(dramatic music) - Welcome to "Illinois Lawmakers" weekly coverage of the final weeks of the Illinois General Assembly here on Public television and radio.

I'm Jak Tichenor, along with Amanda Vinicky of Channel 11 Chicago tonight.

Amanda, great to have you back on the program.

- Great to be with you Jak, always.

- We're heading down to that May 19th adjournment date a few days earlier than lawmakers usually do in the month of May as opposed to May 31st.

The big issue that's still hanging fire out there and it's not unusual for this time of year, is the Illinois budget.

What are you hearing?

- You're right, Jak.

The only thing that's unusual about it is that we're having this talk about it getting close to down to the wire in early May versus in late May.

But what is interesting about this is that on one hand Illinois isn't a great financial position particularly relative to recent years past.

The COVID is still of course with us but the pandemic portion of it has by and large passed.

So there aren't those same pressures.

There also, of course are going to be losing in the dollars but Illinois still is seeing revenues that are higher than once the state could have imagined.

Is everything hunky dory?

No.

There's still a unfunded pension liability that long-term Illinois is going to have to contend with but in a pretty decent fiscal position.

What you have happened with that though, is that all sorts of ideas and projects sort of come out of the woodwork that lawmakers say, "Oh yeah, we've got money to work with.

I want a piece of it."

And so there are a whole lot of spending pressures because again, there are a lot of needs.

Every legislator has their own, that is a priority, and so that is what is going to make this difficult be it whether that is a tax breaks for widespread Illinoisans, whether it is a tax credit for those who have children, whether it is an increase to anti-violence funding, whether it is some of the asks that Chicago's soon to be new mayor has made of the general assembly.

There's a lot of asking.

- Well, and he was in Springfield this week making the rounds.

Mayor elect, Brandon Johnson was there meeting with senior members of both parties and he had a joint session addressed to the general assembly.

One of the things he's asking for along with the Illinois Municipal League is trying to ratchet back up the share of income tax money that goes to the state of Illinois and comes back to local governments in the form of basically kind of a rebate.

And it was reduced a number of years ago because of the deficit problems we were having.

The Municipal League is trying to bump that back up and the new mayor is wanting to see some of that money come back into Chicago's coffers.

- He could use all the money he should get.

That was one of his big asks.

It's called the local government distributive fund.

There you go.

We don't need to say it a ton, but just in case you see it now, you know what we're talking about.

And yes, the mayor is on board with the Municipal League's ask, it would help the City of Chicago immensely, of course, getting back more money as the biggest municipality in this state.

That was one of his asks.

His second ask during this address was that he wanted more money to go toward specifically Chicago public schools, really is what he's concerned with.

The way that he phrased it was revamping the education funding formula.

Now, that's something that I don't necessarily see as happening, particularly in this shorter window a redo of this bonding formula that in fact one of Pritzker's chief deputies was responsible for crafting when he was a state senator.

But certainly, yeah, Annie Moar, the governor's budget does propose some additional money going to that funding formula that is particularly meant to uplift the schools that are on most uneven and most in need of state funds or additional funds in order to get on par with those ones that already have the local funding to spend increased dollars per people.

So that's one of these other demands, more money on education.

We did not hear from Johnson I think interestingly was a couple of his other campaign platforms that he would need the general assembly on and that would be things like a financial transaction tax in Chicago and a tax on real estate transactions.

Again, you got such a short window as we were talking about earlier, that those might be very difficult sales in this period of time.

But we don't know exactly what he said in some of these private meetings particularly with the senior leadership and whether that's something that he's beginning to lobby for.

Chicago has a lot of needs as well.

- Thanks so much.

And in talking to members of both parties who are in some of those meetings, the meetings did go well.

Now, whether or not he'll come back with everything he asked for, well, probably not, but there's always lots of bargaining, lots of horse trading here in the state of Illinois.

Amanda Vinicky, thank you so much for your time on "Illinois Lawmakers."

Joining me now on "Illinois Lawmakers" Democratic House Majority Leader Robyn Gabel of Evanston.

Great to have you back on the program especially in this new role, congratulations.

- Thank you.

Thank you very much.

- That is, of course, the second most powerful position in the Illinois House of Representatives you take over after Greg Harris's retirement earlier in the year.

For our viewers and listeners, I'd like to know a little bit more about what are your hopes for the position and what is your agenda as House Majority Leader?

- So this is really a great honor for me to be the majority leader.

I really view it as a opportunity to help my caucus and continue to promote our democratic values.

But even more specifically it's really a great opportunity to help my colleagues with their priorities.

So I'm now like number 10 in seniority, so I really view it as my responsibility to work with my colleagues.

We have a lot of new ones, new members and it's really an honor for me to just help them figure out how to work in this process.

For many people, it's a unique opportunity.

They haven't really experienced anything like this before, so it's great.

I really get to help my colleagues and for my own community, I get to amplify our values as well.

- You're known for your work as an advocate for women, children, and families, and some of the things I've read about, you're working on advocating for racial equity, ethics reform, expanding affordability and access to healthcare.

That's a lot of territory to cover.

- I think my my focus has been both on healthcare issues.

It's my background, it's what I did for 22 years before I became a legislator, particularly in women's health.

And I think that we still have more to do in that arena, but also I've, I've really become a big advocate for the environment and energy and creating a world we can all live in.

So it's really been wonderful to be able to work on those two issues.

- As we go to record this on a Thursday, of course, the US Supreme Court is expected to rule in the status of the abortion pill after the Texas ban.

How will the Illinois General Assembly respond depending on the outcome of the case?

- Well, the general Assembly we've made it very clear that we are a pro-choice state that we really care about reproductive freedom for everyone and that we will continue to make sure that's the way we operate here in Illinois.

We do have a working group that Representative Cassidy is the chair of and we will continue to look at very specific issues that occur and have a response from Illinois.

- One of the issues that's been working its way through is a measure to try to provide a new $700 per child tax credit in the state of Illinois.

Where do things stand with that now?

- We're still in the process of working through our budget.

I think we will certainly take that into consideration as we move forward.

$700 is what the first number that's been thrown out but we do know that any child tax credit really does go to help the children, help bring children out of poverty, help increase even middle class children's lives.

So, it's something that we will consider.

- We've got about a minute left leader.

Of course, the budget proposal is out there.

The governor proposed a 49.6 billion budget for the state.

How is that working its way through the legislative process on the appropriation side?

- Sure.

Well, the governor's budget is the beginning where we start from and we have our appropriation committees that have been meeting.

We work in a partisan manner to really review the budget.

And our groups are going through the budget with a fine tooth comb and looking to see what we can do this year.

We really wanna have a budget that is fiscally responsible as well as being compassionate.

- Leader, thank you so much for your time.

We certainly appreciate it and we will certainly have you back on the program to talk more about your job as House Majority Leader.

- Thank you.

Thank you very much.

- Another veteran of the Illinois House of Representatives joins us now on "Illinois Lawmakers" Deputy House Republican leader Norine Hammond of McComb.

Good to have you on the program again.

- Thank you so much.

Good to be with you.

- We're zeroing in on the May 19th adjournment date here and as one of the leading budgeteers for the Republicans there at the Capitol.

I'm curious about where things stand right now, with trying to get that budget passed by adjournment date.

- Sure, and I think it's everyone's goal certainly to adjourn on May 19th.

That being said, "I believe we all would like to adjourn on May 19th with a budget that is balanced and a budget that addresses the needs of all of the citizens of the state of Illinois."

Right now as the Chief budgeteer for the House Republicans.

When the session started, I had a conversation with the Chief Budgeteer, my colleague on on the Democrat side of the aisle and we talked about the fact that we hoped that the process would be bipartisan and transparent.

And since that conversation while I have been to many of the budget working groups and have heard from a number of providers and hospitals and healthcare professionals about their ask to be included in the budget.

Leader Gordon Booth and I have not had any subsequent conversations regarding the budget.

- Well, those are some considerable pressures on the budget because of what healthcare providers want to see at the table.

There's a kind of a new wrinkle in it too with the Department of Healthcare and Family Services as relates to the Immigrant Adult Program.

I think that's another $768 million that had not been accounted for?

- Actually yes, but all total it comes out to about 990 million.

So basically it's a cost of about a billion dollars that certainly was not in the original budget thoughts and has only come to light in recent weeks when the report was released by HFS at the end of March.

- So the governor's proposal was for around $49.6 billion for all the programs he was wanting to fund, and then the revenues were somewhere over $50 billion that we were anticipating.

So how does this all stack up now with what the news we're hearing out of the Commission on government accountability and forecasting coffers?

- Well, I think we are certainly facing some very serious pressures as it stands today.

Is there any way that we could possibly implement the governor's introduced budget and as well as this program, this expansion of the program for undocumented healthcare benefits?

There is absolutely no way.

You cannot do both.

Something's going to have to give.

We introduced a resolution today that essentially would put this program for the population between ages 41 and 54 that was passed last year.

It would put it on pause.

We would wait for an audit to come back from the auditor general's office, get us some definite costs and enrollment numbers and put the program on pause until we had that.

So there's considerable pressures.

The hospital association and many of our safety nets spoke in our Medicaid work group this morning.

They are looking for a 20% to cross the board increase.

Other providers have come before our group as well and there are a lot of pressures and not enough revenue to fund them all.

- We're just about out of time, but I guess the watch words are stay tuned.

There's still more to come in wrapping up this session and this budget.

- There is, and we can come up with a budget that is representative of all of Illinois citizens and addresses as many of those needs as we possibly can.

- Leader Norine Hammond, thank you so much for your time on "Illinois Lawmakers."

It's always appreciated.

- Thank you.

- Our next guest on "Illinois Lawmakers" is Senate Majority appropriations leader, Elgie Sims, a Chicago Democrat.

Great to have you back on the show, sir.

- Always, it's a pleasure to be with you, Jak.

Thanks for having me.

- As the, as the lead budgeteer for the Senate Democrats gotta ask you where things stand now with the budget, of course, the governor put out a proposal for I think it was $49.6 billion in new spending or not new spending, but in spending overall with more money for areas like education, higher education, early childhood, and the like.

How's that budget stacking up as it goes through the appropriations process?

- Well, as we always do, every year we are taking our time to evaluate the proposal laid out by the governor.

I've been so proud of the members of the all of the appropriations committee in the Senate and in the House for the the detailed questions they're asking, the seriousness in which they're evaluating the governor's proposal.

And I think we're in a very good place.

We have made significant progress through the evaluation of that proposal, and I'm looking forward to having a budget that works for the people of Illinois.

- What were some of the proposals that the Black Caucus, the legislative Black Caucus wanted to see embraced in this budget?

- Well, we've always focused on increasing and dealing with the issues that need to be increasing education and focused on healthcare dealing with the healthcare deserts and economic deserts.

And you see a number of those proposals laid out in the government's budget.

And there you will see particularly members of the LA Legislative Black Caucus talking about making more of those investments, how we address the root causes of violence, how we address dealing with trauma issues, how we address healthcare deserts.

In my legislative district, One of the four Walmarts that was closed in the city of Chicago is housed in the Legislative district that I represent.

So dealing with those economic opportunities is it's significantly important for not just only the members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus with all members of the Illinois Senate and particularly members of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

- There's a house Democratic proposal for a new $700 per child tax credit.

I'm wondering how is that fairing?

Does that have any legs?

- We're evaluating all those proposals right now and again, as I've mentioned, we're trying to fix as we look through and evaluate the budget overall what the revenues for the year will look like, what the spending requests and recommendations will look like.

That's where we're getting into the part of the session where those discussions and negotiation around the beginning earnest.

- There was some talk earlier in the session, that because revenues have continued for the time being to exceed projections that there was some talk about tax relief for Illinois citizens.

The Senate Republicans had a news conference earlier this week where they were talking about proposals such as doing away with the franchise tax which is particularly owners for small business in the state and extending some tax credits for companies that have made an investment in Illinois and it continued to persist here.

- Well, I'm certainly looking forward to having my colleagues on the other side of the aisle come forward with those proposals.

What we have been doing is starting to have those conversations with them.

So I'm looking forward to it, to all those discussions and all those negotiations because right now it's important for us, for all voices to be heard and we're open to that and we're willing to have them bring those proposals to the table.

And I'm looking forward to hearing more about what they're proposing and what those details are.

But what's what's gonna be critical is making sure that we pass a balanced budget that's good for the people of Illinois, that invests in people and make sure that we have the opportunity to continue the good sound fiscal footing that we've put Illinois on.

We've invested in our pensions, we've invested in our Ready Day fund.

And you're seeing that because of the good stewardship we have been made with the good stewardship we have, you're seeing the credit rating upgrades to continue to happen.

I want to continue to see that happen because that's really what the people of Illinois expect and deserve from us.

They expect good sound fiscal management and we've been giving them that and we want to continue to do that.

- We've got about 30 seconds left.

Republicans continue to stress the fact that they don't wanna see an awful lot of new spending because of continued concerns over a national recession.

Will these numbers hold as far as you're concerned?

- We are concerned as well but I would say also we can't just arbitrarily dismiss the investments that we're making in people as just more spending.

We have to eradicate the food deserts, the economic deserts, and the educational deserts that so many people find themselves in.

And that's what we are working towards and I as we pass this budget, we work to pass a budget that does just that we're making investments in people and I think that's really what the people of Illinois expect and deserve from us.

- Senator Sims, thank you so much for your your time on "Illinois Lawmakers."

Always appreciate it, sir.

- Always a pleasure my friend and I'm looking forward to it and I'm looking forward to being able to do this in person again.

- Up next on "Illinois Lawmakers," Deputy Senate Republican leaders Sue Rezin of Morris.

Senator Rezin served in the Illinois Senate since 2010 and she's currently the Republican spokesperson on early childhood education.

We're gonna talk about a number of good things today.

Good to have you on the program.

- Thanks for having me.

- One of the things we're looking at, of course, as the clock ticks down to adjournment in May is progress on making a new budget for the state.

The governor has a plan out there for about 50 million, $50 billion in spending.

How are Senate Republicans viewing the progress that's been made thus far?

- Well, I would say that this year because we have additional revenue coming into to the capital that there is an opportunity to work together on the budget.

We are concerned about our priorities as well.

We want to make sure that the additional revenue that we have also is put into our Rainy Day fund.

We're not always going to have a budget surplus.

In fact, we're what we're reading across the country as prepared for a downturn in the economy in the next year to two.

So we want to make sure that we have a healthy Rainy Day fund in place that will protect us should the economy turn bad.

The other thing is there regarding our priorities it's important, especially coming out of the pandemic to recognize that there are challenges coming out of the pandemic, challenges in our schools to catch our children up, as they have been learning via Zoom for two years or so we want to make sure that the schools have the money to implement the tools and the programs that they need to to make sure that our students are able to catch up and close that learning gap.

So I mean, our priorities I think can align with the governor in certain areas but we also have concerns regarding the growth just of government in general.

Anytime in Illinois when there's excess money, instead of maybe saving and spending at a rate that we can afford, we tend to start new programs which then in a couple years we have to find money to fund again.

So I think we need to make sure that we work together so we don't grow government, but still fund the priorities where we can find common ground with the governor and with the Democrats.

- And you've made some progress this session in championing a new bill that would lift the somewhat I think it's about a 30 year moratorium on new nuclear power plant construction in the state of Illinois.

Give us some insights into that.

It's already passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote.

- It has passed the Senate and it just passed the house committee so it's going to the house and this is a bill that would lift the moratorium on banning nuclear in the state.

This bill was passed approximately 30 years ago and but fast forward 30 years we have new technology that is being developed at our national labs.

It's called Advanced Modular nuclear reactors.

I call 'em mini mods.

Many nuclear reactors that are being developed.

In fact, the Biden administration believes in this technology so much that they included approximately $5 billion in their infrastructure act that was passed two years ago for the development of this new technology.

And here's why it's important as coal plants are going offline as we're trying to decarbonize our energy portfolio, many plants are going offline.

These many modulars are able then will be able to be assembled right on the plant site and tie into the grid that's already there.

And also employ the people that may have been working at these previous plans.

They're good paying jobs and create a tax base.

So it's a win-win for everyone.

But more importantly, why nuclear?

These many modulars are important.

They provide consistent, reliable power.

And that's what you're going to hear a lot about in the next year.

We are concerned about the reliability in our grid system for Northern Illinois and for Southern Illinois.

There have been two studies, one by the PGM and by MYSO that have said because of these premature closures of these coal plants and other plants around the state, that we will not have enough power to power the grid in the hottest of hot days or the coldest of cold weather and the extreme weather.

So there are red flags everywhere from independent groups talking about the need for more reliable power.

And the many modulars provide a reliable, consistent power because they can run all of the time around the clock.

- Well, Senator, thank you so much for the update on that.

We'll be keeping tabs on that as the session winds down and hope to have you back on the program.

Thank you so much, Senator Rezin.

- Thank you.

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