(peaceful music) (captivating music) (captivating music continues) - Welcome to "Capitol View" on WSIU.

I'm Jeff Williams sitting in this week as we look at what is making news around the state in Illinois politics.

To help guide the discussion this week, are Peter Hancock, State House reporter for Capitol News Illinois, and Charlie Wheeler, director Emeritus of the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois Springfield, and a longtime State House reporter.

Gentlemen, welcome back.

- Thank you.

It's good to be here.

- Thanks.

- I wanna start this week with the sentencing of former Illinois House speaker Michael Madigan on his federal corruption conviction.

Sentencing hearing, I guess, essentially began this week and is underway and is likely to culminate on Friday.

Just as a note, this program airs on Thursday.

Madigan is the latest in a line of Illinois politicians and elected officials to be convicted.

Charlie, you've witnessed and reported on a number of state officials fall from grace, so to speak.

How significant do you think, is the sentencing coming up for the former speaker?

- Well, I think it's gonna be very significant.

The feds are asking for a 12 and a half year sentence in prison.

Madigan, I believe turned what, 83 this year, or 84.

So that, in a sense, that could very well be a life sentence for him.

On the other hand, his attorneys are asking that he had given probation and sort of house confinement.

So that's what the judge is gonna have to weigh.

And whatever the result is, there's still an appeal going forward on the conviction in the first place.

I think what Madigan's conviction always represented to me was a kind of a sea shift away from what was accepted in Illinois politics.

He basically operated under the rules of former Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, and ran sort of a patronage operation.

He got jobs for his friends, he got internships for his friends' kids.

He took care of his people and that was the standard for many of the years that I covered Republicans and Democrats alike.

That's how they handled things.

That's how the operation went.

Well, the times have changed and Madigan was not able to successfully adopt to those changes.

And so, it'll be interesting to see what the judge says.

There was a very, I don't know what the right word would be, maybe a poignant video sent in by his wife Shirley, saying how important he was to her.

That he was basically, he was her life's support and she needed him.

And the US attorney said, "Well, you know, you got kids, you got grandkids, you shouldn't have to worry about 'em.

If he's not there, they'll take care of you."

So we'll see what happens on Friday.

- Yeah, I gonna ask you about that.

As you mentioned, Charlie, Shirley Madigan made a very impassioned plea.

Peter, in terms of federal courts, what impact do you think her statement's going to have given the nature of the speaker's conviction and then the fact that the prosecutors kinda let leak or put into the record the fact that his net worth is somewhere around $40 million.

I don't know if that has an influence on or on the mitigating factor of Madigan's wife's plea or statement.

If you had to guess, what do you think may, how do you think that may or may be taken by the court?

- Well, I would tend to doubt that the judge is going to take the wife's statement into account.

I've covered federal court sentencings before, and I remember one where the judge, similar statements were made by family members of the man being detained.

And the judge said, "Look, I've, you know, if every sentencing is an inconvenience to the person's family, I have to sentence people all the time, and I'm sorry that it's an inconvenience to you, but that's just the way it's gonna be."

Having said that, I would be a little bit surprised to see a federal judge sentenced an 82, 83-year-old man to 12 years in prison for what is essentially a nonviolent crime.

Yeah, I tend to agree with Charlie that his conviction and the end of his career really kind of marks, hopefully a turning point in Illinois politics, the end of an era that we shouldn't feel too nostalgic for, where politics was all transactional.

It was, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

There was no, I don't think anybody would ever argue that Mike Madigan had any sort of guiding political philosophy other than to promote the career of Mike Madigan and the people who supported him.

And whatever that took, he was willing to do it.

So, I think it does mark the end of an era.

I think, it's hard to say what sort of sentence will come down.

My guess is it's not going to be the 12 and a half years that the prosecutors were looking for.

At the size of his estate, the fact that he has more than $40 million in net assets, I think is remarkable.

But I think that also argues toward, in favor of a heavier monetary fine than a prison fine.

- Yeah, I think the prosecutors are asking for- - When I saw this comment on Capitol Facts, Rich Miller's website, somebody pointed out that there's gonna be a whole lot of Chicago attorneys who are partners in law firm who have wealth of $40 million or more.

So I guess if you're a Chicago attorney and a partner in a big name law firm, $40 million is not gonna be like, oh my gosh reaction it would be like to any of us.

- Yeah, Peter, as you mentioned, I think the feds are asking for one and a half million in fines.

I thought it was also interesting, the judge has already denied a motion for a new trial.

Do we expect that this will, that the speaker will form, will probably appeal this case at some point?

- Yeah, yeah.

I think the request for a new trial is just almost kind of perfunctory.

It's perfecting your claim in the future.

Now that they've denied a new trial, we will appeal on the basis of, you know, whatever that the conviction was unfounded or whatever.

So, yeah, there's going to be an appeal, no doubt.

- Sticking with the courts, gun rights advocates are again, challenging the state's assault weapons ban.

They're asking, believe the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn that ban.

And I guess one of the, in the latest, one of the latest requests for that.

Peter, I know you've been following the latest action on that.

Kind of bring us up to speed on this, on this latest effort.

- Okay, yeah.

So there was a trial.

The assault weapons bans spawned many, many lawsuits at both the state and federal level.

A lot of them have been packaged together into consolidated suits.

The only one that has gone to full trial so far was a set of lawsuits filed in the Southern District of Illinois, which sits in East St. Louis.

There was a week long trial back in September.

The Judge Steven McGlynn, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, declared the law unconstitutional.

The state is now appealing that to the Seventh Circuit, which has looked at this laws several times, as well as other similar laws, municipal bans in Naperville, in Cook County, in the city of Chicago.

And they've been fairly consistent.

They have refused so far to issue a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of the laws.

And so, now we're seeing this appeal move forward.

The state filed its appellate brief back in May, and then I think June 5th was the day that, or June 6th was the day that the plaintiffs in this case filed their replied brief.

And so now the state has one more, they have the opportunity to file one more brief and then they will set oral arguments.

While this, there are a lot of different storylines that weave together in this.

While all this was going on, many other states and local jurisdictions have passed similar bans on assault weapons and large capacity magazines.

I think last year the US Supreme Court declined to review the Illinois case where the Seventh Circuit had refused to issue an injunction.

And then on June 2nd this year, they declined to hear appeals in two other cases.

There's a Maryland assault weapons ban, which is very similar to the one in Illinois.

And there was a Rhode Island ban on large capacity magazines, which is similar to a provision that's in the Illinois law.

It takes four justices to agree to hear a case.

They only got three on this one.

The 4th justice, Brett Kavanaugh kind of issued a separate statement saying, you know, "This is an important issue, it needs to be decided by the Supreme Court, but just not yet."

He said, "It may take another term or two."

He was kind of unspecific about it, but he said there were other cases kind of percolating in the courts of appeals below, and he wanted to see how those would come out.

Among those are the case in Illinois at the Seventh Circuit and a number of other cases.

The interesting thing so far is that there has been no split among the circuits.

Every circuit court of appeals that has looked at one of these laws has upheld it as constitutional, even as the Supreme Court's standard for reviewing gun control laws has changed.

There's a very high bar to cross right now.

You have to show that your regulation is consistent with the historical tradition in America of regulating guns, traditions dating back to 1789.

It's a very high standard to cross, but so far no circuit court of appeals has stricken one down.

So that's kind of the environment that they're going into.

We expect to see oral arguments at the Seventh Circuit, probably this fall, early winter.

- So in the meantime then, the state's ban remains in place.

And that's what, large capacity magazines and bump stocks and items like that?

- Yes, there're a long list of weapons that are defined as assault weapons.

The term assault weapons is really more of a political term than a technical term that actually exists in the gun industry.

But there's a definition of it in the statute, these types of basically, semi-automatic weapons that have the ability to fire very high powered ammunition at a rapid rate.

Certain kinds of attachments like the bump stocks that increase the rate of fire, other, I think 50 millimeter ammunition, other kinds of things that are banned in Illinois.

And so yeah, this has been in place, it was enacted largely in response to the 4th of July, the mass shooting at a 4th of July parade in Highland Park in 2022, I believe.

Many of the other laws that you're seeing around the country were also enacted in response to shootings like the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, you know, and several years ago there was the one at another elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

There have been horrific mass shootings around the country and in response, state legislatures and city and county governments have enacted these bans on these types of weapons.

And so, it will eventually be decided by the Supreme Court, we just don't know when or which case they're gonna choose as the vehicle to do it.

- It's been, what, about a week and a half or so since the dust has settled on the state's FY 26, $55.2 billion budget.

So either Charlie or Peter, either one, do we have a clearer picture of what is in all the fine print in this new budget?

Or are there still some aspects that are, that are murky?

- Well, Peter can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the actual budget bill is like 3,600 pages.

So if someone has read every one of those pages, they have a pretty good idea of what's in there.

The summary roundup is that the budget is balanced.

The legislature has told the governor and the state agencies, "Here's how much money you have to spend."

And on the other hand they said, "Here's how much money we're gonna bring in."

And what we're gonna bring in is more than what you're gonna spend.

So there's a surplus.

People will argue about the accuracy of that.

They'll argue about how some of the quote, "Revenue Enhancements" are only one time.

For example, borrowing money or taking money from other funds.

The state budget altogether, I'm guessing, I haven't looked this up, I'm guessing it's probably like $150 billion.

We always focus on the general funds, the portion that's supported by income sales taxes and so on.

And that's the one that's key.

But of these myriad of other funds, some of 'em have excess money in them.

And so the legislature said, "Well, we're gonna take money from this particular fund 'cause there's excess and we're gonna put it over here."

And then they stop some payments.

They're, for example, they're not going to make a payment to the road fund out of the sales tax.

They're gonna delay that again, things like that.

Now, there was a criticism that came out at an analysis by Joe Ferguson, who's the head of the Civic Federation, and he argued that lawmakers made too many short-term decisions to balance the budget that could make future fiscal years more challenging.

And he mentioned, for example, as I was alluding to $271 million swept from other funds into the general fund.

And he also talked about the fact that the practice of putting additional money into a rainy day fund was sort of deferred for this fiscal year, things like that.

And what Ferguson's point is, things aren't gonna get better next year for FY 27 because who knows what's gonna happen in Washington.

So it'd be more prudent for us to try and reign in spending, but that did not occur.

Now, one of the other interesting things that I noticed, and I got a kick out of it, there's a bunch of super conservative Republican House members, mostly from East Central Illinois, and they filed a suit, challenging the budget and said that it violated the constitution because the guts of the budget were contained in the amendment, and the amendment was offered at the 11th hour and people didn't have a chance to read it.

And they say the Constitution says, bills have to be heard on three separate days in each chamber.

Well actually, the Constitution says the bill has to be read by title.

So, as long as you say House bill 24, a bill for the state budget, first reading, that counts, second reading, that counts, third reading, that counts, send it to the Senate.

And second reading in the Senate, you offer this 3,600 page amendment, it gets adopted in the Senate.

The Senate passes it, send it back to the House, House concurs.

That's all legit.

And they're arguing that you can't do that.

But the Constitution also says that the House speaker and Senate president have to certify that all the procedural requirements for passage had been met.

And of course that will happen.

Speaker Welch and President Harmon will sign off and say, "Yes, it was read by title three times, everything else is copacetic" and that'll be the end of it.

So it was interesting that they were making this challenge and it struck me, it's gotta, they can't be so, what would be the right word, so misinformed about what the Constitution requirements are, what the history of all this stuff is, that they thought this would have a chance.

And so I think it was just a way for them to get some publicity.

- Yeah, Peter, the governor, I think referred to some one time fixes and one time expenses to help make this budget work.

Has anything played out yet?

I mean, do we have an idea yet what's gonna be potentially impacted with those one time fixes with this budget process?

- You know, not really, and this is one of the things, I mean, putting together the budget is not a pretty process to begin with.

And it's really hard to know everything that's in there because it kept changing right up to the final vote in the house.

I mean, there were some people who were complaining that when they finally had a negotiated package and the House leaders briefed the House Appropriations Committee on the budget, between the time that the committee passed it out and the time it was voted on, on the floor, there were additional amendments, there were changes made to it.

And when they briefed the Senate Appropriations Committee on it, the Senate briefing was in many ways different from what was in the House briefing.

And so, you get the impression that in a lot of ways, even the people who put this budget together don't know everything that's in it.

And I think it's just gonna take a lot of time, probably over the course of the next fiscal year to find out exactly what was in there.

We do know that it gives a lot of discretion to the governor.

I think there's a, something in there called a bridge fund, which is basically like $100 million that the governor can use at his discretion in the event that the federal government should make significant changes.

There is money for higher education.

You know, they've said that there's a 3% increase in operational budgets for the universities and the community colleges.

But a lot of that is stuck into a special provision of the budget apart from the regular appropriations.

And it says that that money can only be spent upon written permission from the governor, and you have to tell the governor exactly what the money's going to be spent for.

So, I mean, there are a lot of little things in the budget but you know, on paper, as Charlie was saying, it does balance, you know, there is, as far as we, you know, the best projections, there will be enough revenue coming in to cover the $55.2 billion in expenses.

You know, the big question mark between now and the end of the next fiscal year is what happens at the federal level?

Is Congress going to cut Medicaid, for example?

Will Congress cut student loans and other kinds of student financial aid and federal funding for higher education?

Those things are all still up in the air and wait, everybody's just kind of waiting for that shoe to drop as well.

- Yeah, and that's a good segue, Peter.

In the five minutes or so that we have left, I wanted to touch on the fact that Governor Pritzker along with some other Democratic governors are scheduled to testify this week before a congressional panel that's looking at sanctuary cities and their policies.

Either one of you, what do you expect to, what do you expect to come from this panel hearing?

And what do you, how do you expect the governor to react and or to say as part of his, part in this procedure?

- I'm expecting largely a lot of performance arts, there will be Republicans in Congress who are, you know, infuriated at Illinois and the city of Chicago for their sanctuary policies.

Governor Pritzker will make an impassioned defense of what those policies actually do and how they're often misinterpreted.

But what's really at stake here?

I mean, is Congress going to do anything that prevents Illinois or Chicago from enacting these policies?

I mean, is the state of Illinois gonna do anything?

It's posturing more than anything else.

I mean, there may be some policy decisions that will flow out of this, but largely it's a political debate.

- Yeah, I agree with that.

This is, the sole purpose is to give some of these Republican firebrands a chance to rail against a blue state governor who is not kissing Donald Trump's posterior.

And I think that's the bottom line.

I think Governor Pritzker will acquit himself very well.

If you recall a month or so ago, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson went before the same group of yahoos and he could good a job.

He did a good job of explaining Chicago's policies.

So I expect Governor Pritzker will do very well.

And as I say, the radicals will get to spout and carry on, but in the end, what is this expression in "Sound and Fury," signifying nothing.

- Yeah, we have a situation in California where the National Guard there has essentially been federalized, and to what extent they're being involved there with the discussion on immigration policy and deportation and that kind of thing.

Do we expect to see that potentially happening in some Illinois cities?

Especially, I'm thinking maybe Chicago, if we see demonstrations there that the current administration doesn't care for.

- You know, I'll jump in there and just kind of observe that countries that turn their own military against their own people tend to not fare very well.

I think it's probably an overreaction.

I mean, certainly the state of California has a right to enforce law and order in response to these protests.

People have a right to protest.

Protest is not an insurrection or rebellion against the existence of the sitting government.

And so, yeah.

You know, to the extent that that escalates in Southern California, yeah, you could see some bleed over here in Illinois where ICE is apparently prepared to make similar moves in Chicago and other areas.

- Well, in a couple minutes or so that we have left, gentlemen, as you gaze out into your crystal balls, what are you gonna be looking at over the next week or so?

What's out there on the horizon that you're watching?

- In my case, I'm not sure there's anything.

I suppose the next thing that will happen is the several hundred bills that have gone to Governor Pritzker, that are on their way to Governor Pritzker.

What we'll be reporting is on him signing the bills.

I'm pretty sure he probably won't veto a whole lot of 'em.

And the whole uncertainty about things like mass transit, tier two pensions, there's a whole host of issues that we are still working on.

Lawmakers are still working to come to a compromise and they could come back.

They're scheduled to come back for veto session in October, but they could come back earlier to work on these things, particularly the mass transit up in the Northeastern region.

The issue is that the mass transit agencies, the CTA, the RTA, Pace Bus, Metro Line faces 770 million shortfall at the end of this fiscal year.

And so the lawmakers are saying, "Well, you got money till the end of this fiscal year."

But the agencies are saying, "We have to develop our budget within the next couple of weeks based on the money we actually have, and we're gonna have these horrendous cuts."

So I would not be surprised to see lawmakers called back to deal with mass transit, for example.

- Peter, 30 seconds or so, we've got left.

What are you, what do you see?

What are you looking at this week?

- I'm looking for a lot of bill signings.

In a year when there wasn't much money to go around, we saw a lot of kind of minor scattershot policy issues that went through the legislature that are kind of interesting and they'll make for some good bill signing ceremonies.

- All right, Peter, I'll let you have the last word.

For Charlie Wheeler and Peter Hancock.

I'm Jeff Williams.

Thank you for joining us this week for "Capitol View."

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