, the folks in law enforcement, your sheriffs and police at a local level and from victims all around the state who say, "Look, we want people who commit crimes "held accountable for them."

So the criticism has been wide-reaching, even among, I think your more moderate Democrats.

Ultimately what's happened is Governor Pritzker, he really pushed that Safety Act through.

In doing so, he pitted the people who helped to keep our streets safe against the people who are committing crimes.

And he really shifted the balance that normally exists between the accused and the accuser, so that criminals now have a stronger leg to stand on, I suppose.

The result is criminals are feeling less accountable.

The prosecutors are saying we can't even hold some of the people who are committing really dangerous crimes, and there's been a dramatic shift in policy that's playing out in the streets and communities around our state, so we've gotta reinvest back in our law enforcement, and we've gotta enhance our laws, so that criminals feel accountable for the choices that they make when they break the law.

- Senator Barickman, thank you so much for your time on "Illinois Lawmakers," we always appreciate it.

- Always good to talk to you as well, thank you.

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