(gentle music) - Welcome back to Illinois Lawmakers' coverage of the spring session of the Illinois General Assembly.

I'm Jak Tichenor along with Amanda Vinnicky of WTTW's Chicago Tonight.

Amanda, the governor has signed the new budget for the fiscal year starting Jul Like most documents, this is a political document as Democrats head into the midte - Yes, as they head into the mid And by the way, Jak, this is a b that doesn't take effect until J The governor had plenty of time to wait to sign this, but I think one sign that it is a political document, he did not.

He wants to be able to campaign In fact, even prior to it being signed into law, the Pritzker campaign was airing a campaign ad on tv celebrating the tax relief that is contained within it.

So certainly this is a budget that does a lot of things.

There are questions, I think, about what it means for the futu in terms of a lot of increased f for state programs.

Will the state be able to sustai As well as these one-time measur a lot of one-time measures that offer tax relief that you are going to hear about a lot on the campaign trail.

I talked to Democrats and Republicans alike who say, ehhh, this maybe wasn't the best way to go about it and use money, but by golly the bulk of them, both sides of the isle, voted fo heading into an election year.

- And according to the governor, the ARPA funds were basically on the outer margins of all this, and he believes, that because of the state's economic recovery, this is sustainable.

- Yeah, you know, I think it does get complicated there.

Certainly the ARPA money frees up funding that Illinois would otherwise have had to allo from some suspending dollars that instead they can put elsewh The pandemic also has had anothe You had people buying more goods things like on the internet, for that are taxed now, versus servi There is no such sales tax on se that otherwise had really driven the economy.

So that is why you've seen an increase in revenue.

Of course, everybody hopes that there will be a sustained resurgence of the ec but there are glimmers that there could be a recession.

What is that going to mean for the state and its revenues, already projected to be not as h going into this next year as they were for 2023.

So you have to say that the pand has had certainly some effect, but it would not be accurate to that this is all just federal gr that is being pumped into the FY23 budget.

- Amanda Vinnicky, thank you so much for your insight on Illinois Lawmakers.

We always appreciate it.

- My pleasure.

- Governor J.B. Pritzker is our newsmaker interview for this week's Illinois Lawmake Governor, good to have you on the program.

- Great to be here, Jak.

Thank y Earlier this week you signed int a new $46.5 billion budget for the state of Illinois for the budget year that starts on July 1.

How does this package of bills square with the priorities that you outlined in your State of the State and Budget address back in February?

- This is a balanced budget with a surplus.

This is not only that, but also an opportunity for us to provide tax relief to families all across the state Grocery, gas, property tax relie as well as direct support for fa who will receive a check during the rest of this year.

So, it really has accomplished quite a lot in that regard.

Let me also point out that Illinois' finances have really come along nicely during my term.

We've been able to balance the b for the fourth year in a row.

And we received two credit upgrades during that period.

I'm hopeful for more, but it means that we're paying a lower interest rate for borrowing that we've done in and may do in the future.

And it's great for sending a signal to business that Illinois has its act together and that we're growing.

- At one point, we had something $17 billion dollars in overdue b Now we're back within the 30-day which is basically accounts rece - That's correct.

In fact we're paying our bills within 15 days now.

There is no more bill backlog.

We used to talk about that like it hung over our heads everyday like the sword of Damoc We now are a state that pays its bills on time.

Not only that, but we paid some and long-term debt off.

For example, $900 million dollars in group health insuranc that hadn't been paid for many, many years.

A burden that had fallen on the of really middle class families.

And then we also paid an additional amount into our pe $500 million more than is required by law.

That reduces the liability to our children, to us, going forward by $2 billion almo And then don't forget, we put a billion dollars into our rainy day fund.

Our rainy day fund has never seen that much in it.

And it means that if we ever run significant challenges in the fu we have something to rely upon in our rainy day fund.

We went from having almost nothi I'm talking about less than 15 minutes of cash to pay bills for the state of Illinois.

To now having a billion dollars.

That's really a big leap forward And I think people see what we'v as a very responsible way to operate the state.

- How much of this budget, gover is predicated on the Federal American Rescue Act?

- None.

What I mean to say that the Fede that was delivered to the state is a completely separate endeavor than the budget.

This budget relies upon the regular revenues that normally come to the state.

Corporate income tax, individual income tax, sales tax, etc.

And so we've had a very good, strong recovery in Illinois of our economy, and that's brought a strong reco of revenues for the state.

But we know that the economy isn't always gonna grow at almost six percent, like it did last year.

So we've estimated for the comin and the coming year, a reduction of revenues to the state and therefore reduction of spending in the state, including, obviously, if we have more revenue we'll pay more of our bills that we may have.

Our long-term debt now 'cause we paid most of our short-term debt off.

But we've taken into account that the economy won't always be as strong as it is.

But the federal ARPA dollars are a separate matter.

They're used for extraordinary one-time expenditures that are, to a large degree, a result of the COVID-19 pandemi - The new budget also targets something like $2.7 billion doll in terms of the state's unemployment insurance fund.

I believe that's somewhere in the tune of about $4.5 billion dollars being underwater Republicans basically said in the last couple of weeks that "Well, it's great that there some money going to that."

But not fully funding that trust puts employers at risk of having higher taxes on them, as well as benefit cuts for the unemployed.

- Well, let me remind you that the normal process for our UI Trust Fund, our unemployment insurance trust is a closed process in which we a process of bringing together labor and management outside of the legislature itsel to come up with a plan, an agreed upon plan.

And this is called an Agreed Bill process.

Now that's the way this has always happened if ever there has been a deficit in our UI Trust Fund.

That is, in fact, what's been going on this process.

So in an unprecedented way, we took $2.7 billion dollars fro more as a percentage of our UI d than any other state in the Midw And we put it in to make it, the process of the Agreed Bill, easier.

That has been appreciated by labor and management.

And they're still at the table working out any difference they have about how to deal with the remaining part of the deficit.

But it is, $2.7 billion dollars, to put it into the UI Trust Fund is really a very responsible, fiscally responsible way to help get over the challenges.

You know, we had almost a millio that were out of work at one time or another during the pandemic, and were collecting unemployment.

So this has never happened befor That's why we did something that's never happened before, and that's to provide that $2.7 billion dollars.

- Back to the budget priorities.

One of the things that you concentrated on was trying to restore funding to social services agencies like Department of Human Service Department of Children and Family Services.

A lot of those agencies had been hollowed out in recent decades.

And hundreds of thousands people actually fell off of the rolls for relief.

- That's right and, you know, we've been working, I mean, I've been in office now 3 1/2 years almost and when I came into office, as you mentioned, state government had been hollow and that meant that people who had developmental disabiliti weren't getting the services that they should get.

That people who need healthcare weren't able to get it.

That many people who rely upon investment from state government in order to help build their com weren't able to get the help the Don't forget that prior to my coming into office, because the state suffered eight credit downgrades under the prior governor, two years without a budget, we also had our universities suffering credit downgrades because the state wasn't funding universities.

We've reversed all of that.

We now are providing 50 percent more money for kids who wanna go to college adults who wanna go to college.

To everybody that is applying that's eligible for a MAP grant in the state of now will get one.

We won't run out of the dollars as a result of the appropriation that we made to that program.

And then we've increased the funding for universities.

So that's just one area, but one of many in which we're just rebuilding, getting back to where we ought t People who talk about the exodus of people from Illinois, which, by the way it turned out after years of the spelunkers fo talking about how hundreds of thousands of people left the state.

When we actually did a count, it turned out to be about 18,000 That's still something we wanna, rather build population than lose it.

But one of the biggest populations of people who are out migrating from the s were our young people, who were leaving to go to college elsewhere because they couldn't afford to got to college in Illinois because we weren't providing eno scholarship funding for them.

So I'm very proud of this budget I really do think we've rebuilt a lot of areas, including, as you said, the social services that people rely upon.

So I'm happy, and don't forget that we did all of this through a deadly global pandemic And that has sapped all of the energy of state government to try to deal with mitigating the health damage that it's done, the financial damage that the pandemic has done.

And yet still we've been able to very responsibly manage our budget and invest in the things that I think are most important to government.

- We've got about a half a minut Governor, I wanted to ask you about COVID, the situation with the mask mand Looks like that's been pretty much overturned at this point?

Well, the federal government is now seeking to have an appeal of the ruling that came in that struck down their mask mandates on public transit, on airlines, And so that's, I understand why they're appealing.

I think it's an important thing for the federal government as well as for the state governm to retain the ability to put mitigations in place to make sure we're taking care o when we have a resurgence of this deadly virus that we're able to deal with it.

But in my view we're in a pretty good position right now.

Always monitoring it.

But we haven't seen, even though we've seen an uptick in cases, we've haven't seen an uptick in hospitalizations.

But we're watching it closely.

Honestly, I wake up every mornin and I look at on my iPad, the dashboard that tells me what's happened in the last 24 h so that we can react to it and make sure we keep our people As a result of the work that we over the last couple of years, really thousands of lives have b and I'm very proud of that.

And mostly that is due to the people of Illinois doing the right thing.

We provided the information to t We put in mitigations wherever we needed to.

But it's really the reaction of people doing the right thing that has resulted in saving so many lives.

- Governor Pritzker, thank you so much for your time.

I certainly appreciate this.

- Great to see you, Jak.

Thanks.

- Democratic Senate Majority Caucus Whip Omar Aquino of Chicago is our next guest on Illinois Lawmakers.

Great to have you on the program - Thanks for having me, Jack.

- One of the Democrats key agend had to do with tax relief for fa in the form of an earned income tax credit.

First of all, explain to our aud what an earned income tax credit - So for our low income and middle income folks that work and file their taxes, they get a return, federally and also in the state, for the taxes that we have from the income that they earn.

And so what we've been doing, which has been a multi-year effo I think I've been sponsoring an iteration of this bill for the last three years.

Is trying to make sure that we're expanding that pool.

Not only expanding it by adding folks into it.

So 18-to-24-year-olds.

65 and ov and also I-10 filers.

So for our refugee and immigrant population that file their income taxes to also would be eligible.

In addition to that, we increase from 18 percent to 20 percent.

And so this has been something that we have done with a coalition of folks that have been supportive of this.

Myself and Representative Carol we're the ones that led this fig both in the House and the Senate And thankfully this year we were able to add this into th along with the other relief that you mentioned that we provided to our constitu in the state of Illinois.

- So how does this translate into actual money back and to people's pocketbooks as this process plays itself out - Once someone files their taxes and is eligible for EITC, the next filing period, folks that fall within those poo So there's about 3.6 million peo that already are eligible for EI in the state of Illinois.

So what those folks are gonna se is a two percent, more money bac next time around.

And then you have another additi 1.6 million households, actually 1.2 million rather new folks that are gonna be added into that pool of getting money back.

And look, this is gonna have an impact in the state and local economies to a tune of about a billion dollars because those same folks that get their money back that they've earned, spend those dollars.

They're not putting away that mo into some sort of trust fund or They're directly utilizing those to pay for a number of different things that, you mentioned that we'll see higher gas prices with inflation, a lot of other goods and services are increasing, including child care, grocery store prices and so forth.

So this is basically anyone that that's eligible to get the EITC will see that expansion, get that money back and they get to utilize it in the way that they need to help their families.

- You mentioned that this is rou a billion dollars back into local economies, and there's an old saw among economic development folks that for every dollar you plug into a local economy, it turns over five, six, seven t before it actually leaves, so there's some multiplier effec - Yeah, absolutely.

And just put this, EITC alone has the multiplier effect of two Like for every dollar that we give back folks, we're gonna see two times that b However, like you said, it's eve when you think about where those are gonna most likely spend their dollars, and that's locally.

And so, I think that this is sort of a stimulus, so to speak, for the state as well.

The other thing I wanna note is for EITC, again, it's low to medium income individuals, so a lot of these folks, during the COVID time, were essential workers.

You know, these are the folks, o that had no choice of their own but to have to show up for work in the last few years and have made sure that our economy is still running, and getting those goods and serv And so for me, I really do think that this is really a heroes' ta paid back to those folks.

And so, those are the families that are gonna see great benefits from this.

- So, you have a background, a considerable background, as we draw to a close, in the social services.

How is this in your mind a way t lower income and middle income f tough it out during this high inflation period?

- You know, it's getting money back into people's hands.

And in addition to, you know, earned income tax credit was $100 million dollars of dollars that are going back into our communities.

But that was only $100 million of $1.8 billion dollars that actually, in our budget pla is going back into taxpayers' ha And so there's a number of different things that account for that.

There's not going to be increasing the tax on, excuse me, the gas tax.

There's also gonna be a tax holi for buying goods during the back to school items, also grocery tax that we are gon take a holiday on as well for the entire year.

In addition to that, this bill that we worked on also had a child tax credit portion to it.

And that was added to a one-time that folks are gonna be seeing.

So about 97 percent of the state individual filers from 150,000 and I believe joint filers to $3 they're gonna get for every individual $50 back.

And for every child that they ha $100, up to three children.

So even this bill that we've had for our EITC, our child tax credit portion was on a one-time rebate that we hav of $1.8 billion dollars planned.

- Senator, we're gonna have to end it on that note.

Thanks very much for your time.

Senator Omar Aquino of Chicago.

We certainly appreciate your tim - Thank you.

- Republican Senator Dale Fowler of Harrisburg joins us now on Illinois Lawmakers.

He is the Republican spokesman on the Senate Commerce and Higher Education committees.

Good to have you on the program, - Good to be with you, Jak.

Thank you.

It's a real honor.

- Your background is in banking and economic development, in addition to serving as the mayor of Harrisburg.

How did the business community o fare in this spring session of the General Assembly?

- Well I think the business community has done okay.

Obviously the pandemic was devas to our economic opportunities that we have in Southern Illinoi as the state as well, but we've seen some improvements in this budget for our business They've had their struggles, and any relief, you know, we've been able to give them some tax relief, and, you know, to be able to promote their business and hopefully keep their doors o so I really feel like we've done a pretty good job.

There's always more that you can But we want the business community to know that we're there for them, we've been there for them, and we'll continue to do so.

- Specifically, there's some economic development issues that passed in the spring sessio Like a one-year waiver of the retail liquor license fees.

That would be helping restaurant and other liquor license holders that suffered under the COVID-19 outbreak?

- Yes, any relief that we can give our business community is beneficial.

So, yes, that's one.

And there's others as well.

And we know they've gone through tough times.

And we just wanna give them all advantages they can to continue to prosper and get.

Their doors are back open now and we wanna give them the support that they've earned.

- As a former mayor, there's a permanent increase in the state's revenue-sharing p that would pump an additional $25 million or so in funding to local units of gov through the local distributive f - Yes, absolutely.

It was increased a fraction.

It wasn't to the degree that we had hoped for.

Originally when this was establi they were, our local communities were to get 10 percent.

And that's actually had been dro I forget exactly what year that but it was dropped to just a little over six percent.

And then now it's been increased by another 1/10 of a percent.

So, it's not to the level that we wanted to get it to, but it is an increase.

It could have been substantially All of our communities will be able to benefit from this with some form of an increase, but it could have been much more Any improvement's a good improve but we were advocating for additional funding to get back up to that 10 percen We're not quite there yet.

I believe it's now just below 7 But it was an increase in this b so any increase is good to give you know, some relief to our business community.

- Of course, there's always a lot of partisan bickering that goes back and forth across the major issues.

That's part of the normal political process.

You can point to a couple of areas in particular where Democrats and Republicans are working together on issues like the new Cairo Port Project, a new project for a port at Old Shawneetown, Illinois.

- Absolutely.

I'm starting my sixth year in the General Assembly and one of my top priorities is to get to know my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and work together for all of Ill and especially be a voice for the 59th District as well as all of Southern Illin So yes, the Cairo Port received $40 million dollars in the Rebuild Illinois capital The $150 million dollars that was actually designated sta for the 19 ports in the state of Illinois.

So we actually received almost o Cairo received $40 million out of that $150,000,000 to hope they start the construction of this port, which could turn in to be the nation's hub for wherever port transportation opportunity.

The concept design has been completed on that.

Now it's kind of left up to the federal government on the permitting, so there's some obstacles yet.

But we'll continue to move forwa And yes, Jak, as you mentioned, Old Shawneetown received $11.2 m and I'll back up just a little b The Cairo Port, both of these pr are public-private partnerships, which is very beneficial to the entire state and to the private investment as 'Cause Cairo Port, it can end up close to a $300 million dollar p by the time it's said and done, when all the private investment And then also, on the Old Shawneetown port, we're taking an old coal holding that was in existence in Old Sha which is already permitted, which is a huge advantage, and converting that into fertilize offloading and hopefully one day grain as w It was $11.2 million of the funds out of the $150 million, and then there's a little over $ in private investment coming in.

And what's really encouraging ab the Old Shawneetown project is that it's actually luring in out of state investment.

Companies from Indiana, as an ex that's gonna be investing in Ill And both these projects are gonn hundreds and hundreds of construction jobs.

And the Shawneetown port is actu designated to be open and going by January of 2023.

So that's very exciting.

- Senator, thank you so much for your time.

We certainly appreciated it and happy to have you on Illinois Lawmakers.

- Always a pleasure.

Thanks.

Great to be with you.

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