(gentle bright music) (stirring music) - Welcome to "Capitol View" on WSIU.

I'm Brian Sapp, a reporter here in Carbondale with WSIU Radio.

This week is deadline week in the General Assembly.

We'll talk about legislation that's passed and legislation that's waiting to be passed.

Whether it has a chance to be called for a vote or not, we'll find out today.

And everyone is looking at the economy trying to figure out what's going on after President Trump has imposed global tariffs.

Amid this uncertainty, Governor Pritzker is talking trade with other nations.

We'll tell you about his meeting with officials from the United Kingdom this week.

Joining us this week to cover what's happening in Springfield, we have Charlie Wheeler.

He's the emeritus director of Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois Springfield.

And we have Peter Hancock, who's the state house reporter for "Capitol News Illinois."

Welcome, gentlemen.

- Thank you.

- It's always good to be here.

- Good, glad to have you.

Let's start off with deadline week.

I'm new to Illinois politics, just been here in Illinois for three months and so, getting used to the flow of things and just learning what is happening here.

Deadline week is this week in the state house.

It's time for bills to get their third reading and either get moved or get set off to the side.

Peter, what are you expecting to make headlines this week, and what's the feeling there at the capitol?

- Well, the feeling is kind of strange.

I've been through a lot of legislative sessions, and they each have their own tempo and their own personality.

As you said, this is deadline week.

It's the week when each chamber has to send its non-budgetary bills across the rotunda to the other chamber.

It's a rule, as Shakespeare said, that's observed more in the breach than the observance, honored more in the breach than the observance.

There are all kinds of procedural ways around it, but generally speaking, if you have some policy legislation that you want to get through, this week is the week when it needs to pass the first chamber.

And so far, it's been very slow.

That's kind of what's strange about this session.

Not a lot of legislation has been moving.

Most of what is moving is stuff that passes by unanimous consent, very non-controversial bills.

There are a handful of very controversial bills, including one we don't know the status of it yet, but would impose state oversight and regulation over homeschooling.

That has brought a lot of people to the state house, ordinary citizens, homeschoolers, people interested in that issue.

There's some Medicaid-related issues, other, you know, kinds of policy issues.

But overall, there doesn't seem to be one giant thing like expansion of gambling or, you know, a big capital improvements plan or anything of that sort.

It's just a lot of little stuff that individual legislators want to get through.

- One of the things that I saw was some changes that Speaker Welch, and I thought maybe people seemed interested in that, he asked the members of his caucus to choose a small set of five bills.

And he really wants to make sure that the bills they pick are gonna pass.

Is that new for him, and how is that working out for him?

- It's new as far as I can tell, and it's been very interesting.

It's not just the Democrats.

It's everybody in the House.

Each day for five days, you're allowed to bring up one bill, and they go through the roster alphabetically.

Monday it was from Carol Ammons to Representative Yang Rohr.

Tuesday it went the opposite direction.

Wednesday it'll go, you know, A to Z again.

And everybody's allowed to bring up one bill if you have a bill that you want to get through, and you have the votes.

Generally speaking, they're telling you, "You get one bill, so make it a good one.

Make it one you think will pass."

And they've been going in, you know, pretty steady order.

They're not meeting here till midnight or 2:00 in the morning as they have on some occasions.

You know, they go till eight, nine o'clock sometimes, but everybody is allowed to bring up a bill, and a lot of legislation has been moving that way.

- Okay.

- One of the things that surprised me, Peter, is apparently the House is not using agreed bill lists.

In the past, there were... As you said, a lot of bills that have passed so far have passed without any big debate, almost with unanimous votes.

And in my experience, and I have to say, I've watched this stuff... Brian, you've been here for what, three months?

- (laughs) Yes, sir.

- I've been watching this stuff since 1970.

- Okay.

- But one of the things that would happen in past sessions would be that the leadership would agree, "Well, here's this bill that Wheeler has, and it says that we should smile at each other.

So that's not controversial.

Put it on the agreed bills list."

And there'd be a list of, oh, I don't know, 50, 60 bills that had no real objections to them.

And they would pass at a single roll call, and then later, individual members would be able to say, "Well, I really don't like Wheeler's bill 'cause I don't wanna smile, so I'd asked to be recorded as no."

But that was a way to really streamline things and get a lot done more quickly.

And Peter, it sounds to me, if we're going to do this, everybody gets one bill, and it's going to go through the normal proceeding where the sponsor gets to speak, and then an opponent gets to speak.

The sponsor gets to close.

That strikes me as gonna be spending an awful lot of time.

- Yeah, they are spending a lot of time, but I think it's mainly for the non-controversial bills.

There've been a few that have broken on party lines, including one prohibiting the use of mascots.

But you know, generally, these are the smaller, the less controversial bills.

And as I said, there are other procedural ways to bring out the big, you know, more divisive bills later in the session, usually through what are called shell bills.

They're just bill numbers that have a subject line, but they don't really have any content in them.

And those things kind of pass through the system unnoticed in order to skirt the deadlines so that when you get to the end of a session, you've got a vehicle where you just stick the contents of your bill into a shell, which the shell bill has already been through a lot of the procedural steps.

And you can pass it, you know, in the last couple of days of the session.

- Okay, lots here.

This week is gonna be busy.

There's lots of things, like you said, to come up, and I think for those who like politics and are those junkies, I think they'll have plenty to look at- - Probably more sausage-making than you really were interested in.

- Yeah, yeah.

(laughs) That's okay, I kind of geek out on this.

I like to learn about politics, and maybe some days I can be like Charlie and have this (laughs) depth of knowledge.

Let's move into a couple of bills.

I know, Peter, you wrote an article this week about nursing homes seeking some relief from the state in the form of, I believe, increasing rates that they receive from Medicaid.

What are the nursing homes, what did they say?

What are they looking for, and what help do they need?

- Well, this is something that comes up every year really.

All healthcare providers feel as though they are being underpaid by Medicaid because Medicaid reimbursement rates actually are very low, below costs.

And some people would argue that's why everybody else has to pay higher costs in order to make up for what they're losing on the Medicaid side.

But in the nursing home industry, otherwise known as long-term care or skilled nursing facilities, these are, you know, residential facilities for the elderly and the disabled people who need round-the-clock monitoring and care.

They're saying that their rates have been so low that it's actually forcing a large number of nursing homes out of business.

Last year there a very large bankruptcy by an outfit called Petersen Healthcare, which was one of the largest nursing home operators, certainly in Illinois, as well as in the United States.

And it's a very complicated thing about how rates are set.

It's kind of, you add up the cost of the nursing care, the cost of the brick and mortar.

It's kind of an administrative cost, but the cost of operating, you know, the physical plant of a nursing home.

And then there is the administrative cost that goes along with it.

And what they're saying is that their administrative cost, which includes things like utilities, like food and clothing and all of the nonclinical care, those are based on what their costs were back in 2017.

So it's like an eight-year-old formula, and that was pre-pandemic.

They're saying interest rates have gone up.

There's been significant inflation since then, and they just can't survive on these low rates.

Now, at the same time, you also have nurses, especially certified nursing assistants, kind of the nuts and bolts ground workers in nursing homes, saying, "Hey, our salary is too low."

And they're saying, "We can't keep enough nurses on staff because we can't attract people because our salaries are too low."

So a lot of people on all sides within nursing homes, all of the different segments are saying they're just not getting paid enough.

And to let you know how significant this is, out of, you know, 100,000 or so nursing home residents in Illinois, Medicaid pays for close to 2/3 of all the nursing home patients in Illinois.

We're at 60% to 65% of all the nursing home...

They count it as patient days.

That's how they're reimbursed.

Most nursing home care is paid for by Medicaid, and so it's a big deal.

If Medicaid isn't paying what it needs to pay to keep people in business, then the whole industry is going to be teetering on the edge.

- And I saw in your article that there were a couple of bills.

Where do those stand, those bills to look at this?

- And this is another thing that happens.

Identical bills will be introduced on the House side and on the Senate side.

It's kind of a backup measure in case something breaks along the way.

You've got a backup bill in the other chamber that you can run through.

Basically, they're just kind of sitting there.

The sponsors hope to move them through this week as part of this, you know, conveyor belt, meat grinder process of just moving cartons of legislation across the hallway.

They're hoping to get that through the House or the Senate this week so that it stays alive.

But it will probably be negotiated out when we get to the final budget bill on the last day of the session.

- Okay, all right.

Something else to put on our list to watch this week.

Since you brought up budget, let's move a little bit and talk about some money.

Charlie, as we were setting this up, we talked a little bit about the tier 2 pensions.

I know that that's been talk.

One of the things I've learned in my short time here is that pensions are pretty contentious.

The state's funding of those is low, and they made some changes.

And I fall under, as a new employee here, I fall under the tier 2 system.

Can you tell us kind of where that stands, and what the state's looking at with that?

- Yeah, the argument that is made is that the changes that were made, well, I guess it was effective in 2011 for employees, state employees, including university employees, and for teachers and everybody else in the state's pension systems hired after that, they actually have to work longer and get fewer benefits than people who were in the pension system before that date like myself.

I'm in tier 1, and I have excellent benefits, and, Brian, if you're in tier 2, you're not as fortunate.

But anyway, so teachers and other public sector employee unions are advocating for state lawmakers to make change in retirement benefits for the new employees.

They say it's unfair to current workers to pay the same amount into the pension system.

They don't get the same benefits.

They have to work longer.

And another issue that is being raised is that under IRS, Internal Revenue Service rules, pensions have to provide at least the same level of benefits as Social Security does.

Otherwise, I guess you would say the holder of the pension in the state of Illinois would have to start paying into Social Security.

And I'm pretty sure that in the instances of most teachers, the school districts don't pay anything into Social Security.

And so the concern is that if tier 2 does not match the safe harbor provisions, as they're called, the state could be in a whole boatload of trouble.

And we could have to put in a ton of money to make up the difference.

And we would have to make the Social Security payments on time, unlike the pension payments.

And as a matter of fact, Illinois has never put aside enough money to cover the benefits that a employee earns in a given year, and this has been true for more than 100 years.

And the tier 2 was designed to try and address this by reducing the amount of benefits that would be earned going forward so that the amount to cover a pension, Brian, for you is less than what would be needed to cover me.

And the argument, again, it's one of fairness, but people on the other side said, "Well, when you signed up, you knew.

You knew what all the deals were when you took the job.

So, hey, tough luck."

There was legislation introduced last session that would've basically given tier-2 people the same benefits as tier 1.

And there was a cost study done by the Legislature's Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, and they said that it would basically add through fiscal year 2045 about roughly $30 billion more to the cost of the pension systems.

And right now in Illinois budgets every year for the last several years, roughly 20% of the money has gone for retirement systems.

So Governor Pritzker appreciates the fact that we have this problem with the safe harbor provision, and he has, to kind of match Social Security, he's proposed an additional 78 million in this year's budget on top of the required contributions.

He's also suggested that instead of...

The current formula says by 2045, we have to fund 90% of the money we need to pay benefits.

Pritzker is saying we should do 100%, and we should do it by 2048.

And so the big issue here, and it's one that's not gonna be resolved, the legislation has been introduced, but the legislation has not gone anywhere yet.

And it'll be one of those issues that will be settled in the final days of the session.

But it's a big money hit no matter how you look at it.

And again, it goes back, in my judgment, to the fact that from day one, the state has always chosen to spend money on current needs and desires and not worry about tomorrow or, you know, 20 years from now when somebody might wanna retire.

- That's a thing that I'm learning, that it's a topic that they kind of kick it down the road a little bit.

So maybe they can get somewhere the last part of this session.

I think we have time for about two more questions, and so I wanted to dive into community colleges.

I know at the end of February as a reporter here, I received press releases, and a couple of the community colleges...

Sorry, they were junior colleges when I went.

Community colleges here in the area were sending out releases saying that they were looking forward to Governor Pritzker's talk about allowing community colleges to offer a limited number of bachelor degrees.

Peter, where does that stand?

The last I heard is it didn't get a second reading.

And then so where does it stand now?

- Yeah, that issue has kind of stalled, but, as I said, there are procedural ways around it.

This was something Governor Pritzker called for in his budget address and his state of the state address back at the start of this session.

And basically it would allow community colleges, don't call 'em junior colleges anymore, community colleges to offer four-year baccalaureate degrees in specific high-need subject areas like advanced manufacturing, something that employers really needed within the community college's service area and that wasn't being offered anywhere else.

And Pritzker would argue that, A, community colleges cost less.

They're more accessible.

Not everybody lives near Illinois State University or U of I or SIU or Northern.

A lot of people live...

Especially non-traditional students, adults who are trying to further their education in order to get a promotion at work or, you know, to apply for some other kind of job, you know, it's hard for them to get to a four-year university.

But everybody has greater access to a community college somewhere close to 'em.

The problem is that... Well, there are several problems with this.

One is that the four-year, the big universities, are very territorial about their services, and they don't like the idea of community colleges stepping in and offering programs that might compete with what they're doing.

Many of them are already struggling to maintain enrollment, and they don't wanna lose it to community colleges.

And just generally when it comes to higher education governance, when you're talking about trying to get universities and community colleges on the same page about something, the image of herding cats comes to mind.

They're all very independently minded, and it's very hard to get them all on the same page.

So it did not make it out of committee, the House committee where it was supposed to be heard.

They in fact didn't even have a hearing on it on the committee deadline day a weeks ago.

But we are being told that talks are still going on.

The chairwoman of the committee, a Representative Katie Stuart from the Metro East area, is said to be still in discussions with the universities and with the community colleges trying to come up with some sort of framework that would work for everybody.

This has been debated before.

It's one of those things that may take more than one session to get through.

This might be two or three sessions before everybody finally arrives at a place where they can agree on the package.

- Yeah, sounds like it.

They'll have to get both of those sides, get those cats and figure out the best way to kind of herd them together.

Peter, I had one more question for you, but, Charlie, I'd love to maybe get some of your thoughts on this after we have Peter talk to it.

On Tuesday, Governor Pritzker hosted the general counsel from the United Kingdom, and they signed a memorandum of understanding.

Obviously this is less than a week after President Trump imposed his global tariffs, which have made the markets go haywire it seems, lots of ups and downs and a lot of uncertainty.

You were there for the signing, Peter, and what came out of the event, and what did you hear from Governor Pritzker?

- Well, this was a memorandum of understanding, which is kind of a non-binding agreement, sort of a statement of principles that Illinois and the United Kingdom are going to cooperate.

They have a longstanding trading relationship in automobiles, in computer information technology, a lot of high-tech stuff, as well as energy technology.

Goes back a long ways.

And this is one of those things that governors do.

Governors, of course, do not have foreign policy authority.

That's vested with the federal government and with the executive branch.

But they do have the ability to conduct relationships, to introduce Illinois businesses to British businesses, Illinois government officials to the UK government officials and help build relationships.

And we've seen Governor Pritzker doing a little bit more of this.

He did it with Great Britain this week.

He did it with Mexico a week or two ago trying to... A lot of people would say he's trying to step on the national stage and maybe the international stage, obviously speculation that he wants to run for president in 2028 or for some other higher office in 2026, perhaps.

And so we did ask him, you know, "How confident are you that the principles of this memorandum can be fulfilled in the new age of tariffs?"

And he was really, I thought, very cautious, kind of being more diplomatic than he otherwise is when you ask him a Trump-related question, but basically just saying Illinois is a stable state.

He used the word stable very pointedly.

And whatever chaos is going on right now, this too shall pass, and we're looking to the future, and this will outlive... You know, our relationship will outlive this temporary madness that we're seeing.

(Brian chuckling) - Yeah, lots going on.

Charlie, I want to kind of maybe get your thoughts on this.

Governor Pritzker, lots of times, he's been trying to raise his profile nationally.

You've been in Illinois for a while.

Do you think that he's gonna gain any traction?

And we have about a minute and a half left.

- Well, I think he's probably getting a lot more attention than other governors because he's been very, very outspoken in terms of criticizing what President Trump is doing.

And he's in a position where he's got a decision to make whether he's gonna run for another four-year term or whether he should hang it up and spend the next couple years preparing a run for the presidency.

Now, if I were to advise him, and of course I'm not one of his advisors, I would say, "Run again for governor of Illinois because I think you've been a good governor, and I think we need somebody who's been able to stabilize the state after 20 years of goofiness that we've had."

And Pritzker has come in.

He's been (indistinct).

We've been able to balance the budget.

He's been a leader in a lot of areas, and obviously I don't know what he's gonna do, but I would hope that he's going to run again.

And you never know.

You know, we were talking... One final thought.

We were talking about... Peter mentioned vehicle bills.

Well, I checked, and as of the morning that we're taping the show, there've been 6,686 bills introduced, and the last bill introductions in both the Senate and the House occurred yesterday, which was well after committee deadline.

And I can guarantee that among those bills, there are a number of vehicles, and there will be probably a dozen or more that ultimately will pass with totally different contents in January of next year.

- Okay, well, you've taken us to the end of the show.

Gentlemen, John, or Peter and Charlie, thank you for your time, and that's it for "Capitol View."

Join us next week.

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