(soft music) (dramatic music) - Welcome to "Capitol View" on WSIU.

I'm Jeff Williams, sitting in this week as we take a look around the state of what's making news in Illinois politics.

To help guide our discussion this week are John Jackson, visiting professor with the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, and Kent Redfield, emeritus political science professor at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Gentlemen, welcome back.

I wanna start this week, as we have more than once on this program, with former Illinois House Speaker, Michael Madigan.

He was sentenced Friday to seven and a half years on federal bribery charges, and fined two and a half million dollars.

John, this is the latest chapter for Speaker Madigan, the longest-serving legislative leader of any state.

He was a power broker in Illinois politics for nearly 40 years.

You've witnessed and studied Madigan's reign.

What does the next chapter to be written look like for the former speaker?

- Well Jeff, I'm gonna try to set some historical and political science context for just a bit.

I taught political parties, state and local government, American government, occasionally urban government, for many years at SIU, and in that teaching, I always talked about the fact that for well over a century, really going back to Andrew Jackson, we had what you might call pragmatic political parties.

We had parties that wanted to please their constituents, they wanted to do things for the interest groups that supported them, they wanted to get the job done, but they were not very philosophical, or ideological, or sort of coherently committed, in terms of the political theory behind what they were doing.

And that has changed.

And it's changed really just in the last 20, 30 years.

It came along slowly, but then rapidly, the progressive movement demanded reform.

They demanded that the material kinds of rewards that party activists and party leaders could expect were no longer acceptable.

They demanded that the graft be cleaned up.

And this particularly was the setting for the great urban machines, and perhaps one of the greatest, and one that lasted the longest, was Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, and that's exactly the background, of course, that Speaker Madigan came out of.

He was a young man, then got to be one of the youngest leaders in the General Assembly when Mayor Richard J. Daley was still alive and in office.

And he brought that mindset and history as to what political parties were supposed to do.

And getting your brother-in-law a job up the street in sand, for example, is what would you do otherwise?

And that was the mentality.

But the older-view people didn't quite get the memo, and the Feds charged that Mike Madigan didn't get the memo, in that he continued too much business as usual, that the laws had changed, that court decisions had changed, things like the Shakman decision, were supposed to control hiring and all that sort of merit-based stuff that the progressives wanted.

And the Feds charged that he continued to do some things for his people and his interest groups, for example ComEd, just the way it always was done, and that he crossed the line on legality.

I want to say I think this decision by the judge and this sentence was really pretty harsh.

And I would say, noting that it's 7.5, he's got to serve, as I understand it, at least six years.

Madigan's 83 years old, plus five, plus six rather, would be way on up there in expected life cycle, and it's perhaps a life sentence.

And I think it's worth noting his claim during the defense that he had to take care of his wife Shirley, I think she's a part of that.

So I think you can make a case that this is a very hard come down by the judge on the former Speaker.

We can argue about whether or not it'll be enough of a warning to those who haven't gotten the memo yet.

There's certainly been enough people at the ward and precinct level, and all kinds of folks have gone off to jail since things have changed.

So that's the other interesting question.

Kent is a foregone expert for all these years in studying what is graft and what can you do on campaign finance, so I'll be quiet and let Kent talk some of this now.

(Kent laughing) - Wow, I think there's no question that the Speaker was pretty remarkable in terms of his ability to take the office of the Speaker, and the Legislature in general, post the Constitutional Convention, and really reimagine what the role of the legislative leader was.

The leaders, over time, with Madigan leading kind of being the example, let's say leaders became the political parties, and they still are to a large extent within Springfield.

So you don't have a Democratic party, you've got these days a Chris Welch and a Don Harmon party, the Speaker of the House, President of the Senate.

And so part of his genius, it was also a necessity, he was never gonna be mayor of Chicago, was to figure out how to gather power within the office of the Speaker.

And that residual is going to be there.

This is a very top-heavy Legislature.

The committees are not particularly strong.

The legislative staffing, the resources are controlled by the leaders rather than by the individual members.

And the members do not have a lot of resources, even out in the district, whereas the legislative leaders, again, the model being Mike Madigan, gather up all of the money at the top.

And through flaws within the campaign finance system, and at one point, Madigan had two very powerful committees within his chamber.

He was also, had the 13th ward, he was also the chairman of the Democratic party.

If you want to give money to Madigan, you had lots of pots to put it in.

That residual is still there.

We could do for some more democracy, in terms of the committees and the resources that members have.

Ultimately, all of that power couldn't stand up to 19 members of his caucus saying, "We really don't want you to be Speaker anymore."

The House collapsed because it always depends on loyalty, transaction, obligations, and when the time ran out, then it was amazing how quickly the fall.

I'm not, having spent a lot of time on reform, I am hopeful but never optimistic that we're gonna really turn the corner on dealing with corruptions, but we shall see.

- John, as you mentioned, this was a relatively, a very harsh sentence, in comparison to other Illinois elected officials that have found themselves in a similar position.

The judge also didn't mince any words with Madigan.

He outright said, "You lied on the stand," when Madigan testified against, about his association with the ComEd scandal, and a couple of other individuals involved in that investigation and in that case.

Madigan also didn't accept responsibility for the crimes that he was convicted of.

Either one of you, his demeanor on the stand, and how he has presented himself throughout this case, is this typical?

Is this Michael Madigan being Michael Madigan?

- Oh, I think so.

I mean, this is a very, I mean, he's a very proud, disciplined person.

I think he always knew what was going on.

He tried very hard to insulate himself.

He got brought down by modern technology, in terms of, in his heyday, we didn't have cell phones, and all of the, what prosecutors currently have.

It's interesting to note that, because of, not necessarily the weakness of the case, but because of the constraints that the Supreme Court has put on pursuing corruption, that the main charge, which you would have expected all of the bits and pieces to add up to him being convicted of a racketeering charge in a criminal enterprise.

They were not able to bring that, in terms of kind of the shifting sands of the criteria that the Supreme Court has placed on getting corruption, political corruption convictions.

And so that's, I think that that's one of the things going on here that is, I think, people in their forum committee find troubling, is the way that the Supreme Court has cut back on the tools that federal prosecutors had to go after political corruption.

- Just to kinda come full circle on this, I know Madigan's attorneys have said that they will appeal, John, if there is a civics lesson to be learned from this story, what would it be?

- Well, I think the rules of the game are under attack everywhere you look these days, particularly at the federal level, but certainly Illinois has that problem.

We've got to have an understanding that you can't personally enrich yourself by doing politics, and that, I think, is the number one thing that needs to be carried away.

I think drawing some lines that define what the quid pro quo rules are, are still necessary kinds of problem that state and federal law needs to be clarified on.

It is politics to take care of your friends and to help your interest groups.

You can say, "I've always been with you, you know I'll be with you on right to life, or abortion," or whatever the other major things that you're discussing at the time.

And that's fair game, but up to a point.

And we've still got to, number one, clarify that, and number two, pound them in to the heads of those who get elected and expect them to follow them.

And I think what's going on at the national level is exhibit number one of how you can still enrich yourself under the rules that exist at the federal level.

Apparently there are no rules, in the case of the presidency, for example.

- We're now a couple of weeks out from the end of the spring session.

The governor, in fact, as we tape this, just signed the FI2655 billion dollar state budget this week.

We've talked a lot about what was in the budget, and other legislation that made it through the session.

I'd like to spend a little bit of time this week taking a look at maybe some of the more significant items that didn't make it through, or at least not entirely.

The first is tier-two retirement reform.

That impacts pretty much any state employee, I think especially anyone hired after 2012.

Kent, in your opinion, what are lawmakers gonna have to do with this issue?

- There's a simple fix, and then there's a much more complex fix.

I mean, to comply with Safe Harbor, which is, essentially, your state system has to at least mirror the Social Security if you're gonna opt out of Social Security.

It would be a disaster if the state were to fall into a situation where, in addition to all those pension obligations that we have with people were current employees and in the system, we would have to start administering Social Security on top of that with employee and employer contributions.

You have to address that.

The broader picture is tier two, the benefits are much lower than tier one.

You've got situations where you got people doing the same, basically the same job, got significantly different pension futures.

And it's causing problems with retention and recruitment.

If you don't constitutionally fix the limits on the pension guarantee in the state constitution, you're gonna have to spend a lot more money to recruit people and pay people, and we don't have a lot of money.

Anytime you get new benefits, you want to make tier two a little more friendly, you're building in obligations that are forever, at least with the current position of the state Supreme Court.

And so it is a really difficult issue that, if we had money, we have demands to spend it in lots of different places, rather than fixing up pensions, and we don't have any money.

So this is gonna be one more thing that I think we'll probably take care of our vulnerability, and then, like everything else, short-term, it waits for whatever the federal government does, in terms of cuts in things like, that will affect Medicaid, which could be a tremendous hit.

And the state has a very bad revenue structure.

The same things they were talking about when I got here in 1975, with structural deficits, are still there.

And so we've got talk about, well, we need to expand the sales tax.

It's such a terrible budget situation that I don't suspect that we're really gonna do anything but the necessary bandaid on pensions.

- Another one I wanted to touch on, Northeast Transit funding, that one has been in the news especially.

I think Chicago area public transit authorities are preparing for what they call, I think one headline called it, "A Doomsday budget."

They didn't work out a funding plan for that in the session.

Is this something you anticipate is gonna either be a, potentially be a summer special session, or something in the fall?

It seems like a fairly dire situation for the Chicago area Metro Transit Authorities.

- Sure, it is, you've got a fiscal deficit, which is going to end up with massive service cuts, unless you address it.

But the fiscal deficit, as difficult as that is, where are we gonna find more money, is coupled with real problems in terms of the structure.

And so the basic structure, a Chicago authority, a Cook County authority, a Collar county authority, headed up by the RTA, people were very skeptical of that when it was put in place in the early '70s.

There's not reason to be optimistic that that structure is gonna do anything to fix problems.

So you have to get three different silos, if you will, along with a coordinating structure.

You've gotta get all of that working in a way that you can, where you're focusing on how do we get buses and trains and the whole system to work in a coordinated manner with a lot of resistance, from not only entrenched politicians, but trade unions that are associated, different trade unions associated with different parts of this puzzle.

So we're gonna be back.

We've gotta fix it.

The economic engine of the state is northeastern Illinois, a transportation crisis there, where you can't get into the city or out of the city to go to your job, would be a huge hit to the state's economy.

We will be back, it's just a question of how soon and how big a crisis that we'll be dealing with, that the Feds are gonna hand us on top of that.

- Yeah, one more I wanted to talk on, and we've got, we're really covering ground here today.

We've got about six minutes or so left, I wanted to make sure to get this one in too, 'cause there's something's been talked about over the last two, three years, and that's higher education funding reform.

It did not advance out of the General Assembly this session.

A plan has been in the works for the last, I think, three or four years.

It would basically overhaul how the state funds its public universities.

I think they're looking at trying to add about two billion dollars in proposed new funding to help bring equity and stability to the state's higher education system.

John or Kent, what's the prognosis on this one?

What do you think needs to happen, in terms of higher education funding, when we look at how our public universities are being funded?

- Well, this is just example of the bigger point, which is these things are complicated, and they take years to work out a formula, to work out the wording of the legislation.

And this is one of those cases.

It will not happen in this or other areas, like RTA, and like tier one, until the legislative leaders and the governor agree on something they think can pass the caucus, and that can get the interest groups that are relevant to back it up.

While it could be discouraging, I would point you to the K through 12 funding formula.

That thing was around for years, and it took a long time to work it out, but they did finally work it out.

And in my view, it's been working very, very well.

We've got other things on the agenda that are equally complex.

We don't have time to talk about it, but clean energy bill, affecting ComEd, and particularly those of us on Ameren downstate, but it's just gonna take some time to work through it.

And I think the legislative process works that way, and I'm optimistic that one of these days, they'll get their ducks in a row.

- These are always easier if you've got money to spread around.

And so, when we did K through 12, we hold everybody harmless.

You got what you got.

Then the new money, we're gonna take and divide up and slowly level people up.

If you don't have any money, then that solution is not readily available.

You're talking about everybody is saying, particularly in higher ed, we're back into the 10, 15 years ago, if you adjust for inflation, in terms of the funding for higher ed.

We've cost-shifted to students and other ways to cut costs.

But it's not a great situation.

And you've got a Legislature that this is probably the first budget that most people in the General Assembly have ever faced where they didn't have money to play around with.

Ever since we overrode Governor Rauner's veto on the budget, got a tax increase, then we got COVID money.

There's been enough there to smooth things over.

All of those, that's all gone away, going away.

And so these are tough, really tough times, both in terms of meeting basic services, but then we haven't even talked about, for every time you talk revenue, people say, "Yeah, but how are you gonna take that and fix the property taxes?"

And so, we could go on and on.

I'm sorry.

(Jeff laughing) - That's okay.

There was a little bit of pushback from University of Illinois.

John, you've had a little bit of experience in higher education, in administration.

Is this gonna be a difficult kind of lift from the administrative side of the equation?

- Yeah, absolutely, I think that's no question about it.

- All right.

Gentlemen, we've just got a couple of minutes left.

What's on your radar in the coming weeks ahead?

What are some of the things you're gonna be looking at, in terms of Illinois politics?

- Number one will be how aggressive the president, and ICE, Homeland Security, are going to be with a surge into Chicago in terms of enforcement.

California would suggest that the president is gonna be very aggressive, hoping that a surge in enforcement will generate civil unrest, which will create an opportunity to send in the National Guard and the Marines.

The hope is that we won't have a repeat of what went on in California, but it will take a lot of restraint, in terms of leaders and community leaders within Chicago, not to repeat that, what went on.

That's number one for me.

I think that, potentially, could be very explosive.

- John, I'll let you have the last word.

- Coming off the federal, saying I think we had political theater all over the place this weekend that's very relevant, and that is what's going to be the role of the president and what's going to be the role of the grassroots rebellion that was in evidence over the weekend.

Political theater in the Capitol, clearly it was political for the use of the 250th anniversary of the Army to celebrate Trump's birthday.

And I think the pushback is very relevant to how far can the Feds, particularly the presidency, go.

And I think all of those demonstrations, thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, and millions, are the grassroots pushback.

And I think that's what's still got to be worked out, and sets us up for the midterm elections.

- All right, fair enough.

Gentlemen, thank you both for joining us this week.

- Thank you.

- For John Jackson and Kent Redfield, I'm Jeff Williams, thank you for joining us on "Capitol View."

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