Latest / WIXN AM 1460 - Shaw Local Radio / Talk Line: Li Arellano Jr. touches on the latest state legislative issues

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Talk Line: Li Arellano Jr. touches on the latest state legislative issues · WIXN AM 1460 - Shaw Local Radio

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Speaker 1: Good morning, sog Valley. You've joined the Waking crew here
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Speaker 1: on FM ninety five one and AM fourteen sixty w
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Speaker 1: I XN. It's eight seventeen on your Monday morning and
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Speaker 1: it's time for talk line and I am joined in
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Speaker 1: the booth once again by our good friend, State Senator
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Speaker 1: Lee Ariano Junior. Sir, how are you good morning? Good
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Speaker 1: to be here? Yeah, how is it outside? I know
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Speaker 1: it was a little soggy.
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Speaker 2: It's a little soggy. It's not raining.
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Speaker 3: My windows were fogging up real fast on the outside.
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Speaker 2: But other than that, you know, it's spring.
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Speaker 3: It's Illinois version of spring anyway, so it's going to
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Speaker 3: be all over the place.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, hopefully we haven't cursed Illinois with another blizzard out
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Speaker 1: of nowhere.
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Speaker 3: But I think it's safe to say it's spring. No,
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Speaker 3: I think, yeah, wow, Yes, I think so. It's I
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Speaker 3: feel like we've had our one random winter storm late
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Speaker 3: in the year, and we've checked that Illinois box, that
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Speaker 3: northern Illinois box, and we had our hailstorm already. I
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Speaker 3: drove home in a hailstorm from Springfield recently and I
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Speaker 3: was like, Okay, well, I think we're I think hopefully
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Speaker 3: we're getting close to checking all the boxes and the
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Speaker 3: farmers can just start planting soon and hopefully.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I hope all the wild weathers ahead
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Speaker 1: of us. I mean we're midway through April, and so
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Speaker 1: that's what kind of brings us importantly to our first topic,
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Speaker 1: is that it's it's Child Abuse Awareness Month.
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Speaker 3: It is it is and Shining Star here and Dixon
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Speaker 3: just did their annual hands around the courthouse to bring
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Speaker 3: awareness to it. And you know, one of the reasons
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Speaker 3: I wanted to highlight this twofold one. In Illinois, we
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Speaker 3: don't and this is a this is a fight I'm
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Speaker 3: having down in Springfield, and it's a bipartisan we're kind
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Speaker 3: of together on this. We don't do enough, whether it's
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Speaker 3: in the City of Chicago, rural areas for child abuse
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Speaker 3: prevention and certainly handling the after effects of when it happens.
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Speaker 3: And that's a real problem. It's been affected by Illinois
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Speaker 3: budget for decades now. But we hopefully can start moving
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Speaker 3: the right direction. But that means that there's more more
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Speaker 3: responsibility on us in the community to make sure we
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Speaker 3: are educating ourselves on what does it look like, what
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Speaker 3: are the signs, how can we prevent it, right, because
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Speaker 3: the best approach to this is prevention, right. You know,
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Speaker 3: I've visited, as of a few weeks ago, all seven
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Speaker 3: of mile child advocacy centers in my twelve counties and
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Speaker 3: certainly not going to share some of the stories they
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Speaker 3: share with me because they're you know, that is a
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Speaker 3: rough line of work to do.
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Speaker 2: My heart goes out to all of them.
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Speaker 3: But the best way to respond is to prevent those
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Speaker 3: stories from happening in the first place, to prevent those kids,
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Speaker 3: those kids from ever having those memories. And so this
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Speaker 3: is a month. You know, you see these awareness months
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Speaker 3: pop up. It's also Autism Acceptance month here in April.
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Speaker 3: It's easy to just look at them and you know,
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Speaker 3: you share a post on Facebook, which is good, or
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Speaker 3: you wear a pin, which is good. You know, I
2:41
Speaker 3: do all those things, but we want to take it
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Speaker 3: to the next level. And each month, when you see
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Speaker 3: some of these things, take ten minutes out of your day,
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Speaker 3: do a Google search and learn a little bit more
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Speaker 3: about what you should know as a member of society
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Speaker 3: for each of those months. And in the case of
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Speaker 3: child abuse awareness and autism, it is a simil Google searches.
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Speaker 3: What should I look for. You know, how what are
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Speaker 3: the signs I could see or hear from a child?
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Speaker 3: Because it does happen here in Dixon. I can tell you,
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Speaker 3: as the former mayor of Dixon, we saw cases come
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Speaker 3: through that would break your heart. It happens in Lee County,
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Speaker 3: it happens all across Illinois, and there are still children
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Speaker 3: falling through the cracks. And so that would be my
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Speaker 3: message for Child Abuse Awareness Month is you know, spread
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Speaker 3: spread the awareness, but also take an extra ten to
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Speaker 3: fifteen minutes of your time just to do a quick
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Speaker 3: Google dive on what should.
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Speaker 2: I look for? What are the signs?
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Speaker 3: How can I make sure it doesn't happen to the
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Speaker 3: children in my life, whether it's your kids, whether it's
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Speaker 3: your nieces and nephews. You know, if you have a
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Speaker 3: line of work that works around kids, it's all the
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Speaker 3: more important.
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Speaker 1: So, yeah, what do you think we could be doing
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Speaker 1: better on a state level with this?
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Speaker 3: There are a lot of things. Seven of them require money,
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Speaker 3: some of them don't. In terms of prevention, we are
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Speaker 3: not a very proactive society in Illinois. And because of
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Speaker 3: all all of the budget problems and the overspending and
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Speaker 3: the mess, we're in a lot of times, preventative maintenance
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Speaker 3: is the thing that goes down first, whether that's something
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Speaker 3: as simple as taking care of vehicles or road planning,
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Speaker 3: or in something like child abuse prevention. So we need
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Speaker 3: more advocates and social workers in our child affic centers
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Speaker 3: that can proactively say, for example, go into school and
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Speaker 3: give the classes they're supposed to be giving about what
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Speaker 3: is a healthy relationship look like? What is a bad touch?
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Speaker 3: You know, so these kids understand it.
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Speaker 1: You know.
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Speaker 3: What we found is when we do those hey, it
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Speaker 3: can prevent things from happening. Those kids will know to
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Speaker 3: talk to their parents or talk to the adults in
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Speaker 3: their life if something starts walking down that path. But two,
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Speaker 3: any of those advocates can tell you stories about when
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Speaker 3: they give some of those awareness classes in schools and
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Speaker 3: then within days or weeks, those kids either come to
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Speaker 3: a teacher or come to their parent and say, this
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Speaker 3: happened to me, right. So that is something we do
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Speaker 3: not have enough of, is the proactive prevention education steps
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Speaker 3: that would either prevent some of this from happening in
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Speaker 3: the first place, or catch it earlier before it continues
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Speaker 3: down a long path. Because some of these they start bad,
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Speaker 3: but then they get worse and worse over time. And
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Speaker 3: if you have taught and educated kids to have a
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Speaker 3: conversation with their parents or an adult they trust in
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Speaker 3: their life, you can prevent those outcomes.
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Speaker 1: Now as you saying that we don't have enough of
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Speaker 1: this prevention, is it that we don't have enough people
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Speaker 1: to be doing this we or should we be using
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Speaker 1: a better model or both?
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Speaker 3: You know, I won't criticize Illinois's model as much. We're
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Speaker 3: one of the few states that has a child advocacy center.
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Speaker 3: I think there's forty two in Illinois now that cover
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Speaker 3: every part of Illinois. But in the rural areas, the
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Speaker 3: distances are very big and the staffing doesn't always adjust
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Speaker 3: for size. And I'll give you an example. Island County,
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Speaker 3: which is a county with population well over one hundred thousand,
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Speaker 3: has roughly the same amount of child advocates working in
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Speaker 3: it as some of my rural counties, which is four.
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Speaker 2: To five people.
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Speaker 3: Peoria, which has two hundred thousand people in Puora County.
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Speaker 2: They have four to five people working.
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Speaker 3: In the child advocacy center right now, which is similar
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Speaker 3: to what you'd find in a rural area. And one
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Speaker 3: of the things they've been losing are their social workers
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Speaker 3: because those were grant based and the grants ran out,
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Speaker 3: And a lot of times those workers can get much
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Speaker 3: better pay in a regular healthcare system than they can
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Speaker 3: working in these underpaid state funded facilities, and so they
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Speaker 3: leave right after a period of time. And that means
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Speaker 3: often those critical positions go unfilled either because of lack
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Speaker 3: of grants, lack of money, or because the personnel are
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Speaker 3: turning over too fast, And so that's an area we
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Speaker 3: need to work on. One other more simple fix is
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Speaker 3: giving more flexibility and how the current grants can be spent.
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Speaker 3: So say, for example, if a child, and I think
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Speaker 3: I might have even talked about this here before at
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Speaker 3: WI excent, if a child in a rural area faces
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Speaker 3: physical or sexual abuse, they might have to travel to
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Speaker 3: Peoria or Rockford to get seen by the medical pediatric
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Speaker 3: specialists that look at those kind of cases, and there's
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Speaker 3: not necessarily money in the state budget to pay for
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Speaker 3: the kid or the family to get there, which is
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Speaker 3: not so. For example, United Way does a lot in
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Speaker 3: my counties to fundraise for those offering fuel cards or
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Speaker 3: food cards for that Really something that we as a
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Speaker 3: society should be covering if you have an abuse child.
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Speaker 3: And I'm a diehard fiscal conservative, and even I will
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Speaker 3: take one look at that and say that's something we
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Speaker 3: should be spending money on. So it kind of shocked
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Speaker 3: me that we don't. But we don't Illinois. Why, it's
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Speaker 3: just never been in the grants and it's an easy
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Speaker 3: thing to overlook, and I think part of it is
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Speaker 3: so many people automatically assume we're taking care of that.
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Speaker 2: You know, Illinois has a reputation of high tax.
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Speaker 3: High service, but the high service part doesn't always happen,
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Speaker 3: and so sometimes when you're paying these high taxes, you
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Speaker 3: just assume, okay, well the services that come with us
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Speaker 3: are happening, not necessarily, and this is one of those
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Speaker 3: areas that's fallen through the cracks. And I would tell
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Speaker 3: you it affects Chicago too. Chicago has travel problems for
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Speaker 3: their young ones as well. They're a bit different than ours.
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Speaker 3: There's not so much about distance. It's about congestion and
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Speaker 3: time and getting to the right place, especially for kids
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Speaker 3: that come out of families and poverty, and that's something
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Speaker 3: we can solve quite frankly. I mean the solution to
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Speaker 3: that is in probably the millions per year, Whereas you know,
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Speaker 3: we spend forty million on a youth sports complex, but
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Speaker 3: we can't spend two million on child abuse prevention or
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Speaker 3: getting a kid who has been sexually assaulted to a
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Speaker 3: pediatric nurse that specializes in that. You know, some of
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Speaker 3: our priorities are backwards or what it comes down to,
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Speaker 3: and that's ultimately falls on me. That's part of my
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Speaker 3: role down in the legislatures to highlight, Hey, for our
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Speaker 3: our rural kids. This is something that's fallen through the
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Speaker 3: cracks and we got to get it addressed. And I've
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Speaker 3: been able to find some bipartisan support for that. I
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Speaker 3: don't think I'll get my particular bill across the line
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Speaker 3: this session, which is disappointing to me, but I think
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Speaker 3: within the next year or so we might I might
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Speaker 3: be able to get that solved.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: You know, you make a good point about priorities. I mean,
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Speaker 1: most of our teachers need second jobs. But in this country,
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Speaker 1: I think we give too much priority to entertainment and leisure. Mmm,
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Speaker 1: just even as the average consumer. Yeah, I mean, surely
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Speaker 1: you have people on the screen making millions of dollars
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Speaker 1: to play dress up and pretend.
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Speaker 2: But your teachers bread and circuses.
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Speaker 1: And paying for supplies out of their own pockets.
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Speaker 2: Yeap bread and circuses.
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Speaker 3: That's been a problem of our human condition for millennia
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Speaker 3: is we like to be distracted, we like to be entertained.
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Speaker 3: We pay high premium on that, and that flows through
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Speaker 3: into our budgets in ways that are just a bad
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Speaker 3: match for priorities.
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Speaker 1: Well, the emperors of Rome weren't wrong.
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Speaker 2: We will solve that problem. To take No, we can
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Speaker 2: tip away at it. I don't think we're going to
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Speaker 2: solve it.
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Speaker 1: Let's move on over to a little something closer to home.
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Speaker 1: Some agriculture bills you wanted to discuss.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a lot of AG meetings going on
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Speaker 3: right now. The farm bureaus have been having their legislative meetings,
10:16
Speaker 3: have been in you know, Ogle County has been to
10:18
Speaker 3: Lee County for AG in the classroom, been Lacelle. And
10:24
Speaker 3: there's a lot affecting.
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Speaker 2: Ag right now down in Springfield.
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Speaker 3: The biggest one is the death tax, the estate tax,
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Speaker 3: which is steadily each year killing more family farms. And
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Speaker 3: you're seeing agriculture getting more corporatized as the years go by,
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Speaker 3: which I and many of us think is a bad thing,
10:42
Speaker 3: and so the the death tax, which is not tied
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Speaker 3: to inflation that in Illinois. So each year, where as
10:52
Speaker 3: the farming family leave loses their patriots and matriarchs and
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Speaker 3: gets caught up in the the death tax, they're having
11:00
Speaker 3: to solve off parts of their farm to continue family farming.
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Speaker 3: And at this point, I think the last adjustment was
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Speaker 3: almost twenty years ago, So that's a lot of inflation
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Speaker 3: that should have been going into that adjustment and it hasn't.
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Speaker 3: So that's I think aggs number one goal, and it
11:17
Speaker 3: has been for the last couple of years. The fix
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Speaker 3: for that for just family farms would be about twenty million,
11:22
Speaker 3: which there again, there are worse things we're spending in
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Speaker 3: the budget for twenty million than addressing statewide Illinois aggs
11:31
Speaker 3: number one concern, and yet we haven't been able to
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Speaker 3: do it. The governor signaled he's open to it. Last
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Speaker 3: year he told Republicans if we wanted to solve this,
11:38
Speaker 3: we'd have to find some areas we'd be willing to cut.
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Speaker 3: We offered those, he didn't like any of them, so
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Speaker 3: it didn't make it into the budget. This year, I
11:46
Speaker 3: think we're closer than we've ever been the challenge we have.
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Speaker 3: I think is more political than policy. I think if
11:51
Speaker 3: this topic made it to the Big Board, it would
11:54
Speaker 3: pass both chambers easily. So they don't let it get
11:58
Speaker 3: to the Big Board because they don't want to spend
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Speaker 3: money on this particular issue. And again that comes down
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Speaker 3: to politics. This is not an issue that's important within
12:06
Speaker 3: the city of Chicago because obviously not a lot of
12:08
Speaker 3: family farms within the city of Chicago, and not an
12:10
Speaker 3: issue that's important to the governor and his various ambitions,
12:14
Speaker 3: whether it's reelection or bigger and so they just don't
12:17
Speaker 3: have any interest in moving this. So there's a lot
12:19
Speaker 3: of prognosticators that think it'll be a couple years before
12:23
Speaker 3: we can move this. That's not a guarantee. We're going
12:25
Speaker 3: to fight for it. I think, like I said, it's
12:28
Speaker 3: we're closer to getting this solved than we have been
12:30
Speaker 3: in the past because there are so many Democrats that
12:33
Speaker 3: support it. But if we can't get it to a
12:35
Speaker 3: vote and we can't get it in the budget, then
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Speaker 3: it doesn't happen, even if it has seventy or eighty
12:39
Speaker 3: percent of the legislator supporting it. So that's one of
12:43
Speaker 3: our battles for rural legislators is how do we get
12:46
Speaker 3: popular topics that we know are important, that we know
12:48
Speaker 3: would pass onto the board to get voted on, because
12:52
Speaker 3: leadership blocks them from getting voted on in the first place.
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Speaker 2: And there are a lot of bills like that. There's
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Speaker 2: a lot of things.
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Speaker 3: I mean, I have one of my bills where I
12:58
Speaker 3: have thirty co sponsors, so that is a majority of
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Speaker 3: the Senate. So including myself a chief sponsor, there are
13:05
Speaker 3: thirty one people who have signed on to my bill
13:08
Speaker 3: allowing electronic storage for local governments, which would cut local
13:11
Speaker 3: government costs, which in theory helped chip away at property
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Speaker 3: tax pressures. I fully have a majority of my colleagues,
13:19
Speaker 3: including leadership from the Democrats, signed onto my bill, and
13:22
Speaker 3: since I introduced when I first got in over a
13:25
Speaker 3: year ago, I cannot get it called to a committee hearing.
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Speaker 3: So these are the kind of dynamics where we're trying
13:30
Speaker 3: to push on and work on its things that we
13:31
Speaker 3: know are positive, that both parties agree are positive, we
13:34
Speaker 3: can't get votes on because they won't give us enough
13:36
Speaker 3: influence to even bring.
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Speaker 2: The topic up.
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Speaker 1: Those pushing it back against this, is it just certain
13:41
Speaker 1: points that they're not happy with, or is it legitimately
13:44
Speaker 1: that they don't see the value in it, because as
13:47
Speaker 1: you were saying, you know, city, it's not exactly a
13:49
Speaker 1: top process.
13:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a mixture, right, So one of the legitimate
13:54
Speaker 3: points is why is this only applying to egg?
13:57
Speaker 2: Why is this not across the board?
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Speaker 3: So, for example, if I'm a member of the Chicago
14:02
Speaker 3: Caucus or the African American Caucus, because there's not a
14:05
Speaker 3: lot of black farmers in Illinois for all the historical
14:08
Speaker 3: reasons that we're aware of, that's a legitimate concern. The
14:14
Speaker 3: problem is to tie it to inflation. They've just been
14:18
Speaker 3: unwilling to do that, which would have solved this incrementally
14:20
Speaker 3: over time and been much easier to handle.
14:22
Speaker 2: And they're unwilling to do it across the board.
14:25
Speaker 3: One because that price tag is probably over seven hundred
14:28
Speaker 3: million a year, and so the advocates have been saying,
14:31
Speaker 3: all right, let's chip away at this. Solving egg and
14:34
Speaker 3: Illinois is a critical first step because it's so destructive
14:36
Speaker 3: to family farms and egg is a leading industry in Illinois.
14:40
Speaker 3: And for me, it's a no brainer because I'm a
14:41
Speaker 3: very rural senator and we've been able to build consensus
14:46
Speaker 3: around that. Unfortunately, that leaves a poison pill in there
14:51
Speaker 3: that can people can use an excuse to say, oh,
14:52
Speaker 3: we don't think the bill's ready yet. Well, if a
14:55
Speaker 3: vast majority of the Senate House is ready to vote yes,
14:57
Speaker 3: then the bill is ready. It's just ready for one
15:00
Speaker 3: or two key powerful leaders in Illinois, which really kills
15:04
Speaker 3: the democratic process quite frankly. And I'll give you an example.
15:08
Speaker 3: In the House, Speaker Welch has a rule where in
15:11
Speaker 3: order for a bill to move forward, he needs a
15:13
Speaker 3: majority of the Democratic caucus sixty Democratic representatives, a majority
15:19
Speaker 3: of the entire House of Representatives in Illinois of Democratic
15:23
Speaker 3: votes before he'll move forward. So, in other words, Republicans
15:27
Speaker 3: and largely rural legislators have no power whatsoever in Illinois's
15:32
Speaker 3: House of Representatives to advance a bill. A bill will
15:35
Speaker 3: only advance if it already has enough majority passing votes
15:39
Speaker 3: from the Democratic Party to move And that is the
15:42
Speaker 3: kind of shenanigans that is both unethical in my opinion
15:45
Speaker 3: and secondarily on article because it's only possible because of
15:49
Speaker 3: the gerrymannered maps giving them a full supermajority if they
15:52
Speaker 3: had a normal majority. They couldn't have an unethical rule
15:55
Speaker 3: like that because they'd always need some Republicans for the
15:58
Speaker 3: vast majority of bills to be part of the discussion,
16:02
Speaker 3: to completely wipe out Republicans from any part of the
16:05
Speaker 3: discussions that way by rule, it's an unwritten rule, but
16:08
Speaker 3: everybody knows about it. Means we can never advance our
16:12
Speaker 3: causes because any Republican idea would need sixty Democratic state
16:18
Speaker 3: reps to move forward, not sixty total represent not a
16:22
Speaker 3: majority of the House, but sixty Democrats specifically. That is
16:27
Speaker 3: an impossibly high bar because what incentive do sixty Democrats
16:32
Speaker 3: have to make a Republican look good? There are plenty
16:34
Speaker 3: we can work with down there, they're probably not sixty,
16:38
Speaker 3: and that makes it very hard.
16:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean this is the kind of a
16:42
Speaker 1: thing that applies to no matter whose side is favoring,
16:45
Speaker 1: which is that I agree, if you're going to have
16:48
Speaker 1: something pass, you should have a reasonable number on both
16:52
Speaker 1: sides saying they're interested, because that to me sounds like
16:55
Speaker 1: we're coming together in the middle. No one person one
17:00
Speaker 1: side should be getting their way right, So we're supposed
17:03
Speaker 1: to be doing the best we can within compromise. Right.
17:06
Speaker 3: By Speaker Welch's rule, the middle does not exist in
17:08
Speaker 3: the state of Illinois.
17:09
Speaker 2: There is no middle.
17:10
Speaker 3: The middle of Illinois legislatively is the middle to left
17:16
Speaker 3: middle of the Democratic caucus because you have to start
17:19
Speaker 3: with sixty votes of Democratic reps. There's one hundred and
17:22
Speaker 3: twenty state reps in Illinois, one hundred and eighteen. I'm sorry,
17:27
Speaker 3: So sixty is a majority of the House. If you
17:30
Speaker 3: get sixty votes on something, you pass it, right, you
17:34
Speaker 3: should be able. So if you have seventy eighty total
17:38
Speaker 3: votes on something, that's a pretty strong majority. And in Illinois,
17:43
Speaker 3: you haven't even gotten started yet because a bunch of
17:45
Speaker 3: those were Republican.
17:46
Speaker 2: And they didn't count according to the speaker.
17:49
Speaker 1: How do we get around this ever, Well, in.
17:52
Speaker 3: My case, I ran for the Senate, where they don't
17:54
Speaker 3: have that rule. So luckily it's easier for me to
17:57
Speaker 3: work with my Democratic colleagues than it is for my
18:00
Speaker 3: Republican colleagues in the House. I've said before, the key
18:04
Speaker 3: is Jerrymanner in reform and ethics reform, if you had
18:06
Speaker 3: a fair map and a fair system, you would more
18:09
Speaker 3: fairly represent the people, and then unethical rules like this
18:12
Speaker 3: literally couldn't exist.
18:13
Speaker 2: They just they wouldn't function.
18:16
Speaker 3: So the problem with functioning off of an unethical and
18:21
Speaker 3: in the case of Jerry Manner in an illegal base,
18:23
Speaker 3: is you get unethical results. Your foundation is unethical, so
18:26
Speaker 3: your results are unethical. And we see that all up
18:28
Speaker 3: and down in Illinois. But that means a lot of
18:30
Speaker 3: rural issues, like things like child abuse awareness and travel
18:33
Speaker 3: for a rural kid can easily get ignored because royal
18:37
Speaker 3: voices don't count as much.
18:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you see you see that in a lot.
18:41
Speaker 3: Right for and you see that a lot in eg
18:43
Speaker 3: I will say the farm BIA does a really good
18:45
Speaker 3: job of working in the Democratic Caucus if they're very
18:47
Speaker 3: bipartisan group ag is and so they've been able to
18:51
Speaker 3: get some things done and once they can get them
18:54
Speaker 3: to the board, like I said, they'll pass.
18:56
Speaker 1: Yeah. Because if you're not aware of it, those of
18:58
Speaker 1: you who need to listen, food applies to both sides.
19:02
Speaker 2: That's true.
19:03
Speaker 3: When you raise the input cost of food, you're raising
19:07
Speaker 3: the cost of food. I mean, this is one of
19:08
Speaker 3: the reasons we harp on property taxes. You know, we
19:11
Speaker 3: were mentioned in the beginning. I don't know if you're
19:13
Speaker 3: allowed to talk about it on there, but I am.
19:15
Speaker 3: Your family's working on a new business in Dixon. And
19:18
Speaker 3: when people talk about property taxes, a lot of times
19:20
Speaker 3: they think, oh, you know, that's just taxes, that's not
19:22
Speaker 3: my daily cost of living. No, if you rent, that's
19:25
Speaker 3: built into your rent, If you own a home, that's
19:27
Speaker 3: built into your mortgage and into your monthly expenses.
19:30
Speaker 2: Right.
19:31
Speaker 3: And so when those go up, the cost of doing
19:33
Speaker 3: business goes up. All across Illinois, the cost of owning
19:36
Speaker 3: a home goes up. It is directly taught tied to housing,
19:40
Speaker 3: and it's directly tied to successful economic development. I mean,
19:44
Speaker 3: the real fast shorthand is the more you tax something,
19:47
Speaker 3: the less of.
19:47
Speaker 2: It you're going to have.
19:49
Speaker 3: And that flows through the economy into housing, into small
19:53
Speaker 3: business development and storefront development. And that's another area where
20:00
Speaker 3: we just you know, if we had a more ethical
20:02
Speaker 3: system in Illinois, we would have already moved on some
20:04
Speaker 3: of these property tax reforms.
20:06
Speaker 2: And we just can't. We can't.
20:08
Speaker 3: We can't get things through the House. And the Senate
20:10
Speaker 3: won't take them up if they can't get the House
20:13
Speaker 3: because it's a waste of their time, and the governor
20:15
Speaker 3: gets to wash his hands of it. Because well, you
20:17
Speaker 3: know it can't get through the House. Well, Gov, you
20:19
Speaker 3: could lead on this issue and then it would change
20:21
Speaker 3: as would happen. That would be my critique of the
20:22
Speaker 3: governor on that.
20:23
Speaker 1: Oh boy, another issue. We can't solve this one.
20:26
Speaker 3: No, no, and property taxes is one that even if
20:30
Speaker 3: we got on the right path, it would take ten
20:32
Speaker 3: to twenty years to normalize.
20:35
Speaker 2: And I'm just blunt about that.
20:36
Speaker 3: There's people out and sell you know, the snake oil salesman,
20:39
Speaker 3: the overnight fixes that doesn't exist. We got into this
20:41
Speaker 3: mess over decades and decades and decades. And if we
20:44
Speaker 3: got out of the mess half as fast as we
20:46
Speaker 3: got in, which is a reasonable goal, that's twenty years.
20:49
Speaker 3: I think ten to fifteen We could probably do it
20:51
Speaker 3: if we were real serious about it, if it was
20:53
Speaker 3: a top goal in Illinois, and you would see a
20:56
Speaker 3: result in economic boom in Illinois if we did that. Unfortunately,
21:00
Speaker 3: the powers that be are just not interested in those solutions.
21:03
Speaker 3: There are areas where we could have faster fixes, and
21:06
Speaker 3: I don't know if you and I have talked about
21:07
Speaker 3: this before. Energy policy is one of those areas where
21:10
Speaker 3: we could have an almost overnight fix and lowering of prices.
21:13
Speaker 3: We could adjust energy prices down within one year.
21:18
Speaker 2: I'd love that. Tell me how well.
21:20
Speaker 3: First we'd have to change our approach to energy policy.
21:23
Speaker 3: We would have to get much more aggressive about building
21:26
Speaker 3: nuclear For the long term, that's a ten to fifteen
21:28
Speaker 3: year fix. But if we push that, and we've started,
21:30
Speaker 3: we've been pushing to lift this nuclear ban for a
21:34
Speaker 3: long time now. Senator Resud, my colleague, has been working
21:36
Speaker 3: on that. I want to say over a decade. She
21:38
Speaker 3: finally got it through. So ten to fifteen years from now,
21:41
Speaker 3: the solution's built in if we make it serious. In
21:44
Speaker 3: the short term, we need to build more clean natural
21:49
Speaker 3: gas facilities and really build up the grid. And if
21:55
Speaker 3: we're going to allow data centers, we need to require
21:57
Speaker 3: they be part of building up that grid, both to
22:00
Speaker 3: vide power for themselves but also to build up Illinois
22:03
Speaker 3: grid as a whole. And then that's the midterm, and
22:07
Speaker 3: the short term is you'd have to extend all the
22:10
Speaker 3: arbitrary deadlines on clean coal technology and unleash natural gas
22:15
Speaker 3: existing plants to run. So the only reason natural gas
22:18
Speaker 3: plants can't run more in Illinois is because our permit
22:21
Speaker 3: says they can't. They could literally hit a button when
22:24
Speaker 3: electric prices get high and run those plants more and
22:27
Speaker 3: lower the price of electricity easily. And I had a
22:30
Speaker 3: bill to do that. One of my Democratic colleagues, Senator Cunningham,
22:33
Speaker 3: has a similar bill to do that. This is a
22:35
Speaker 3: bipartisan issue where my bill is pretty straightforward. As long
22:39
Speaker 3: as you meet the federal air standards as they've existed
22:43
Speaker 3: for two decades, right, and you want to sell power,
22:48
Speaker 3: you can. It's really that simple. You have to meet
22:50
Speaker 3: the environmental standards and then you can run. In Illinois,
22:53
Speaker 3: you're not allowed to do that. You have time limits
22:55
Speaker 3: on how you can do that. And even if you
22:57
Speaker 3: could make money selling energy, you're not allowed to sell
23:00
Speaker 3: in certain conditions. Well, what does that do that cuts supply? Well,
23:03
Speaker 3: in the world of supply and demand, what does that
23:05
Speaker 3: do that raises prices? And then in a world where
23:08
Speaker 3: you're cutting supply the way Illinois is, and demand is
23:11
Speaker 3: also going up because of AI and data centers, you're
23:14
Speaker 3: getting nailed economically from both sides of the supply and
23:19
Speaker 3: demand dynamic. You're getting nailed from a lowering supply, which
23:22
Speaker 3: is arbitrary because of the governor's energy policies, and because
23:26
Speaker 3: of the environmental push that wasn't well thought through and
23:29
Speaker 3: the numbers were in the math was lied to everybody
23:31
Speaker 3: about but also from the demand side, because AI and
23:35
Speaker 3: data centers have been coming in, they weren't poorly thought through,
23:39
Speaker 3: which meant the grid wasn't ready for them. And when
23:41
Speaker 3: the grid's not ready for them and you take power
23:43
Speaker 3: out of it again at the price point inflection, all
23:47
Speaker 3: of that is solvable within a year. You could solve
23:49
Speaker 3: the data center issues by taking a better planning look
23:52
Speaker 3: at water use, energy use, and grid build up before
23:55
Speaker 3: they're allowed to come in and make them pay their
23:57
Speaker 3: fair share, even plus some quite frankly, because they are
24:00
Speaker 3: so in demand. In Illinois is so land intensive. You
24:03
Speaker 3: could drop your property taxes, improve your electrical grid, and
24:06
Speaker 3: make them do environmental work on the water supply and
24:09
Speaker 3: leave all of those better and they'd probably still come in.
24:13
Speaker 3: So that's the short term, midterm and long term plan.
24:16
Speaker 3: The long term is nuclear and whatever twenty years of
24:18
Speaker 3: technical looks like. The midterm is building more clean gas tech.
24:25
Speaker 3: The short term is stop the hate for clean coal
24:29
Speaker 3: and natural gas and use the revenue from those to
24:31
Speaker 3: build into your nuclear plan so that way you can
24:34
Speaker 3: be carbon free by twenty years from now based off
24:37
Speaker 3: a nuclear agenda and whatever tech improves. My bill did
24:41
Speaker 3: have a limit in it as more wind and solar
24:43
Speaker 3: came online, like some of those, some of the things
24:46
Speaker 3: my bill allowed would go away just out of recognition
24:49
Speaker 3: that we've been lied to about what wind and solar
24:51
Speaker 3: are capable of. But they are capable of something. They
24:54
Speaker 3: do have a role to play and energy, and as
24:56
Speaker 3: some of those come online, we can shift away from
24:58
Speaker 3: older tech, but we can't do it on fake, arbitrary
25:01
Speaker 3: guidelines that are mathematically impossible, because otherwise you just price
25:04
Speaker 3: people out of living. And that's what we're doing in Illinois.
25:07
Speaker 3: We're pricing families and businesses out of being able to
25:10
Speaker 3: afford an electric bill. And I literally have elderly folks
25:14
Speaker 3: who have come into my office and said, Lee, and
25:16
Speaker 3: I'm not even making a story up, Lee. My husband
25:19
Speaker 3: helped build this house. I've lived in it for over
25:21
Speaker 3: fifty years. I have to sell it and move in
25:23
Speaker 3: with my kids because I can't afford property tax and
25:25
Speaker 3: utility costs. They're literally more than I can handle in
25:28
Speaker 3: a month, and I won't have money left over for
25:30
Speaker 3: food or anything else. So they're selling their home like
25:32
Speaker 3: that should not be the Illinois we live in.
25:34
Speaker 1: No, I want to know what's the hold up with nuclear?
25:38
Speaker 1: I hear a lot about nuclear being something that could
25:40
Speaker 1: be a great answer. Is this just fears we're going
25:42
Speaker 1: to have an American chernobyl. What's the deal?
25:44
Speaker 3: It was so over the past few years before I
25:48
Speaker 3: got in, they lifted the ban on nuclear partially for
25:51
Speaker 3: small modular reactors. The problem with those is the tech
25:54
Speaker 3: isn't good enough to make them very affordable. They're incredibly useful,
25:58
Speaker 3: the utility rate is high, but the lost per kill
26:00
Speaker 3: wide is just orpermeg wide is not conducive for most
26:04
Speaker 3: things yet and that teck will get better, and like
26:07
Speaker 3: all tech, it'll get cheaper. And then finally last year,
26:12
Speaker 3: the one of the few good things in the energy bill,
26:14
Speaker 3: because that energy bill is terrible, we finally pushed through
26:17
Speaker 3: as part of the compromise, lifting the ban on new
26:21
Speaker 3: nuclear energy development. So we also raised the cost to
26:26
Speaker 3: do it, though, because of course we did.
26:27
Speaker 2: We're Illinois. We riched.
26:29
Speaker 3: We raised the reactor free from two million to four
26:32
Speaker 3: million a year, so not pocket change, and we stocked
26:38
Speaker 3: the group that decides energy palace in Illinois with people
26:41
Speaker 3: from wind and solar, and nuclear is not well represented.
26:46
Speaker 3: So we moved two steps forward and then we moved
26:49
Speaker 3: one step back, so we're still kind of heading in
26:51
Speaker 3: the right direction. The next problem is simply that nuclear
26:55
Speaker 3: is the most expensive upfront. It is the cheapest and
26:58
Speaker 3: cleanest long term over the course of its life, but
27:01
Speaker 3: it has the most upfront capital costs in time and
27:04
Speaker 3: regulation to meet. So the downside to nuclear is it
27:09
Speaker 3: is hard to get going. It takes ten to fifteen
27:11
Speaker 3: years of work and investment and planning to get a
27:15
Speaker 3: live reactor producing energy safely and cleanly. The long term
27:20
Speaker 3: benefits are amazing because over the life of the whole
27:23
Speaker 3: project it is cheaper than most other forms of power
27:27
Speaker 3: and it is carbon free. Right, so it scratches a
27:29
Speaker 3: lot of people's itches over the long term. But ideally
27:33
Speaker 3: we would have started this ten to twenty years ago
27:34
Speaker 3: and then we'd be there instead for nuclear word ten
27:37
Speaker 3: to twenty years away from it being super impactful. With
27:41
Speaker 3: one caveat energy markets react to the future just like
27:45
Speaker 3: most business So if we did any of the steps
27:48
Speaker 3: I just mentioned, energy prices would partially go down because
27:51
Speaker 3: the futures would react and we'd get more development interest
27:55
Speaker 3: reacting to the fact that Illinois now has better energy policy. Right,
28:00
Speaker 3: the economic development equivalent would be when Dixon put in
28:05
Speaker 3: tools up i ID eight when I was mayor, and
28:07
Speaker 3: developers saw, hey, Dixon is committed to this. There's these
28:10
Speaker 3: tools in place. They can work with us. This interstate
28:15
Speaker 3: stop is going to start blowing up, and I want
28:17
Speaker 3: to be part of it. We started getting interests, and
28:19
Speaker 3: then once other people saw they had interest even more,
28:22
Speaker 3: and then success begat success. And if you go out
28:24
Speaker 3: at ID now you see tons of things that weren't
28:27
Speaker 3: there twenty years ago. Right, energy isn't any different. If
28:30
Speaker 3: people see Illinois as pivoting to the better path, they
28:34
Speaker 3: will invest. Right now, we have the opposite problem where
28:37
Speaker 3: people who do clean natural gas tech are pulling out
28:39
Speaker 3: of Illinois and going to Texas and other states like literally,
28:42
Speaker 3: we've had the testimony from Democrats in the Energy Committee
28:45
Speaker 3: in the Senate complaining that this is happening in their districts,
28:49
Speaker 3: and those of us on the Republican side, we're just saying, yeah,
28:53
Speaker 3: we've been telling you that since you started these energy policies,
28:56
Speaker 3: over half a day ago that this is the path
28:58
Speaker 3: we were walking.
29:00
Speaker 2: Did we know it was going to get this bad? No,
29:02
Speaker 2: we knew it was going to be bad.
29:03
Speaker 3: We didn't know data centers were going to become such
29:05
Speaker 3: a big thing and make it even worse. But we
29:07
Speaker 3: knew the supply demand curve was going to get messed up,
29:10
Speaker 3: and it has.
29:12
Speaker 1: You know, I hate to say that I don't have
29:14
Speaker 1: enough time to ask the half dozen other questions that
29:18
Speaker 1: the journalist in me has for this, especially getting into
29:21
Speaker 1: a whole other tangent on wanting to know your hot
29:23
Speaker 1: take on data centers and sharing mind.
29:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a lot. That's a deep conversation, it is.
29:28
Speaker 1: And we got a couple other topics, so I want
29:30
Speaker 1: to get there, but I'm just sayings in my face.
29:34
Speaker 1: It was like, you can't today, Brandon. Just save it
29:36
Speaker 1: for the next time he comes back. Let's get into
29:39
Speaker 1: local zoning and people regulations. Yeah, let's touch on that.
29:41
Speaker 3: So local controlling has been under fire our current governor.
29:46
Speaker 3: You know, he didn't come out of local government. He
29:48
Speaker 3: had not you know, he was born into the high
29:51
Speaker 3: circles of life. And one of the downsides to that
29:54
Speaker 3: is he does not have enough appreciation him and his team,
29:58
Speaker 3: or respect for what a county does, or what a
30:01
Speaker 3: township does, or what a city or a school board does.
30:05
Speaker 3: And his solution to a lot of these problems is
30:08
Speaker 3: we're just going to take away local control. We saw
30:10
Speaker 3: this and where battery placement did in the energy bill,
30:12
Speaker 3: they can go within one hundred and fifty feet of
30:14
Speaker 3: a residential neighborhood, which is nuts. There's no fire prevention
30:18
Speaker 3: language built into the bill, which you know, the fire
30:21
Speaker 3: unions were worried about local governments.
30:23
Speaker 2: We're heared about because batteries are a fire hazard. That
30:25
Speaker 2: is a known thing.
30:27
Speaker 3: We've seen that in the zoning for ag versus wind
30:30
Speaker 3: and solar and how we do food production, and now
30:35
Speaker 3: in the housing topic, it's gone to another level. The
30:40
Speaker 3: City of Dixon just recently passed a resolution pushing back
30:44
Speaker 3: on some of the governor's proposal. The Illinois Municipal League,
30:47
Speaker 3: which is over one thousand cities in Illinois, is pushing
30:50
Speaker 3: back strongly.
30:51
Speaker 2: You know.
30:51
Speaker 3: One of his solutions to the housing issue, which is
30:53
Speaker 3: a real issue, is to say, well, we have too
30:56
Speaker 3: much overregulation of local zoning, which isn't false. I want
30:59
Speaker 3: to I want to say as a small government guy,
31:02
Speaker 3: I'm with him so far. All right, I'm with you
31:04
Speaker 3: on that part, Governor. And then we get into the
31:06
Speaker 3: solution phase. And here's where the governor and I often
31:09
Speaker 3: part ways, because his solution is to just ignore any
31:13
Speaker 3: of the benefits of local control and local input and
31:16
Speaker 3: local voices on zoning and say, if you meet these
31:18
Speaker 3: state standards, you can do X, regardless of the population
31:22
Speaker 3: of your city, regardless of your population density in your city,
31:26
Speaker 3: regardless of how much land you have to do other zoning.
31:30
Speaker 3: And so something that might make sense in Chicago, where
31:32
Speaker 3: you really kind of have to go up in many
31:34
Speaker 3: neighborhoods as opposed to out or over or under anything else,
31:38
Speaker 3: doesn't make as much sense in Dixon, where we literally
31:40
Speaker 3: I could name off of a map right now of
31:42
Speaker 3: areas that we have marked where housing can go.
31:44
Speaker 1: Right.
31:44
Speaker 3: It's just completely different local issues. We have our own
31:48
Speaker 3: local issues. They're different than you'll find in the middle
31:51
Speaker 3: of Peoria or in the middle of Chicago. And Rockford
31:54
Speaker 3: has its own challenges, right, And so we're getting a
31:58
Speaker 3: lot of pushback for my mayors. I've been hearing a
32:02
Speaker 3: ton from them. I know a lot of folks have
32:04
Speaker 3: just in shock at the depth of how much Springfield
32:08
Speaker 3: is wanting to take away from local control and remove
32:11
Speaker 3: local voices from the process. And so there's several times
32:15
Speaker 3: where I've been in this weird position, like I support
32:17
Speaker 3: some level of township consolidation. Last year, they introduced these
32:20
Speaker 3: town consolidation bills that were just awful, all three of them,
32:23
Speaker 3: and even I, as a government consolidator, looked at them like,
32:26
Speaker 3: you can't do that. You'll tear up the local governments.
32:30
Speaker 3: So they just don't get it from their perch in Chicago.
32:33
Speaker 3: The world looks like Chicago to them. And since we're
32:36
Speaker 3: cut out of the processes, there's parts where government reformers
32:39
Speaker 3: like me could have said, hey governor or hey Democrats,
32:42
Speaker 3: we support some level of township consolidation. Here's a way
32:45
Speaker 3: that it makes sense in my area. Here's the way
32:47
Speaker 3: it makes sense in your area, and down south it
32:50
Speaker 3: makes sense. The third way, we got to incorporate all
32:52
Speaker 3: of that. This is a complex state. We got to
32:54
Speaker 3: incorporate and down the bill, and there's no interest to
32:56
Speaker 3: do that. So the township bills all died, so we
32:58
Speaker 3: had no consolidation, and the governor's looking like he's going
33:02
Speaker 3: to power through some of these stripping of local control.
33:04
Speaker 3: And we're really in Illinois a situation where bad bills
33:07
Speaker 3: either get past bad or they die, and we should
33:10
Speaker 3: be in a point where we can work them into
33:12
Speaker 3: bills that make sense across the whole state.
33:14
Speaker 2: Well.
33:14
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, being a rural area, it seems this is the
33:18
Speaker 1: kind of thing that happens all too long when those
33:22
Speaker 1: in from the larger communities just don't want to take
33:27
Speaker 1: that smaller look. Unfortunately, we're out of time. I think,
33:30
Speaker 1: Shaw Media, we need another podcast. I need a good
33:32
Speaker 1: hour with you.
33:32
Speaker 3: If you can never spare that, we need to do
33:34
Speaker 3: a data center special.
33:36
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Yes, we're really out of time for
33:39
Speaker 1: that one. But yeah, thank you so much for coming in,
33:42
Speaker 1: sharing all this information, for going out there and advocating
33:45
Speaker 1: for a great state.
33:45
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
33:46
Speaker 3: Glad to be here and talk to your listeners. Look
33:48
Speaker 3: forward to coming back.