[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Welcome to Capital View on Siu.

I'm Brian Sapp.

Today as we begin 2026 we're going to talk about some of the new laws taking effect for the year.

And the new legislative session in Springfield is quickly approaching.

We'll talk with our guests about some of the topics that could be on the General Assembly's agenda.

Today we're joined by Charlie Wheeler.

He's the emeritus director of the public affairs reporting program at the University of Illinois, Springfield.

And Jason Piscia, who is the current director of the program.

Gentlemen, welcome to the program.

>> Thank you for having us.

>> Hope you had a great holiday season and a happy New Year to you guys.

Um, let's start off with one of the first things when we were kind of talking about today grocery taxes.

I've been reading about it for most of the year, about how the state was getting rid of their 1% tax, and that they were leaving it up to the municipalities and counties to do that.

And, Jason, you said you notice something when you went to the grocery store this week.

>> Yeah, a little bit of a change of pace.

Usually when you buy anything.

Uh, you'll see a line for the sales tax added to the receipt.

But, uh, if you live in certain cities around Illinois, uh, that tax line is missing when you go grocery shopping.

Uh, and this is a result of the law that Governor Pritzker signed last year that went into effect on January 1st.

That eliminates the 1% sales tax on grocery items.

Um, the governor did this, he said, to help combat the rising price of groceries and inflation and all of that.

Um, one side effect of that that maybe doesn't get publicized as much is that that 1% went, uh, toward the benefit of local governments, not necessarily state government.

Uh, so this left a hole in many, uh, municipal budgets around the state.

Uh, so the law also gave those municipal municipalities the right for their city councils or village boards or town councils, uh, to pass, uh, their own, make their own decision on whether they want to reinstate that 1%.

Many of them did.

There's about 700 municipalities around Illinois, according to the Illinois Municipal League, that have voted to put that 1% back in.

Um, but bigger cities such as Chicago and Springfield, uh, have left that out.

And that's why, uh, when I went grocery shopping earlier this week at grocery store in Springfield, uh, you know, I pulled a $5 frozen pizza off the shelf, and I paid exactly $5 for it and not a penny more.

Uh, again, the savings isn't huge.

I've only saved, what, a nickel off of that, uh, $5 pizza.

But it's still something.

Um, so it's a it's a little bit of a switch, and, uh, we're going to have to get used to it.

It's going to cause a whole, uh, we there was some reporting about the Springfield mayor talking about why their city has not implemented the 1% tax back in.

And the mayor mentioned, you know, they recently raised some water rates on citizens.

And there's a plan coming up on the ballot this spring about implementing a county wide, half a percent sales tax increase to support a mental health board that they want to do.

That's in wake of the Sonya massey, uh, police killing from about a year and a half back.

So there's a lot of things on the horizon with that.

And so the city of Springfield decided to to hold off on the 1% for now.

>> Charlie, what is, um, what do you think you might see, or what are you looking for to be some of the as we go forward, are we going to see more municipalities enact this as the year goes on?

>> Yeah, I think there will be an opportunity for other municipalities to impose this tax.

But as Jason said, under this law, the state collected the money on behalf of the cities and municipalities and remitted it to them.

And so the state said, okay, if you want it, we'll allow you without referendum to put it in.

But the deadline to do that is January 1st.

And the Illinois Municipal League, which represents.

Oh, well, most municipalities in the state, said that little more than half of the state's municipalities have passed an ordinance to establish their own grocery tax.

Uh, and they said that it's roughly 7.2 million people are covered by the local tax now, uh, about 57% of the state population.

Now, if other cities decide at this point, yes, they would like to impose that 1% grocery tax or whatever level they'd have to do it by referendum.

They have to go and ask the citizens.

We would like to tax this.

Are you okay with it?

And my guess would be it'd be a pretty hard sell.

>> I think I think you're right.

Especially if save a nickel on that pizza.

But I'm sure it does.

The money could add up and we'll have to see as the year goes on.

Um, I wanted to move on to another bill.

It came up, um, at the end of the legislative session, the General Assembly passed the medical aid in dying.

Um, and Governor Pritzker signed that in the middle of December.

But then we had some news, um, that the Pope, um, and Governor Pritzker had talked about that.

Charlie, could you tell us a little bit about about this bill?

And.

Yeah, basically, this is this.

>> Is a bill that would allow, uh, people who are near the end of their life with certain medical conditions, under kind of tight guidelines to decide to, in essence, end their life by prescription.

And it was a a very controversial bill going through the General Assembly.

It passed in May very narrowly.

It passed the House, and in October it passed the Senate with the bare minimum required number of votes.

Uh, all along the way, it had very staunch opposition from Catholic leaders and from disability rights activists.

And the governor, in signing the bill, said that he he thought very hard about it, and it was basically testimony that he heard from terminally ill, terminally ill residents that persuaded him to go ahead and sign it.

And in one conference, he said, and I'll quote him here, I could have gone either way on this, just on the issue of compassion, about thinking about what the right thing to do is it's very difficult.

But in the end, I felt like giving people a choice in these very limited circumstances.

And he got blasted again by the Catholic clergy here, uh, by some disability rights advocates who worried that the guardrails weren't weren't tight enough and there would be an inclination, uh, in essence, for doctors or family members to say, hey, Wheeler, we're tired of you, and you're you're disabled.

And so we're going to just get you to sign off to take this medicine and be out of here.

And the governor did have a meeting with the Pope, and the issue was raised.

And the pope was very adamant, I guess, would be the word.

He's very disappointed that the bill was signed because it's against the the Catholic doctrine about the sanctity of life.

And the governor said, yeah, we we sort of agreed to disagree.

And The Catholic Church has its beliefs.

But Governor Pritzker obviously is not Catholic.

He's Jewish, and the Jewish beliefs don't necessarily coincide 100% with the Catholics.

So I don't think there was any real big dispute there.

But the the reaction, for example, here in Springfield, we have two hospitals, Memorial and they're considering what to do, and we have the Saint Johns Hospital and they say flat out, no, we're not going to do this because it's run by a Catholic order.

So that's kind of where it stands.

The the Bishop, Thomas John Paprocki here in Springfield came out with a particularly caustic comment.

He said, and again, this is a quote after it passed the Senate, he said, it's quite fitting that the forces of the culture of death and the Illinois General Assembly passed physician assisted suicide on October 31st, a day that culturally has become synonymous with glorifying death and evil.

And I thought, wow, but that's our bishop.

And it'll be interesting to see how this goes forward.

Or as I said earlier, the disability advocates are worried that there's going to be impetus to, to to sort of encourage people to do that.

But this law has been in effect, a similar law has been in effect for a long time in, I believe, in Oregon.

It's been in effect since 94.

And one of the academics studying this law pointed out that.

Here's a quote.

People always raise concerns about coercion or abuse.

We just aren't seeing that in the data.

No horror stories have assisted or have emerged.

So the the law applies to terminally ill Illinois adults with a prognosis of less than six months to live.

That has to be confirmed by two independent physicians.

Patients must be physically able to administer the medicine to themselves.

A patient who asks for this medication has to pass a mental evaluation to confirm that they are mentally capable of making this decision and not facing undue influence.

They they must make the request both verbally and in writing.

And physicians are required to inform them of alternate hospice care pain control options.

So that's it's I think the guardrails that are in place seem to be pretty strong.

We'll just have to see how it plays out.

And as I said earlier, there's this is an area of disagreement.

And the Catholic doctrine is very, very much opposed to this, what they call this assisted suicide.

Uh, and I guess it comes down to what your personal beliefs are.

What do you believe should be an individual's agency in terms of making decisions about themselves?

>> That's.

Yeah, Charlie, that's one of the things I noticed was the the guardrails that they did try to, to put in place, maybe to alleviate some of the concerns.

To narrow down, uh, I guess we'll have to see how how it's, how it's received.

And it does seem to be that that choice of people and where they want to stand on it.

I want to move on to, um, another new thing.

Um, the this past week, the CDC has, um, changed their guidelines for, vaccinations for children.

They reduced it to vaccinations to prevent 11 diseases.

And then the right away, the Illinois Department of Public Health said that this isn't going to impact or affect the vaccinations of Illinois children.

Um, Jason, what are the impacts that we could see from this federal move?

And would Illinois be able to be able to overcome these?

>> Yeah.

Um, Governor Pritzker signed a law that went into effect on January 1st that, uh, allows the state to kind of adopt its own vaccine guidelines if they, uh, differ greatly from the US CDC guidelines that that may come out, uh, and that we saw that happen this week.

The CDC on Monday of this week came out with some official recommendations for what vaccines children should take.

And, uh, it, uh, left out 6 or 7, uh, ailments that that people traditionally had vaccine vaccinated their children against before um, no longer recommended or protection against the flu, which is, uh, you know, obviously in the headlines now with so many people suffering from flu and respiratory illness this time of year, especially bad this time of year, uh, rotavirus, hepatitis A and B, RSV and some others, the CDC is no longer recommending that children get vaccines for those things.

Uh, but again, there's this law in Illinois that basically allows, uh, our state health department director to, uh, ignore those guidelines and put in its own guidelines that they think are necessary.

And, uh, our state did come out and mention that.

Yeah, you know, the CDC said this, but, uh, you know, we ignore it.

We, uh, our recommendation is to to that parents should still do all these things for their children.

Um, so we'll see where that goes from there.

But, uh, you know, if you give birth to a child in Illinois, uh, the recommendations will be that you still keep getting all the vaccinations that you've gotten in the past.

>> Charlie, I've noticed, um, as the governor was.

>> Interesting in this that the the feds, the CDC comes out and says, oh, you don't need to vaccinate your kids.

And, uh, President Trump asked us to study what was going on in other countries.

And so we're we're basically patterning ourselves after Denmark.

And some of the critics are saying Denmark.

Denmark, a country that has universal health care.

And in a country where the population is pretty much homogeneous and a country the size of what?

The size of Wisconsin, and you're saying that we should do what they're doing.

On the other hand, the the decision, The federal decision was criticized by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and basically all the, quote, legitimate medical operations.

And it's based, I think, on the Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.

The fact that he has and again, this is me being critical.

He has a mental fixation on vaccines.

He thinks they're bad.

And instead of following the guidance of professionals who medical professionals, health care professionals who work in the field, he fired the advisory board and kind of did this on his own, on his own hook.

And my guess is that most states will kind of ignore what Bobby Kennedy wants, and they'll do what the medical community thinks is best for their children, which is what we're going to do.

>> Okay.

Um, I yeah, I, the governor and the, um, director of the public health have been out there quite a bit having press conferences this past year talking about how they're going to do their own thing and focus on what they think is best for Illinois.

And I think this probably would fall under the Constitution, where it allows the states to take care of their own items like that.

I want to start looking ahead.

We have, uh, next week, the Senate is scheduled to start meeting for the next session of the General Assembly, followed by the the following week was the, um, state House of Representatives.

Um, as we look forward, Charlie, budgets are going to be big.

This is an election year.

Uh, you know, last, last couple episodes when Jeff was talking to our guests, they weren't expecting much to happen.

Let's start with the budget.

Do you think what are we going to be looking at this year, budget wise, as the General Assembly meet.

>> Well, we're going to be looking at a very, very difficult time.

The.

Two things.

The the economy is not that great.

And there's an uncertainty about what the Trump administration might do to Illinois in terms of holding back money, basically because President Trump doesn't like JB Pritzker.

And even without that, there will be certain costs that kind of occur that are unavoidable.

Now, the the Governor's Office of Management and Budget, uh, last fall predicted that there'll be a a couple hundred billion dollars shortfall, I believe it was next year.

And the governor imposed certain restrictions, if you will, asking agencies to hold back 4% of their their budget.

Uh, we put in kind of an emergency fund to deal with unanticipated.

What would you say?

Effects of some of the stuff that's going on in DC.

There was a study that was put out.

By some, uh, academics that suggested that the impact of the bill that, uh, President Trump signed, his big, beautiful bill is going to cost the state.

It's going to shrink our economy by $10 billion a year.

And that is a real problem then, and in a couple of practical areas.

The.

State Board of Education, I believe it's going to be next week when they will approve a budget request to make to the General Assembly and the governor.

Well, they've already asked for basically close to $750 million in new money.

Now they're not going to get it.

Uh, about half of it is the fact that they want a 350 million increase in what's called the evidence based funding formula, which allocates money to K-12 schools based on a host of conditions that basically are just are intended to determine what are the needs of this particular school district and what are its own resources.

And again, the the law also provides for an increase of at least $750 million, I'm sorry, $350 million.

So that's going to be in there.

So you have that to deal with.

The pension payment is going to increase.

The money that we have to put into our pension funds is going to increase by roughly $200 million this coming year.

And you have the the uncertainty coming out of Washington, the money that the president has frozen and refused to send out to the States.

It's all being challenged in court.

And the court has already told them, no, you got to let some of that money go.

So it's a great degree of uncertainty.

And the governor's.

Budget office, as I say, suggested we're going to have this huge shortfall.

And the the legislature's fiscal authorities, the commission, government forecasting and accountability will come out in a couple of months with their review.

They they had a pretty optimistic report on the first six months of this fiscal year.

They said that the the state's general fund revenues have increased by $1.2 billion over the same period of a year ago, which is about 5%.

But they also said that.

While this is, you know, this is nice to see, there's all this uncertainty going on.

They say they're pretty confident that that the 2026 revenue target will be met.

But they note in the report that there's this uncertainty with the federal legislation, how the federal tax changes may affect Illinois revenues.

And so they say, a cautious approach to revenue expectations for the second half of FY 26 remains warranted until additional clarity emerges through actual tax collections.

So it's going to be, as I said at the outset, it's going to be a very difficult budget year.

There's going to be a lot of people asking for increases, as there always are, and the governor is going to have to and the legislative leaders are going to have to have a very tight rein, uh, for us to be able to put together a balanced budget.

>> Definitely.

Uh, Jason, I wanted to touch.

So the other is spending, and then we have revenue.

Um, the legislature seemed hesitant to raise taxes, but there's been this talk of a graduated income tax here in the state.

Kind of been going around the circles.

Um, can you tell us a little bit about that?

You said you had a little bit of a discussion also with your students about this topic?

>> Yeah.

If you remember, in 2020, when Governor Pritzker first got into office, he proposed that Illinois should adopt a progressive or graduated income tax.

Currently in the Illinois Constitution, it says Illinois's individual income tax needs to be flat.

Everyone pays the same rate.

A graduated income tax would have people making higher salaries pay a higher rate of income tax.

Uh, and Pritzker's thought was that it would raise extra money to help shore up these budget shortfalls that were that were anticipating here in the year ahead, um, that failed, that needed to go to a vote.

Uh, referendum vote to the voters, uh, that failed back in 2020 due to some, you know, very heavy Republican opposition of worrying about, uh, you know, putting extra taxes and extra tax burden on, uh, on the wealthy.

Um, Pritzker seems he's spoken the last few weeks that he's really not interested in trying that again.

Still, there's some Democratic lawmakers in the legislature and elsewhere who have introduced legislation to put some form of a graduated income tax back in.

Uh, it doesn't seem likely it's going to go anywhere.

Um, you know, and this is and if Illinois were to go this route and switch from a flat tax to a graduated income tax, uh, it would be, um, you know, an opposite of the trends that have been going on in America over the last five years or so.

Uh, us, US states, it's still about a 2 to 1 margin of states that have a progressive income tax.

The states that have a flat tax.

There's about 27 or 28 progressive states and about 14 or so flat tax states.

But about half of those flat tax, flat tax states have switched within the last five years.

So that really the trend has been going from a graduated tax structure to a flat tax structure.

That happened in Ohio just last week.

They started a new flat tax structure there.

A lot of this happened in red states that are controlled by Republicans.

But that's what the the the trend is.

And it doesn't seem likely that this is going to gain any traction here in Illinois.

But it's still interesting to talk about, to think about and and look at the revenue projections that could come from it.

>> Definitely.

We have just under two minutes wrapping up here.

Um, I wanted to just because they're playing this weekend, we don't talk much sports.

Do you think the, um, the Chicago Bears have talked for the past couple years about moving to Arlington Heights, looking for support from the state, and they even threatened looking at Indiana Charlie, in like about a minute.

Do you think they're going to get anywhere with this?

>> Let me put it this way.

The likelihood that the General Assembly is going to come up with a bunch of money for the Chicago Bears is less likely than the fact that I will be starting for the bears at center next year.

The and the issue keeps coming up.

And they said, well, we're going to go to Indiana.

And the kind of the reaction in the commentariat was, fine, go to Indiana, see if we care.

And if you think about it, the I believe the the Washington Commodores play in Landover, Maryland.

The two teams from New York, the Giants and the Jets, they play in new Jersey.

So we could have the Chicago Bears play in Indiana.

Uh, but it's not going to happen.

As a matter of fact.

The the House speaker, House Speaker Emanuel Chris Welch was was asked about the likelihood of doing something for the bears this spring.

And his quote was, when folks say, what's your priority going into legislative session?

We're trying to bring down the cost of living, talking about a brand new bears stadium when this one's not even 25 years old.

That's insensitive.

Insensitive to what real people are going through right now.

>> I think we're going to leave it there.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your time this week.

That's it for this week's edition of Capitol View.

Thank you for joining us.

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