(soft music) (dramatic music) - Thanks for joining us on CapitolView.

I'm Fred Martino.

This week, once again, Illinois lawmakers consider creating a Prescription Drug Affordability Board.

Illinois funds controversial sites where drugs like opioids can be used in a public place, more on that, and will campaign cash from ethanol and corn affect some major decisions in Springfield?

Those stories and much more with Alex Degman of WBEZ and Amanda Vinicky from WTTW.

Amanda, upfront this week, a story that you have been covering.

Illinois joined 21 other states in fighting the Trump administration's efforts to pause federal funding in a variety of areas.

And so far, joining that lawsuit, it has paid off.

Tell us more.

- Yeah, so this has to do with the, got a lot of attention, federal budget office memo that had sought to pause all sorts of federal funding to make sure that it was in alignment with really Trump's priorities to, as he describes it, root out any form of wokeness in federal government and making sure that federal taxpayer dollars are not spent with anything that he disagrees with and disputes, be it support of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives or for transgender individuals.

So, but really it goes really very broad and that was one of the main issues with this directive is that although the Trump administration said, "Hey, it won't affect something "that impacts individuals," really, we didn't know.

And there's a lot that impacts individuals, even if it is a pass through to a state or municipal government.

So there are a pair of lawsuits that are winding their ways through the federal courts.

Illinois, as you noted, as involved in one of them, and that's really what I've come to think of as a coalition of Democratic states that are joining together in various ways.

And I expect we will see future lawsuits again, and a similar set of states joining together to combat what they see as not just, I think- Philosophically have a problem with, but also what they believe to be unconstitutional on the part of the president, and that is bypassing, they say, congressional authority and trying to go his own route with federal spending and in fact not spending.

So right now there is, as you noted, because a Rhode Island federal judge has said that he agrees with the states that this is illegal.

He's put a temporary restraining order on the Trump administration from putting all that pause on federal funding.

That said, I don't think that states should necessarily be breathing easy at this point in time.

The Trump administration has a lot of sway over members of Congress.

You've seen thus far in some of the senators, for example, who've had problems with his cabinet appointments have really capitulated and are backing appointees who they previously said they would not.

So this is federal funding that affects not just Democratic states, but also Republican ones.

That could certainly be a factor in Congress saying, "Hey, hold off there, please, President."

But it is clear that President Trump and the administration has a mission to reduce spending on anything that does not align with his own priorities.

And so while this is a temporary restraining order and will continue to go through the court system and, we don't know, could have success there going forward, this is not something that it seems that the Trump administration is pausing by any means, at least in terms of its mission and what it wants to do with the vast amounts of authority that he has both, again, as president and as somebody who's really the leader of his party with Republican control of both chambers.

- Yes, definitely a developing story and one that will keep you and probably a lot of us very, very busy over the next four years, I would imagine.

Alex, a lack of action at the federal level is driving states to consider ways to make healthcare more affordable.

And Illinois lawmakers are once again reviewing a Prescription Drug Affordability Board.

Tell us more about that.

- So this would be a board that is appointed by the governor that's basically their only job is to set price limits on drugs.

We're talking about things like, things that you would use to treat cancer, diabetes, a host of problems where medications are incredibly expensive.

And a lot of people we've seen, especially over the last few years, they are getting into some serious financial trouble with that.

We've seen the state take steps to address that with some of the various things they've done to make it easier for people to get out from under medical debt and things like that.

But this specific plan to address drug costs as being brought this year by a Democratic state representative, Nabeela Syed, and the board would essentially just be there to decide which medicines would be subject to the cap under the governor's discretion.

11 other states already do this right now, and even though Illinois doesn't have such a board, it's not necessarily a new idea here.

We've been trying to do this, lawmakers have been trying to do this here since 2019, but in that year, it stalled a lot.

It's been stalling because there's a lot of pushback here from insurance companies, from big pharmaceutical companies.

They stand to potentially lose.

They've lost some money in states where this has been implemented and they're concerned about that.

They're working the bill, as they say here.

Now supporters note that this is really necessary because as you mentioned, Fred, there are a lot of drugs that, you know, costs are going up.

There are a lot of drugs where costs have risen higher than the rate of inflation.

But insurance companies came back and they said, well, you know that that's not really not the case.

If you look at overall broadly, there are only some drugs that have done that.

Only some drugs that have gone up that much, and overall they've gone up modestly.

So they don't really think that this is necessary.

So this is still in the really early stages.

It has not been assigned to a committee.

It was just introduced a little while ago.

But this is something that people are thinking about.

In fact, the governor was asked about this at an unrelated news conference not too long ago and he didn't put his support behind this idea specifically, but he did say that there needs to be something done to reign in the cost of prescription drugs, whether that's through a board or through some other means.

So we'll definitely be watching this to see where it goes this year.

- And we should say, you know, the Biden administration made some progress on this, but it was limited, you know, the limit on out of pocket expenses for Medicare Part D, the drug part, prescription drug part of Medicare.

Insulin, which got a lot of attention, you know, a limit on the cost of insulin.

But even in terms of specific drugs, and you got into that in your answer, even with the Medicare issue with the Biden administration, where they tried to make an impact by allowing negotiation of drug pricing, it only applied to certain drugs in Medicare Part D. So it illustrates just how difficult and how slow progress has been in terms of this issue.

But the Biden administration did work on it and have some success.

There hasn't been much in the way of belief or talk about federal action now that there's been an administration change.

So we may see other states join Illinois in trying to take some kind of a state action, Alex.

- Yeah, that's true, and you see that a lot when it comes to federal issues that are being left to the states in a lot of ways.

In Illinois, when it comes to medical care, has done a lot in that area.

They're trying to do the Prescription Drug Affordability Board.

I mentioned that they've done a lot to also cap the certain, cap costs of certain drugs themselves.

You mentioned insulin, you mentioned EpiPens.

So yeah, this is something that Illinois is definitely watching out for.

- Yeah, very interesting stuff.

Well, Amanda, we move to a story that you recently covered.

Companies that participated in the slave trade could face new rules in Illinois.

What is being considered?

- This is a measure that has stemmed from really, if you go back to the murder of George Floyd and Illinois' response to it, the Black Caucus really seizing on that opportunity in passing a lot of policy changes, among them creating a commission that would study the issue of reparations, and embedded in that mission, that, again, set forth by law was something that would look to examine, redress, and that's what we have, this proposal now.

You have some legislators that say they want any company that seeks to do work for the state to have to really, I've termed it fess up their past practices when it comes to being any involvement or profiting from enslaving of- In slavery and chattel slavery.

And so they are saying that when these companies put in a bid for state contract, they would have to go through their own background in history, share if there was any sort of profit from slavery, and then as part of the bid, also say how much money they are willing to commit to sort of make amends for that and help to send that money.

It would go into a state fund that would be directed- It's not quite clear what that money would be used for, but really directed to areas where there has been severe disinvestment over the years in primarily areas that where black residents of Illinois live.

So there's a lot of questions, I think.

Even the sponsor of this measure said that there's things that have to be worked out and really didn't pinpoint particular companies that would be part of this.

But they say look to industries such as Illinois' rail system, look to banking, looking to insurance companies, 'cause it's not just the current iteration of a company.

Maybe it changed titles or changed hands, but if you were purchased by a prev- Or it's a corporation, you know, that was subsumed or purchased another company, that that counts as well.

So this is continuing work.

The reparations commission has more to do.

They're on a statewide tour.

They've visited parts of central Illinois and are coming up to the suburbs actually in Evanston this coming weekend.

- All right, we will look for more on that.

Alex, this next story getting a lot of play online, a recent story, some controversial overdose prevention sites, as they're called, are getting $18 million in Illinois funding.

But there could be an issue.

Tell us more about that.

- So these sites are controversial because people are basically going there to use hard drugs that are still illegal and they're controlled areas that are under the watch of a clinician and the idea is that people can go there and use the drugs that they're addicted to and the clinician is there to make sure that they don't overdose, that they stay safe.

And the reason that this is so controversial is because, well, for a long time, folks have had trouble understanding why money is being spent to allow people to use illegal drugs when the drugs are not legal to begin with.

But there's been a shift in thinking over the past few decades to treat, you know, drug addiction as the disease it is and people need to treat a disease.

How do you do that?

Well, you find ways to treat it.

And this is one way that they've done it by making sure that if people are going to use the drugs that they're addicted to, that at least they're not going to die.

Too many people are dying from opioid overdose deaths.

Now the $18 million that is mentioned in this is coming from Illinois' share of the nationwide Opioid Settlement Fund that you remember from a few years ago with big pharma Purdue and all that stuff.

So it's not coming from state funds per se, but it is coming from money that Illinois is getting specifically from an opioid settlement fund.

And last week, we have in Illinois what's called an Opioid Remediation Advisory Board, and last week they voted to approve $2 million a year for three years for three sites.

So that's 18 million in total.

And we're not quite sure where these sites are going to be yet, whether they're all going to be in Chicago.

We do know that the west side of Chicago does have the highest rate of opioid overdose deaths in the state.

So you might imagine that some are going to be in Chicago, but it's a problem statewide to be sure.

So we'll have to see where those are gonna be.

But the problem that this is facing now is that even though the money is there and these overdose sites, you know, they're gonna be there, it needs legislation to go along with it in order to be fully compliant.

So Democratic State Representative La Shawn Ford, I think he's got a bill that he's working right now, he plans to introduce it shortly, and as part of that he's making it clear and the people who support this are making it clear that this is just not, this isn't just a place to go and use drugs, it's not.

It's a place where you can go and get medical detention, you can get job placement services, people can help you find things you need.

And, you know, these are the kinds of things that supporters of this say are really needed if you're going to take a wraparound approach to confronting the opioid crisis.

Because it's less about just getting the drugs off the street, it's about treating the people, like why they're using these, what can get them off of it, and it's a whole process and this is part of it.

- Very interesting and certainly will be interesting to watch that legislation as it goes through a debate and an eventual vote perhaps because certainly a lot of controversy over this idea, which is not new and something that's been debated in other states in addition to Illinois.

Amanda, we are watching the money in Springfield.

Capitol News Illinois published our next story from Investigate Midwest, which says campaign cash is flowing from the ethanol and corn sectors as Illinois lawmakers weigh carbon capture regulations.

Tell us more about this story.

- So the notion of carbon capture is as Illinois seeks to focus more on renewable energy resources and in general the energy future is sort of up in the air, there is an attempt to use technology called carbon capture.

And so any of these emissions that we know are harmful for the environment and contribute to climate change, global warming really is capture, literally seize those emissions, put them underground.

The focus of this story by, again, Investigate Midwest is on a company, Marquis Energy, that does ethanol production.

They want to have one of these carbon capture pipelines in Hennepin County.

And, but this is still really fairly new technology and questions and concerns about what it means, especially how far would these go under the ground, might that affect in central Illinois?

One of the primary concerns for residents is is it going to hurt their source of drinking water, the Mahomet Aquifer?

This story really looked at ramping up by, as you noted, the corn industry overall, but Marquis in particular of campaign contributions giving $270,000 since 2021 through last year to the leaders of the House and Senate, so Senate President Don Harman and Speaker Emanuel Chris Welch.

There's a lot of money always flowing, especially to those two leaders.

They are after all the House Speaker and the President of the Senate.

So that is not something that is quite an anomaly or that this industry is any different, but you certainly are going to have a focus going forward on the future of carbon capture, what will be permitted, what won't be, at present, an attempt to set a ban on anything that would harm the Mahomet Aquifer.

That has been stalled, well, in the defense of that, for example, that the Senate President gave is that okay, we didn't move forward with that legislation, but there's no need to right now because there's a moratorium overall as Illinois seeks to get a better handle on guidelines for carbon capture projects.

So a lot is- - Yeah, and this- - Yeah, and this is very interesting, Amanda.

We've covered this on this program before.

It's one of those issues where a grassroots opposition has really made an impact because of people worried about possible effect on the aquifer.

So it's gonna be interesting to see where this all goes, isn't it?

- Well, yeah, I mean, contaminated water, that's something that you need to live.

So it is not surprising that residents are really concerned about any sort of impact there.

- Absolutely.

All right, Alex, more on energy now as Illinois struggles to meet green energy goals.

Some lawmakers want pension funds to pull out of fossil fuels.

We've heard about this idea before as well in other states.

What did you find out about this?

- This to me seems like another way that Illinois lawmakers are trying to do anything in their power to basically rid the state of things that don't meet its standards essentially and right now we're talking about fossil fuels.

They've divested from things in pensions in the past, like Russian assets during the Ukraine invasion, so this is not new, but it's interesting because they're doing it in tandem with trying to reach the climate goals, as you mentioned.

So lawmakers are trying to find ways to divest from fossil fuels as they try to meet CEJA goals, the Climate Equitable Jobs Act.

And their goal right now, the goal that they're looking at for renewables, is to get about 40% of energy in Illinois, or I should say electricity generated in Illinois, 40% produced by wind and solar by 2030.

Now the last data that I saw from 2023 was they're at about 14% right now, so they still got a ways to go.

And this divestment is just basically a message that this is where we're going and this is what we're gonna continue to do.

And it applies to all five of the state's public pension systems.

This is state representative Will Guzzardi's bill this year, and he claims, he's pointing to some studies that were conducted recently.

He claims that fossil fuel investments have actually hurt pensions over the last 10 years or so.

Illinois pensions specifically were not studied for the study that was out of the University of Waterloo.

But it did find that over the past 10, 12 years or so, between 2013, 2023, there were six public pension funds nationwide that collectively would've had returns about 13% better had they not invested in fossil fuels between 2013 and 2023.

Now this bill, it's not immediate, because obviously it takes a while to divest from things, but the bill would require the pensions to divest from fossil fuel entities by 2030.

And this is another one of those bills that is, it's pretty early on, it's pretty early on in the session and there's not a whole lot of talk about that right now because we are just kind of in react mode to what's coming out of Washington.

But as people try to get Illinois' energy needs and Illinois' pension systems under control, this is gonna be top of line for sure.

- And I'll add, Alex, just that there- I think this also notion of what Illinois spends its dollars on through pension investments is going to be another area that might get some attention this year.

Illinois, there is a set of senators that are looking to reverse one of the policies that was put in place during the Rauner administration in seeking to they say remove any sort of anti-Palestinian bias from those investments, again, that was a measure that was put in place during the Rauner administration, because there's a lot of money in those pensions.

They may be underfunded, but there's a whole lot of money in those systems to sort of direct and be able to announce your allegiances and I think that that's a way to sort of signal where priorities lie.

- Interesting.

Yeah, lots to watch.

Well, Amanda, we have about four minutes left.

You have the final story.

We started this show with the Trump administration causing controversy and we end there as well.

You have been covering the immigration crackdown and the Chicago Tribune had an update this week, which says that Chicago has become an epicenter of resistance.

Tell us more.

- I mean, I think Chicago and his, that that's not necessarily surprising given that it has been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, even from the time that he was a candidate, both for its crime and its sanctuary city status.

It is something that Trump has really focused on, and that's where you saw ICE agents come to the city accompanied by a filming Doctor Phil.

So there also has been, because of that attention and because there has been, it's not just Chicago sanctuary status, the whole state of Illinois under, again, protections that came under first the Rauner administration and then the Pritzker one.

So there's a lot of education that if you ride the L train, the CTA train, you can see posters about know your rights, education from the very, from the many pro-immigrants' rights organizations that are educating people.

You don't have to answer a door, you need to ask for a warrant.

That's something that you saw border czar Tom Homan decry in an interview, I believe that was on Fox saying that, you know, Chicago's too educated and that has made it difficult, he says, for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to carry out their deportation actions and any sort of raids because people know that they have the right to ask for that warrant.

So this is something that I think a lot of city leaders are putting time, energy, and yes, money into, and that there is continued worry, even though we haven't seen perhaps quite the scale of raids immediately that Trump had promised, there has been ICE activity and people are very on guard.

- Yeah, it's a huge issue, and we should say in addition to a lot of concern in the community and in the state where there are these issues, these humanitarian issues, there's also, Amanda, as you know, a lot of concern as well in the business community in terms of the economic consequences of this kind of crackdown.

- Yeah, there's questions as to if people are going to, as we have some reports, stop going to work, be it in the agriculture sector where you have many immigrants who are perhaps undocumented being the ones who are willing to scoop up cow manure, that aren't particularly glamorous jobs, that there are reports from business owners, they have a hard time filling otherwise.

So there's concerns there.

On the opposite end, you have Republicans saying that Illinois' TRUST act is too trusting, that there are some here and there reports of undocumented individuals being responsible for alleged crimes and that that's a problem and that they want Illinois' TRUST act to be overturned to work more with the Trump administration, as Homan had said that by disallowing local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE officials, that that means more people who are, did not, because the focus is supposed to be on any undocumented individuals who ICE believes are responsible for criminal activity beyond crossing the border without proper documentation.

He's saying that more individuals are going to swept up because that's the only way that ICE has to carry out its work with sort a wider reach.

So this is a continued conversation in Springfield and in Washington.

- Absolutely.

Amanda and Alex, thank you both for being with us this week.

- My pleasure, thanks.

- Thank you.

- That's CapitolView.

For everyone at WSIU, I'm Fred Martino.

Have a great week.

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