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

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

It's crunch time for the general assembly.

The state budget is due by the end of the month, just a few days from now, and legislators are working to move bills before the end of the session.

Joining us this week to talk about what's happening in Springfield and around the state are Hannah Meisel with Capital News Illinois, and Charlie Wheeler, the emeritus director of Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois, Springfield.

Welcome to the program.

Glad to have you, guys.

(indistinct) - Always good to be here.

- (chuckles) Glad to see you again, Charlie.

Let's get started with the big thing, is the budget.

There's not been a lot reported.

Like, I mean, I keep hearing things, some newsletters.

Everybody seems to be trying to get the scoop, but much has been discussed.

Charlie, where are we at in this process?

- Well, as we were recording this, we really don't know.

And as I indicated earlier, before we started the show, whatever we say now, in a couple hours, it could be out of date, because the general assembly is meeting today, they have a deadline by the end of the month to pass a budget after which time it becomes more difficult because it would require extra ordinary majorities.

So, they couldn't do it with 60 in the house, 30 in the Senate, they'd have to go to 71 and 36.

So, they're trying to put it together.

The big question as always is, there's a finite amount of money and there's almost an infinite number of requests.

Some of the big ones that are out there, for example, the mass transit agencies up in the Chicago area, on the one hand, they ask for a billion and a half dollars, (chuckles) which is impossible, but they face something, like, a $770 million fiscal cliff that has to be remedied by the end of the year, or they say that they'll lose 40% of their service.

That's a big ask.

The governor has proposed in line with a formula that requires so-called evidence-based funding, where the money given to K12 schools is based on factors like the number of low-income kids, number of English learners, the property taxes available.

And this year, under this kind of this formula, prearranged formula, they're supposed to get 350 million additional.

Well, there's a lot of lawmakers who wanna make it 550 million.

There's all those kinds of asks and the money's just not there.

And one of the things that the legislative leaders have been talking about, in fact, Hannah, they did it talking to Capitol Illinois, they said it's gonna be really difficult for a lot of these legislators to kind realize that we kinda have to tighten our belt.

The money's just not there.

- Right, I mean, you know, unlike the last few years, especially when we've had relatively easy budgets because we've had, you know, unexpectedly high tax revenues because, you know, Illinois has basically continue to spend on consumer goods, and that has eased a lot of fears of any sort of coming recession despite higher inflation.

We have much, much, much more uncertainty from Washington DC.

The Trump administration has... (chuckles) You know, it's a different story every week out of Washington.

And we don't know the impact of the federal budget will have on Illinois's budget.

You know, we've seen budget bills in recent weeks from Washington.

We don't know if they're really gonna pass Congress in the form that they're in.

But, you know, if they do things like Medicaid cuts, other federal support that we rely on every year, you know, it's kind of given, would be hugely devastating to Illinois's budget.

So, you know, that uncertainty, you know, it's especially hard for individual House and Senate members in Springfield to deal with that sort of uncertainty, because, you know, their role is to always try to bring things home for their district.

We see, you know, projects every single year in the budget for individual districts.

And, you know, that's not wrong.

That's a part of, you know, deal making, sausage making.

But for them to, you know, have to contend with this big, you know, amorphous thing that, I think, in a lot of people's minds, it's not quite real because it's just kind of too hard to deal with, you know, the coming possible devastation.

I think they push it aside and they try to act like they always act, because it's too hard to deal with the reality that we don't, you know, know yet.

And so, you know, there's a couple things that have been floated to sort of deal with what might be coming from Washington, maybe set some money aside, prepare for some sort of short-term borrowing.

You know, we don't know if any of those things might be in some sort of budget deal.

But also, you know, what we see at the end of this month might not be the final thing.

We might see lawmakers come back during the summer if they have to deal with some sort of emergency from Washington to amend the budget.

We might see them come back in veto session.

You know, every year, there's always an amendment to the budget.

You know, sometime in the spring, we see what true state spending is, you know, versus the budget that was passed in late May, and then you amend, you know, you do a supplemental budget bill sometime in the spring.

So we might see that sort of process play out earlier than expected because we just don't know what's gonna, you know, come down from the Trump-Elon Musk decision-making machine in Washington.

- Yeah, and that's a major point.

I've been watching this stuff for a very long time.

I would venture to say I've probably been watching state budgets before any of you were even born.

(Brian laughs) And there's never been this level of uncertainty, as Hannah suggested, about what's gonna happen with DC, particularly in Medicaid.

Federal funding for Medicaid is a huge chunk of the state's budget.

It's like $20 billion.

And the things that are being talked about in the legislation that passed the US House and is now in the Senate would gut the program and really affect Illinois and costed billions and billions of dollars, and we just can't make that kind of stuff up.

We just can't recover.

And a lot of people still have that old notion that, well, you know, Medicaid that and welfare, that's for people who are too lazy to work.

Well, the fact of the matter is, the Medicaid in Illinois covers a lot of people who aren't able to work, if you think about it.

Something, like, 40% of the people on Medicaid in Illinois are kids.

And so you can't tell some 7-year-old, "Okay, you gotta go out and get a job at Walmart, or you can't have this coverage."

And the largest percentage in terms of the cost is for senior citizens.

Most of the senior citizens in nursing homes are covered by Medicaid.

And it's not that they were poor during their lifetime, it's just that the expense of nursing home care is so great that their own resources are exhausted and they have to rely then on Medicaid, because Medicare, the health program for seniors, only covers a very limited number of days in a nursing home after which Medicaid takes over.

So that's really, really big chunk.

So, it's not that there's all these people are gonna be available and they just have to go out there and work.

So, that would be probably the biggest threat to the budget and the biggest uncertainty.

We're quite likely to see Medicaid cut.

And the question is, how do we make it up?

And people say, "Well, you know, we won't give healthcare.

We won't give healthcare to people who aren't US citizens."

The problem with that is, even though you're not a US citizen, you may actually get sick.

You may actually have to go to the emergency room.

You may actually have to receive treatment.

Who's gonna pay for it?

You know, it'll either be people through their private insurance or the state should step in and help.

And in my mind, it's just unconscionable to talk about cutting Medicaid, particularly when, as I understand it, the rationale for the Republicans in Congress is, we wanna preserve these tax breaks and we wanna give bigger tax breaks to the 1%, because the billionaires are suffering.

They just can't amass enough money because they have to pay taxes.

As I said, I think that's unconscionable.

- And I think that we're gonna have to wait and see, let Congress figure out what they're going to do, and then the state definitely is gonna have to look and see how this is going to impact them.

And, like you said, that's a huge chunk of change on the- - Well, as Hannah suggested, it's quite likely we'll have to come back, legislatures will have to come back and adjust the budget probably several times before we're done with this calendar year even, much less the fiscal year, which won't be done until the end of June next year.

- Yeah, I know that earlier in the year, the governor had been asked if we would come back due to this, and he didn't rule anything out.

And I think there was a lot of print spent on that.

And I think that, yeah, I want to see what comes of it.

One thing I just wanted to finish up on the budget talk here is, I've not seen a lot of legislators talk about this, but some of the pundits and just when articles have been written talking about increasing revenues and taxes.

I don't get the feeling that, since the legislators have talked about it, that there's much appetite for this.

Are there any talks about increasing revenues in any way either of you have heard?

- There's been a couple of things floated that might be specifically for solving the transit hole.

But like you said, there is no appetite for this.

And, you know, the governor kind of, you know, almost boxed himself in with the budget that he proposed in February and saying, "There are no new taxes in this budget."

Except for, like, a very small casino game, table game tax adjustment that, you know, they don't consider a new tax.

And so, you know, I just don't think that there is much appetite for that.

But, you know, if things get... You know, if we understand what's gonna come out of DC, it's possible that Democrats might feel like they can take cover by, you know, saying, "Yes, the vast majority of Americans, you might've gotten a very small tax reduction on the federal level, and maybe we can make up for that in Illinois taxes."

But it's the same story every year.

Lawmakers are very afraid of raising taxes because they get hell for it at the ballot box and it knocking doors.

- And we're just (laughs) gonna have to wait and see.

And thankfully, we will be back again next week and we can do a post-mortem, so to speak on it.

I wanted to move on and talk about the other part of the legislature, has been working on some bills.

Hannah, what are some of the bills that you've seen passed that have kind of caught your attention?

- Yeah, I mean, it's almost like more of the big bills that have not yet passed both chambers that are really interesting to me.

You know, back in February, the governor proposed, I think it was almost, like, 10 separate things that he had wanted to see from the legislature this year, including allowed community colleges to offer baccalaureate degrees, banning cell phones in schools, which a number of states, both controlled by Republican and Democratic governors and legislatures have gone ahead with.

You know, some more minor.

Abortion protections.

Gosh, reigning in what's called pharmaceutical benefit managers to lower prescription drug costs.

And honestly, you know, there's several more things of that nature that he proposed in February, but we haven't seen a ton of movement on them, which kind of surprised me.

Which, you know, it may say something about his relationship with the legislature.

But, you know, for example, the community colleges being allowed to offer baccalaureate degrees, you know, it wouldn't be immediate.

It would involve a process of, you know, whatever community college in whatever region identifying a need in their workforce and working out that they would be able to offer specific XYZ degree.

You know, finally, after a lot of opposition from these regional universities earlier this spring, it seems like the universities have backed off, their official position will be neutral, and it seems like we will see that one going forward.

But, you know, it's been interesting to see a lot of them not really moving or, you know, maybe they're moving quietly, which is kind of the nature of how the legislature works now, relying on a lot of closed-door working groups, whereas in the past, a lot more things had been done out in open community.

But I think, you know, Charlie's been also looking at a lot of other bills, you know, like a possible fix for Tier 2 pensions that we might see a pop up this week or we might see kind of quickly die and we'll kick the can (chuckles) down the road again on some of 'em.

- Yeah, Charlie, what have you noticed as we've progressed through this session and what are some of the things you're looking for as we finish up this last week with bills?

- Well, to put it into a broader perspective as we are recording this show, according to the General Assembly's website, there've been 6,738 bills introduced this session.

As a matter of fact, there are, I wanna say, eight or 10 of 'em introduced just this week already, despite there's not enough time.

And when the last general assembly adjourn sine die, which means they're done, they won't come back, in the last couple of days, before they quit permanently, there were bills still being introduced.

There were, like, eight bills introduced when it was impossible to have the five days required to actually pass the bill.

And so far, the legislature has passed only 263 pieces of legislation, again, according to the General Assembly website.

- Mm-hmm.

- And in the past week, it's only 25 more bills than they had passed at this time a week ago.

So there's a lot of stuff percolating out there.

Hannah mentioned a couple of the really big ones.

One of the other things that is still there, which probably is not gonna move, is the notion about regulating intoxicating hemp products.

That's a holdover from last legislative session.

The governor wants to regulate and basically to try and make it difficult for gas stations and drive-thru places to sell these gummies, intoxicating gummies, to kids.

And so, that's not gotten anywhere so far.

The governor also wants to regulate cryptocurrency.

That seems to be kind of caught up and unclear whether it's gonna happen.

And as a matter of fact, the federal government is working to basically preempt the area so that states cannot regulate cryptocurrency.

It all has to come from the feds.

Earlier on, there was a push to regulate homeschooling.

That is stalled, and that's probably not gonna surface anywhere.

The thing to remember is that a lot of the bills that are out there don't really do anything.

It'll be a bill where it'll change one word, it'll change an ah to the Z.

And so the bill floats along, and it's called a vehicle bill.

And what will happen when it gets to the final stage when it's on ready to be amended in the second chamber, substantive legislation will suddenly get trotted out and pushed on there.

One of the things I recall is, years and years ago, and this is really dating myself, there was a bill that would allow you to get a tax write off for donating money to land preservation.

And that bill got amended at the last minute to become an income tax increase that was signed into law.

So, that stuff is out there, there's possibilities, and we won't know until the end of the week what's really gonna happen.

Some of the things that have passed I thought were interesting, and Hannah, I don't know if you agree on this, well, this doesn't affect you, so you probably didn't notice, the legislation passed with no opposition either the Senate or the House, that would change the driver's testing requirement so that you don't have to take a road test until you're 87 years old.

And so, that does affect me, so I noticed that one.

(everyone laughs) - Yeah, I noticed that one too.

That one passed without... You know, the Secretary of State suggested it early on in the session, and it seemed to move through pretty quickly.

Are there any other bills that you've seen that there's been this bipartisan agreement on, Hannah or Charlie?

- You know, there's the not-much-bipartisan agreement, but, you know, there always is, but, you know, it's just so dominated by Democrats that, you know, the reigning theory for years and years now and the mindset is that, you know, you don't need bipartisanship.

And I think, you know, also, the ethos in the Democratic Party is, "We don't wanna necessarily deal with Republicans, especially who have been bitten by the hyper-partisan Washington bug."

Of course, those folks would throw it right back to Democrats and say that, you know, "Democrats are also hyperpartisan themselves."

But one thing I did wanna delve into just a little bit is this notion of fixing Tier 2 pensions.

Now, to explain briefly, I'll try to explain briefly.

- Sure, yeah.

- Is that if you are a teacher in the state of Illinois, state employee, a university employee, back in 2010, we saw this kind of looming fiscal challenge where, you know, almost a quarter of every, you know, tax dollar, part of a state budget was going toward pensions.

You know, this is decades and decades going back on years of underfunding the pension system.

So, the legislature back in 2010, on a bipartisan basis, they said, "Okay, we are cutting off the program for the, you know, relatively generous pensions and we'll call that Tier 1 pension.

So, any state employee teacher who joins the workforce after January 1st, 2011, will be in this system called Tier 2."

But as we went along, and as, you know, maybe late-stage retirees joined the workforce and began to look at retirement, folks noticed that possibly these retirement benefits were not generous enough to even match what Social Security might get them.

Because when you're in a pension system, you're not paying toward social security, and that would actually violate federal law.

And so, you know, we've known this for years about a possible, you know, coming emergency there because we would have a massive retirees, but that hasn't happened yet because, you know, by and large, the people who have joined the state workforce after 2011 are not eligible for retirement yet.

But, you know, when that does happen, we're gonna have a massive legal challenge, and likely, the state is gonna be in the wrong and the state's gonna have to pay up.

And so, you know, lawmakers have been trying to head off this emergency for several years.

You know, this year, it was the first year that looked like there's actually some momentum on changing Tier 2 pensions, putting some more money in the system, making benefits more generous.

Now of course, public employee unions would like to see the Tier 2 pension system, you know, basically almost go away and match Tier 1 pensions.

I don't think that's gonna happen, but, you know, some sort of compromise to be made.

And it seemed like, at least for a while, we might've been going along in that direction, but not sure that we're gonna see any movement on that this week.

- Tier 2, we've been talking about it all, and I've done several stories just here locally talking about the pension things, and one of the things moving to Illinois.

They keep trying to figure out how to do it, kick the can down the road, so to speak.

Charlie, we've got about a minute and a half left.

Do you see any movement on the pension before the end of this session?

- Probably not.

And as I indicated earlier, the governor advocated or included in his budget $78 million to try and begin to address the problem that Hannah noted that for Tier 2 employees, there's a concern that their pension benefits won't match what they would get were they under Social Security.

But some of the conservative voices are saying, "Well, we don't really know that yet.

We've not formally been told by Social Security that the Tier 2 don't have what they call the safe harbor, that their benefits don't match what Social Security would give them.

So there's no really no need for us to do that now.

We should wait until we have more information."

So that's something that maybe will be held over.

As we indicated earlier, the mass transit funding is something that will be held over.

Another issue that's out there, and it's probably doesn't affect Southern Illinoian as much as it does Chicagoans, is the fate of the Chicago Bears.

It's pretty clear there's not gonna be any money available to build the Halas family, McCaskey family a new stadium.

And so now, they need legislation to allow them to enter into these intergovernmental agreements in Arlington Park with school districts, with townships, and everything that will enable them to move to Arlington Heights and build the stadium.

- Sorry to cut you off, Charlie, but the time is running out.

And just like time's running out on the end of the legislative session, so we'll update you more next week on "Capitol View."

For Hannah Meisel and Charlie Wheeler, thanks for joining us this week.

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