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Talk Line: Illinois State Senator Li Arellano Jr. and the upcoming spring session · WIXN AM 1460 - Shaw Local Radio

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: And my first time with you, Brandon. Yeah, I think
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: my first one was in twenty fifteen after my election
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: as mayor, A long time ago now it seems, and
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: it's real fun to be back in this role. I'm excited, Yes, absolutely, Leri.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: And in the if you see behind you the Steve
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Marco study, he's still with.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Us here in spirit. Oh, I didn't know it was
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the Steve Marco studio. Now that's very cool.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: It is. It is SOT. Once he was in front
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: of you, he's still always behind your shoulder.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you pointed that out. I had no idea.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: That's a cool honor.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, So let's kind of you know,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: you're here to give us some some updates. Yeah, you
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: had the October veto session and we've got the upcoming spring.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: But to first get a little simpler for those who
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: don't follow Springfield closely, right, what is the veto session
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: and why is that such an important time for lawmakers?
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: So that's a very interesting question because this past veto
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: session was different than almost any Veto session in history
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: in my lifetime, and I confirmed that with a number
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: of my shall we say more senior wisened State Senator colleagues,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: and so normally what the veto session is is it's
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: an opportunity for the legislative branch to be a check
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: or support on the executive branch, and i e. If
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the governor has vetoed some bills or modified some bills,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: because in Illinois we have the mandatory veto as well
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: for governors, then the legislative branch comebacks and decides are
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: we going to overrule the veto? Are we going to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: sustain it and tweak a bill? More and more in
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: recent years it's just become another session at the last
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: minute where they punched through bills that either failed in
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the spring or that they're trying to slide under the
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: radar of the people and the media and the journalists.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: And that's more a one party rule thing. You know,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Illinois for a long time was a two party state,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: and for over half a decade now we've been at
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: one party rule. And now they have super majorities after
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the last jerrymanderin in twenty twenty, and so what this
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: veto session more or less became is they failed to
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: get a lot of things done in spring, and the
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: governor's been a bit distracted by shall we say, other ambitions.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: He's just not been in Springfield as much, and so
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: they came through, and this veto session really became about
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: powering through some very controversial last minute language that dramatically
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: alters Illinois. That's not normally what a veto session is,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: but it's more and more what they've been in. This
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: one was the most dramatic ever. We were there until
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: four in the morning on the last day of veto session,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: getting language changes within the last hours, with thousands of pages,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: passing bills as if it was a normal session, kind
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: of under the cover of darkness, literally and figuratively for
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: that matter. So that's what this veto session is. Spring
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: session is normally when you have a regular process, so
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: that's when your committee hearings would happen. We introduced bills
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: in January, which we just finished doing. We will discuss them,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: have hearings, fight to build coalitions to get them through
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  Speaker 1: committee and eventually through passage when they go to the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: other chamber. So typically under the state constitution, every bill
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: requires three readings. There should be three days between each
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: of those readings. Then it goes to the other chamber.
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  Speaker 1: For example, if I manage to get a bill through
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  Speaker 1: the Senate, it'll go at the House. It has the
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: same process there, and then if there's changes, it'll be
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: a reconciliation process between the two houses, and if it
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: passes that, it goes to the governor. Spring is when
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: the normal stuff will happen. Unfortunately, under one party rule,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: and I'm certainly sure my party does this in other
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: states because power tends to abuse privilege. But what will
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: happen is they'll save controversial bills to the last minute
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: and they will skip this whole process. So, for practical terms,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: in modern Illinois, spring session is when you see normal
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  Speaker 1: processes on either controversial bills that they want to start
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: in a certain way and they're going to finish later,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: or non controversial bills, which is everything we're dealing with
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: right now. It is also when a freshman and the
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: super minority has the most influence because committees are probably
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: where I have the biggest voice. That's part of why
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the majority party won't put controversial legislation through a committee process,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and sometimes they'll make a mistake on that. We saw
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: that with the Homeschool Act last year. The Homeschool Act,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: I don't think they thought was going to be so controversial.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: It put a lot of government controls on private schools,
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  Speaker 1: Christian schools, Catholic schools, and homeschooling families. They wrote that
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  Speaker 1: bill terribly with way too much government control and mandates.
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  Speaker 1: And I don't think they understood how influential that parts
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: of our Illinois community were. I was homeschooled for a
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: while when I was younger, so I was not surprised.
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  Speaker 1: And so they went through the committee process and the
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  Speaker 1: people of Illinois rose up, and that bill had a
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: record amount of witness slips. No, we've never had that
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: many witness slips from the public in Illinois's history. So
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: they were unprepared that if they went through the normal process,
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  Speaker 1: the people in the media were going to catch wind
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  Speaker 1: of how important this was. And it killed that bill.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: The people killed that bill. Republicans, we're not powerful enough
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: to the people are what killed that bill, And that
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  Speaker 1: is the power of the normal process. You give transparency
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: to the media and to the public and they get
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: a chance to weigh in. And so there's some things
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: that passed that wouldn't otherwise pass if the public didn't
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: have a chance to weigh in. But there's things that
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: die that would have slipt through. And so that's a
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: very long winded way of saying. Veto in modern Illinois
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  Speaker 1: is where shenanigans happen, and regular session is where good
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  Speaker 1: due process happens.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Looking back at the shenanigans of the October Vito Session,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: what would you say were the biggest takeaways, you know,
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: whether good or bad for Illinois residents.
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  Speaker 1: So I'll start by saying my spring session I thought
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: was relatively smooth. I didn't think it was super unethical.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: There were parts, especially passing the budget and ignoring the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: three readings rule of the Constitution where we should have
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: a chance to vet some of the budget language. You know,
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  Speaker 1: I thought that part was unethical and rushed and problematic
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: for the finances of Illinois. But everything else I thought
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: was good. I had a lot of input that I thought,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: do a position for a senator representing two hundred and
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: twenty thousand people, even if they're in the minority, should have.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: There are parts that I got caught out that I said, well,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: what happens when you're in the minority, right. Veto session
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  Speaker 1: wasn't like that at all. Veto session was very corrupt.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: It was very sudden. If we had a more balanced
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court, it probably would have been ruled unconstitutional. And
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: there were a lot of dramatic bill changes in the
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  Speaker 1: last minute that just were very untransparent and transparent, however
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: you want to call it. And we're designed to bypass
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: the people and the public processes and transparency and ethics,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: and so I'll give you one example, the Chicago Transit bill,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: the transit bailout bill, as a lot of us called it.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: This was discussed for years, so it's not like the
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the start of the process was unethical. And there were
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: some Republicans at the table. Senator Seth Lewis from the suburbs,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Done DeWitt, a former mayor at the table. And as
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: they went through spring session last year, they were considering
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: some major taxes, an online delivery tax a buck fifty
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  Speaker 1: for every delivery. That turned out to be very unpopular
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: because guess what, people in Chicago order online deliveries too,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: and that would have been a big tax increase for
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  Speaker 1: the whole state of Illinois. Before that, they were considering
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: a six percent service tax, which was also turned out
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: to be very unpopular. I probably got more emails about
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: that than almost anything else as my freshman year, and
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: that would have put to new taxes on auto repair, hair,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: you know, getting your hair done, anything like that. And
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  Speaker 1: so it failed in the spring because nobody wanted these taxes.
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  Speaker 1: The public kind of revolted, and so in Vito session,
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  Speaker 1: skipping the normal process, what they did is on the
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  Speaker 1: last day they introduced language saying we're going to take
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: over five hundred million a year from road and bride funds.
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  Speaker 1: So when I say rural, I mean everywhere outside of
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  Speaker 1: Chicago that's rural to them, So that includes Peoria, quad Cities, Dixon,
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  Speaker 1: you name it. And then we're going to give about
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  Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty thirty million back for their public transit,
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  Speaker 1: so that would be like Reagan Transit or the Peoria
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  Speaker 1: you know, pure mass transit, and we're going to call
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: it good because you know, now we can say we'd
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: into a tax increase. And they rated these rural formulas
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: for infrastructure, and it didn't even go into Chicago infrastructure
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  Speaker 1: went into specifically Chicago public transit, not their broader infrastructure
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  Speaker 1: legal technically under the Illinois Constitution, which required those funds
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: to be spent on transportation, because mass transit is transportation,
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  Speaker 1: but there is no formula right now in Illinois, no
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  Speaker 1: taxing system that will successfully cover rural roads and bridges.
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  Speaker 1: That fund, which is built up over the years. I
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  Speaker 1: believe there's about six billion, and it will be steadily
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  Speaker 1: going down. We won't feel it right away, but when
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  Speaker 1: it hits zero, there is nothing in the mass to
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: say we have road and bridge funds. That's we will
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  Speaker 1: dramatically get cut. And they slipped that through language, thousands
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  Speaker 1: of pages of language in the last couple hours. And
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  Speaker 1: that was probably one of two times I would say
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  Speaker 1: I was lied to in the Senate, because I asked
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: some questions about that. Bluntly, I was lied to. You know,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: normally there's a lot of political shenanigans and manipulations or
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: they just don't tell you, but I would say they
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: rarely outright lie. That was one of two times I
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  Speaker 1: was lied to. And you see in the aftermath there
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  Speaker 1: were many downstate rural unions that split off from the
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: state union because they were lied to too. They were
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: cut out of negotiations. At one point, we were trying
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: to get information from i DOT the Department of Transportation,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: and I found out they weren't being allowed, presumably from
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: the governor in the committee hearing discussing one of the
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: biggest overhauls of public transit and transportation funds in Illinois history,
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  Speaker 1: and we still don't have the information on what all
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: of this means for our region. I DOT doesn't have
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: that information and presumably hasn't been allowed to crunch some
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: of those numbers, which is crazy. And that's veto session.
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  Speaker 1: Regular session, there'd be time to do some of this stuff.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Veto Session it is raw power moves by a super majority.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: So my frustration level if you talk to me as
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: your senator, you know, all the first part of the
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: year was, you know, here's what I don't like, here's
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: what I do like, here's what's happening in VETO. I
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: walked out and I was like, this is a crup mess.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: We need to reform this whole system. That is insane. Yeah,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: that's that's what I thought. And you hear about some
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: of this stuff and kind of assume there's shenanigans in Springfield.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: It's another thing to see it lot. You know, I
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: spent eight years as a local mayor, and you know,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: there were things I liked that we did, things we
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: didn't like, but overall there was always a process. There
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: was times me and the most liberal member of my
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: council work together on an issue and we don't care
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: because if we greet on the issue, that's what we did.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: And there were times I killed a discussion because the
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: minority of the council who disagreed with something said we
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: need more time to look at this. And even though
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: they weren't supporting my initiative, and I knew probably never would,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: that made sense. You know, we're going to meet twice
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: every month. We're going to have these discussions. If there's
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: something I've missed or something you think needs to be
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: explored more, let's table this discussion, bring it up in
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: two weeks or four weeks or two months, and have
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: a better, more informed discussion. And we did that several times.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: I had a standing rule when I was a mayor
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: that I would table any bill if council members needed
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: more time, you know, unless it was some emergency action.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And in the Springfield it's exact opposite. Trying to deny information,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: block information, manipulate narratives, and it's part of why Illinois
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: is where it is. We're fiftieth out of fifty states
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: and fiscal stability we're forty seventh out of fifty and
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: economic opportunity, so it's a very hard state compared to
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: the rest of America to move up. And when you
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: think about that, that's not a partisan thing. When you're
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: fifty athout of fifty in fiscal stability, that means every
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: conservative red state and every liberal blue state and every
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: purple modern state is doing finances better than you. At
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: that point, it's not ideology or party. It's culture and leadership.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: And it's the culture that needs to change in Springfield.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not even sitting here and going to say, you know,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the partisan part of it. People can come to conclusions,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: and I have opinions on that, of course, But the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: actual culture, compared to what you experience in other states
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: or in local government, that's the problem. The ethics and
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: process and culture.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: So the culture needs to change. But what would it
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: need to change in terms of the process so that
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: the culture that wants to abuse the process doesn't have
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: the ability to do anymore.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: That is a great question. First of all, we need
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: an Illinois Supreme Court that defends the Illinois Constitution, and
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: so the three readings rule, no governor no majority party,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: whether it's Republican, which it's been in decades past or Democrat,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: can introduce a bill out of a shell bill in
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: the last minute, fill it with thousands of pages of
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: language to bypass the three readings rule, the transparency laws,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: and then get it passed within hours. That should not
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: be allowed. The Supreme Court could have blocked that a
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: long time ago and should have. And if we need
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: a constitutional amendment to our state constitution to prevent whatever
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court excuses are, then that's what we need
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: to do. So Number two is we need to get
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: rid of jerrymandering, which has been a huge topic in
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: many states and at the federal level. Jerry mannering is
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: supremely unethical. What jerrymandering is is you're letting politicians pick
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: their voters instead of the voters picking their elected officials.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: And with modern demographic mac making bility that has gotten
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: brutally efficient. They can take, for example, my district and see, oh,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of people who started voting Republicans in
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: the corner of Rock Island County into cal and Peoria,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: and they might influence elections. So we're going to carve
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: them out stick them and Senator Oreano's districts, which is
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: a ready Republican to eliminate their voice, and then we're
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: going to shift the numbers to make sure we protect
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: those districts. And so what you end up with is,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: you know, a good example, at the congressional level, about
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: somewhere between forty five to forty eight percent of Illinoisans
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: voted for a Republican congressman in the last election. So
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: you look at that and you'd say, all right, Democrats
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: should have a majority, a slight majority, and Republicans should
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: be fairly well represented, and they'll have to work together
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: to get stuff done. What actually happen is we have
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: three Republican congressman eighteen percent of the delegation as opposed
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: to the forty seven percentage that voted for one. And
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: what happens when you get supermajorities like that is that
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: super majority, whether the Republican or Democrat, doesn't have to
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: work with the geography or voices that came from that region.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: You essentially silence them. And in Illinois, what that means
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: is Chicago has a lot of power because most states,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: when you're jerrymander, you don't jerrymander for one city. If
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: you think about it, if you jerrymander California, you can't
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: jerrymrinder for La because then San Francisco and Oakland and
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: San Diego and all these other cities will gang together
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: and say, no, you're repressing us, and you can't do
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: it Wisconsin for Madison because Milwaukee and Green Bay. Right,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: so they jerrymandered Wisconsin, but it wasn't for one city.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Illinois and New York are kind of unique that when
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: you jerrymander them, it's not our versus d that just changes.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: You completely alter the urban, rural and suburban divide. And
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: in Illinois we see that as this huge anger and
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: angst between Chicago and everywhere else. There's no other state
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: where you have all these separation referendums and counties desperately
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: trying to leave their state in other states like Iowa
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and Indiana passing laws to get ready to accept those
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: areas if whatever happens. There's no other state where that's happening.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: The dysfunction that it causes in Illinois is massive, and
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: we need to address that. We need in Illinois where
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Chicago and the suburbs and the rural areas are all
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: working together for Illinois, and we haven't had that since
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: probably the Edgar days. You're talking multiple administrations of Republicans
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: and Democrats that have failed to handle the budget, failed
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: to handle the culture to get us where we are.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: That is certainly disappointing, but enlightening. Yeah, good morning. We
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: do we do need to take a short break. Don't
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: let that down or disappoint you. We will be back
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: with State Senator Lee Ariano Junior in just a few minutes.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: You're back with the Waking Crew here on FM ninety
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: five to one and a fourteen sixty w i X,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: and we're continuing our talk line conversation today with Illinois
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: State Centator Lee Ariano Jr. Oh Lee, Well, maybe some
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: some better news on the Let's move.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: On to some better notes. So Veto's session was ugly,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: but there is stuff out there. So I'll talk a
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: little bit about spring and I'll start a little cynical,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: which I think is accurate, and then I'll move into
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: some what I think are good things. And the cynical
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: part is it's an election year cycle, so I'm not
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: up for election. So some of these electoral politics that
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: are floating into Springfield kind of don't really affect me
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: too much, but a number of my colleagues are running
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: for Congress or comptroller or you name it. And of
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: course our governor has his eyes elsewhere. I think in
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: his first term he did something like fifty sixty local
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: interviews and like five national and those numbers are flipped now, right,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: So the general consensus seems to be not a lot
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: is going to happen this spring session until after the
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: March primary. That just seems to be what both sides
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: of the aisle seem to think we've already been. We've
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: already canceled like thirty three percent of our session days
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: this year, just because people are like, if we're not
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: going to do work, why are we here? And then,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: of course the paychecks still get cashed. But that's another conversation.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Conversation I've always wanted to right, right, and I'm glad
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: to hear it right in your position.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Why are the paychecks getting cash if we're canceling session?
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: So here's the here's the silver lining in that that
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: means while all these big dogs are distracted by more
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: important things than their job, there's a chance for those
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: of us who are not doing that right now to
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: work bills and try to build up relationships and make visits. So,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: for example, right now, I'm on a tour to visit
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: all seven children advocacy centers that serve my twelve counties.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: And what children advocacy centers do is they work with
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: children who have been physically abused or sexually molested. Underfunded
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: in Illinois, you know, one of the secret sins of
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: our budget. They'll tell you it's balanced every year. It's not.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: And one of the many ways it's not is that
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: we have not put enough into things like rural healthcare
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: reimbursements urds and home reimbursements are at like twenty seventeen
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: twenty eighteen levels, like just denying inflation. And child adfacacy
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: centers also have some challenges, and one of them is
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: if you are in rural areas, you have to travel
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: to pure or Rockford or somewhere to get specialized pediatric
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: treatment for those kind of cases, and that travel isn't
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: covered under state law, and so they actually have to
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: fundraise through things like United Way to get gas vouchers,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: meal vouchers for these families to get the treatment they
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: need and that's before you even count mental health follow up,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: because if you're a nine year old child and you've
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: gone through this, of course you're going to need some
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: follow up mental health care. That should be automatic, right,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: And so one of the weird things for me is
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: I see this budget being made and I see all
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: the nonsense that goes in it, and then we don't
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: have enough money for something like this. So one of
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: my bills is very simple. It allows travel vouchers for
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: victims of sexual assault, which is a bill we passed
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: last year to be extended to child adficacy centers and
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: juveniles who present at a child apic center. And I'll
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: have more in the future years. This is a starting
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: bill for me. I'll probably also be a chief co
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: sponsor and another child advocacy center bill for my colleague,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Senator Morrison. So she passed the sexual self Voushier bill
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: last year and I was a co sponsor on that.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: She's one of my Democratic colleagues in the majority, and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: she has a bill for child afficacy centers and I
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: have one that does something different. So hopefully we'll be
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: co sponsoring each other's bills and helping them getting through.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: So there's an opportunity in a positive way, to work
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: on some of these things that Illinois should be working on.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: And the challenge, like I mentioned, is Illinois a state
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: that moves from crisis to crisis, sometimes very intentionally. The
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: downside to that is there's a lot of day to
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: day operational things that we should be improving, getting better at,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: that we should be upgrading, and it doesn't happen very easily.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And so my hope is there's this window of time
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: between now in the primary where these are the kind
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: of things we can work on and build relationships to
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: get done. And so we're starting to see a lot
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: of that. Another one is the Senate Republican Caucus on Thursday,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: when they canceled session last week, a bunch of us
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: stayed into town and we worked on bills for victims
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: of domestic assault. And so here's another unpleasant stat I'm sorry.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Since twenty nineteen, the number of domestic homicides has doubled,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: and in recent years it's continuing to going up. It's
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: seen as very much a public safety crisis. The amount
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: of domestic violence and domestic homicide that is happening in
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Illinois and in America. And so we have a number
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: of former prosecutors in our caucus. Darby Hills, she was
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: a Cook County prosecutor, and our leader leader Kieren also was.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: And so they and another one of our attorney colleagues
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: have introduced some legislation on how to tweak Illinois laws
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: to better protect women, especially because a law arguely impacts women,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: it can impact men from this surge in violence, giving
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: them more outlets, having more repercussions, for example, for somebody
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: who repeatedly violates an order of protection. You know, those
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: are the kind of things we're having the chance to
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: work on now and hopefully they get some oxygen because
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: they need to get updated. We can't go crisis to
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: crisis past nothing for three to four months, and then
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: what you're going to see is at the end of
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: session there's going to be another crisis. They're going to
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: quick try to slam stuff through, like the budget or
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, because we won't have done anything from
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: now until March seventeenth. So we're trying to get some
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: stuff down now, and that's that's the silver lining is
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: hopefully some of those things can happen.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: And you recently supported an energy Omnibus Omnibus bill.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Right, Oh, no, I posed it. You post that very much. So,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: in fact, that was the first major energy legislation where
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: every Republican imposed and that was close. There are one
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: or two that we're thinking about supporting it, and we
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: lobbying them said no, we none of us can be
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: on this. And the reason for that is there were
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: some good things in the bill, So I supported aspects
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: of it, including lifting the nuclear moratorium, the ban on
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: nuclear So there were parts that I would support of
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: in getting in there. But the final piece removed consumer
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: caps and so there's about eight billion in new charges
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: that are going to be hitting energy consumers in Illinois,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: and that is a huge problem. So we already had
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: consumer paid incentives for things like wind and solar, and
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: we pay for all this every program for the needy
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: who get their energy bills forgiven that's also paid for
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: by other consumers. And there was a cap in the
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: law and how much you could charge a family for
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: energy for these extra things that got stripped, and it
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: got stripped to subsidize battery storage, and they created that.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: This is essentially a battery storage bill where some of
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: the biggest companies in America are going to build battery
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: storage for wind and solar so it can be released
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: down to the grid. But unlike other states like Texas
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: where the developers paid for that, Illinois, we are making consumers,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: not the developers, pay for battery storage. And in order
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: to do that, we had to get rid of the
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: consumer caps because that was an eight billion dollar price take.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: And that is the reason me and every other Republican
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and quite a few Democrats jumped off that bill and said,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: no energy bills are spiking. We are already killing coal
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: production and natural gas production, and now we have data
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: centers and AI spiking energy. We can't make consumers pay
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: for this. So I voted against that strongly.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: So they were going to increase their bills to make
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: them help pay for battery storage for a form of
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: energy they weren't even using.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So what it is is the problem with wind
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: and solars. It's not baseload power, and is the fancy
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: term I'm losing people. Baseload power is like nuclear or coal,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: where you can turn it on and get it onto
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: the grid when you need it. Wind and solar can't
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: do that. So if you have a really bad snowstorm,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: and people are running their heat but and producing as much,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: you don't have power when you need it. And so
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: when you start forcing the grid to be more relying
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: on wind and solar, you have to have battery storage
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: so that when the sun's producing you can store it
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: and then release it again back onto the grid. You're
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: not creating new energy, you're taking existing energy and shifting
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: it to when you need it. I am not a
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: big fan because you could just spend that same money
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: on baseload power and have way more power in general,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: which is also better for economic development and jobs growth.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: But if you're going to be relying on wind and solar,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: you need it. For example, during the recent cold streak,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: during some of the coldest times when we needed power,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: there was maybe ten percent of the grid that was
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: coming from wind and solar. That was I mean, what
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: was keeping people alive and warm wasn't wind and solar
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: because it can't under our current system. It was natural gas,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: it was nuclear, you know, it was what's left of
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: some of those things, and that's really what we should
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: can build. That's why I was so supportive of lifting
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: the nuclear moretum You know, you don't produce any carbon
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: emissions with nuclear, and you produce phenomenally more power and
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: long term cheaper. The challenge with nuclear, of course, is
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of upfront capital costs to build one
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: and it takes ten to twenty years to get them built.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: So that doesn't help us for the next decade. Right,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: we need to look at natural gas and some other
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: things for the now. But what this battery storage bill.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Because Illinois is such a poor business climate, they needed
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: to guarantee profits for these mega companies, including Blackstone that'll
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: be huge hedge fund, one of the biggest in America.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: They're deeply involved in making these battery storage bills. Their
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: profits are guaranteed in this bill. If they aren't able
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: to develop this battery storage because it's Illinois market is
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: not great, then the consumers, the rate payers in this
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: law guarantee it, and the energy companies will charge those
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: incentives by law to us. So we're in Texas, for example,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: where they also did some battery storage. They did not
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: do that. Developers were on the hook for it, and
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: the state of Texas would offer them some low interest
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: loans to help incentivize it, but they did not charge
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: consumers for it, and That's one of the big problems
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: in Illinois when you get a negative business climate is
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: you get into these bad loops where you can't get
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: people in, so you give them all these incentives. But
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: then you've given your tax money to these companies as incentives,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: so you don't have it for your community. So then
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: you have to raise taxes, and then you just do
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: that over and over again. I mean, we're seeing that
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: with the Bears right now, right. I mean, not to
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: reopen wounds, but the Bears property tax bill at their
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: new stadium would have been maybe north of one hundred
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: million a year. And to put that in perspective, the
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: next highest tax burden for a stadium in America, I
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: believe was Kansas City if I'm remembering my reading right,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: and that was less than ten million. Oh wow, So
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: that delta is massive. So when the Bears look at
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: it and said, look, we're willing to build our own stadium,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: which they've said, but you can't sock us with one
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: hundred million or two hundred million or even seventy five
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: fifty million a year in property taxes.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Like where difference going come?
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Like other NFL groups aren't paying this, and so you
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: see a whole bunch of incentives in other states for
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: their NFL stadiums. The Bears weren't even necessarily asking for that.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: They were asking for what a lot of us are,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: which is tax relief. And so I think when people
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: saw the Indiana Bears pop up, it'd still be the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Chicago Bears, right, But they didn't think it was serious.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think they understand what one hundred million dollars
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: a year mean. That's a billion dollars every decade. That's
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of money. I think the governor should be
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: taking that Indiana push seriously because the Bears are not
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: their owners aren't rich enough that one hundred million dollars
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: a year is nothing to them. That is a lot
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: of money.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's ticket price increases, that's merch price increases. Yeah,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: I mean potential salary or player salary decreases.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: You know, and hard.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Enough love my Bears, but you know it can be
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: hard enough to keep a good player with us long enough.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Then you're going to start paying them less. And we
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: can't incentivize it by just cutting their property taxes individually,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: because then what happens under state law in many cases
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: is that one hundred million goes on to the books,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: but then it spreads to everybody in that region. So,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: for example, if we incentivize them to come to Dixon,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: which obviously wouldn't happen, but suddenly one hundred million was
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: on the rolls, and then their excuse from it who's
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: paying for it? Is the downtown businesses? Is it? You know,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: the homes, the commercials, the commercial property. And so that's
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: the problem they're running into is there was a bill
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: in front of the state legislator Lacher that would have
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: allowed a special incentive for mega companies like the Bears,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: like the huge property tax generators, but like usually happens
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: in state law, that would have then shifted to Arlington
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Heights and all around it. Right, and we can it's
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: just essentially a property tax increase to subsidize Bears, instead
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: of just saying we should be a lower tax state
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: so the Bears can be competitive. And these are the
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: traps we're falling into in Illinois because of how poorly
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: we've been managed recently. In other states, you would never
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: even have to incentive an NFL company for one hundred
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: million in property taxes because that wouldn't be their bill
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: in the first place. Oh, welcome to Illinois. Yeah, I
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: was trying to get more positive with it. We kind
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: of slipped off and talking about the Bears. I'm hopeful
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: we'll get something done. I think it's as easy as
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: trying to get them unshackled from that property tax bill,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: but putting into statute that it's not going to get
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: shifted to regular people in businesses. I think there's a
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: way to do it. Really. Long term, we should be
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: getting everybody's property taxes down by getting out of debt
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: as a state. That should be the long term, twenty
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: year goal. But that doesn't help the Bears right now.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Right now, we need to figure something out.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, something better than one hundred million increases. That's
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: probably going to get passed on to me.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Somehow, exactly exactly.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Well, Lee, I hate to say it, man, it's been
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: a blast, but we are out of time today. All right, Well,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: but I want everyone to know he's going to he'll
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: be back for regular monthly yes, yeah so, and I'll
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: let you know ahead of time when those are coming.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Lee, Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Always good to talk to your listeners.