S38 E07: Final Details of Next Year’s State Budget

- Illinois lawmakers continuing coverage of the Illinois General Assembly spring session continues here.

I'm Jack Tichenor along with Amanda Vinicky of Chicago Tonight, and good to have you here from Channel 11.

- Glad to be back with you, Jack.

- As we had scoped this out, it looked as though lawmakers were going to try to wrap up the session by midnight on Friday night.

We're talking on Thursday morning.

That's not looking very likely at this point.

Anything can change in a minute, of course, in Springfield.

But there's some major hurdles between lawmakers and that adjournment deadline.

- Some major hurdles and they don't have to meet that deadline.

It was self-imposed and early considering that they really have until the end of May when the threshold changes and I would say frankly, the mood changes because Democrats have these super majorities.

So the deadline that makes it more difficult come June to get a budget passed in order for it to be enacted by when it takes effect in July, not as big of a deal when you have super, super majorities, still, they wanna get it done by at least May 31st.

It does not seem as if there's really any way for them to, however, get it done by Friday.

And that's because you need technically to have three days to have the budget be read and so that means they had to have gotten started Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, didn't happen on Wednesday.

So sure you could fudge it a little, maybe go past midnight on Friday and technically meet the 19th.

But I think really the expectation is that because there are some issues with negotiations, it's, it's gonna go past that point.

- One of the big hangups, and we've been talking about this for the last several weeks on Illinois Lawmakers with our guest has to be with the amount, the unexpectedly high in number of numbers of undocumented workers who are in an insurance program in the state of Illinois.

The governor's original budget showed it to be, what, around 278 million or something like that.

And now it looks like it's well north of a billion dollars.

- So there's a lot of issues with this.

You have the current programs that give healthcare coverage to undocumented adults age 42 and older.

Now the plan is to try to expand that.

So it's not only the cost of the current programs and that having exceeded projections, it's also an effort that folks say, hey wait, you have a governor that has said healthcare should not be a privilege or it should be for everybody, it is a right.

And so if so, what about the rest of these adults?

Anybody 19 and older, and advocates say that this actually saves money by giving those who haven't had healthcare for a while preventative care and that will save money down the road.

There's a lot of consternation as well, some disbelief in terms of the numbers that are coming frankly from both sides.

You have advocates not really trusting in the numbers that the state agency is giving, state agency not trusting in the numbers that advocates are giving, but this is huge for the budget because it is very costly and because any money that does go to this is therefore of course not available to go to other programs.

So while it is major for the Latino caucus in particular, you have other legislators that are saying, hey wait a second, what about other priorities?

Be it school funding, be it violence prevention, what are those going to get if this gets such a big hunk of the increase?

And I'll add Jack that it's not, like all things in the budget, this is a matter of politics, but this certainly is another one of those.

You have a governor who again has been out front to say that healthcare should not be a privilege, and so he can't really back down from that.

But he's also a governor who has promised that a budget is going to be balanced.

So there's a really a whole lot of back and forth here when it comes to this program, and I think the expectation is that it is going to be folded in somehow, the question is who's going to make the hard calls of perhaps reigning in some of those costs with the program?

Will it be the legislature or will it be Governor Pritzker?

Nobody really wants to wear the jacket for that because of the politics that I just mentioned.

- We've got about a half minute left, and that is one possibility they could just leave it open-ended and punt and leave it in the governor's hand.

- Yes, exactly.

And that is something that is certainly part of the negotiations.

The governor doesn't particularly want that.

You don't often have a governor that says, hey wait, don't give me power, don't give me control.

But in this case, when it is so politically touchy, that is something that he's kind of would rather say, no, the legislature needs to do it.

And by the way, Pritzker is saying that's not just politically, he says that the legislature needs to take those steps legally as well.

- Amanda Vinicky, thank you for your expertise on Illinois Lawmakers, always appreciated.

- Thank you.

- Democratic Senate majority appropriations leader, Elgie Sims of Chicago is back with us on Illinois lawmakers.

You've been at the table in recent days with the budgeteers from the house and the governor's office.

What's the latest as we talk on a Wednesday morning?

- Well, I think it's important for us to note that we still have a long way to go.

We're making significant progress in getting our state towards a balanced budget, a balanced responsible budget for the state of Illinois.

So we're making progress, but we still have a long way to go.

As you mentioned, it's Wednesday and then in Springfield time, that's a lifetime.

- And of course you're projected to adjourn on Friday, May 19th, but that's not exactly a drop dead date because the real deadline is May 31st for a bill to actually have an effective start date, correct?

- That that's correct, but we are, we're on pace for the Senate to conclude its work by Friday.

And we're looking forward to that.

That's where we're working towards we're we wanna make sure that we are addressing the concerns and the pressures that have been shown up for the budget.

We wanna make sure we are passing a budget that's, that addresses the priorities that have been laid out for by our caucus, by the governor, and by the house.

So we wanna make sure that we are having those discussions and the budget that we pass reflect that reflects that.

- And we know, and we've been talking about this for the last several weeks as this spring session is wound down, that the revenue projections are down from what we expected from the big surpluses that we had last year.

And the governor's budget proposal actually reflected that, I think it was $49.6 billion.

How close are you to that, that outline that the governor laid out in in February?

- Well, I think it's important to note that we are coming off historic highs in Illinois revenues.

We had never seen revenues as high as we had the last year, but we have also been consistently conservative in our estimates on revenue, but also consistently conservative in our spending using one-time resources for one-time expenditures, not building those into base spending.

The governor's budget was a proposal laid out the, the governor's priority for the priorities for the year.

And that's, as you mentioned, we have been having those discussions about his priorities, but also about legislative priorities.

- The governor has said in recent days that given the new projections, he's actually ramped down some of his expectations across the state agencies.

Can you give us any insights into which budgets have been adjusted downward?

- Well, again, we have no, no final decisions have been made yet.

We're still in discussions about what those, what those will be.

We've met with both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have met with agency directors and agency budget staff to talk about their proposals for the year.

And we've made, we've made very good progress in understanding what the priorities or the priorities and the proposals were.

And I'm very pleased about that.

- There were specific recommendations for increases for early childhood education, for K through 12 education, higher education, as well as healthcare and human services.

Are those agencies expecting any cuts in what would be normally increases?

- Well, I would say again, we're they're, they're not, we won't be, there's no cuts, but we are, we are looking at adjustments to the prior, the proposal laid out by the governor so that we, we're gonna make sure that we are looking at the budget as enacted from 2023 and increasing from there.

So the, the baseline is really the budget, the current year's budget, and we'll look at how we adjust from there, but no final decisions have been made yet.

- So we're still a ways from the finish line on that.

One of the areas that hospitals have been hoping for an increase is in the, in terms of across the board budget increases for Medicaid spending.

They were wanting 20%.

I was hearing some speculation earlier this week that the actual increase might be closer to 10%.

Can you shed any light on that?

- Well, again, we're been talking to members of the hospital, the hospital industry and both the hospital administrators, but also the individual, the hospital association and having some discussions about what healthcare looks like in the state.

So we are, again, we're, no final decisions have been made, but I'm very glad, very proud of our progress.

We'll be having those conversations right to the end.

- Bottom line, no new taxes in this budget.

- No, there are not, not right, there are no new taxes in this budget.

We are, we're currently, again, we're trying to be consistently conservative in the revenues that have been laid out, not just in the, the revenue plan, but also in our spending.

So we are trying to make sure we address all of the concerns and the priorities that our caucus has, but also reflect that, reflects the priorities laid out by the governor and by the house.

- There was some speculation that the new Chicago mayor, Brendan Johnson, would like to have a transaction tax on the big commodities markets in Chicago.

Senate President Don Harmon and Speaker Welch have both said no to that, correct?

- Yeah, both the president and the speaker have, have said that, that that was not an agenda item that we would be taking up in the general assembly, however, I think that the mayor will be coming out and he's got some plans on how he will address revenue within the city, I look forward to hearing those proposals.

- Senator Sims, thank you so much.

We'll stay tuned, okay, as this whole thing emerges.

- Thanks Jack, always pleasure to be with you, my friend.

- Continuing our discussion of the Illinois budget on Illinois Lawmakers, Republican Senator Chapin Rose of Mohamed is one of the Senate Republicans lead budgeteers working to craft a budget for the new fiscal year that starts on July 1st.

Senator, good to have you on the program again.

- Yeah, thanks for having me, it's been a while.

- Yeah, it has.

Well, we're making it right right now.

At this point, I was expecting that we would know a lot more about what's going to be in that final package, but I had a conversation yesterday with the Senate Democrats budget negotiator, Elgie Sims and details are still few and far between.

What are you hearing.

- Jack, you are sorely placed your faith in Springfield run by Democrats from Chicago.

So I'm sorry to report that, no, they're not going to meet their deadline tomorrow, but I, you know, being Republican, I didn't expect they ever would.

So what are we hearing?

Not much is the short answer to your story.

And I can tell you why, and that is because as I know you have, have looked at the governor introduced what he at the time had labeled a balanced budget, and there were lots of goodies, you know, higher education was gonna get a 7% increase.

Other areas were going to do well for the first time in a long time.

And then we find out that the program for illegal immigrants doesn't cost the $200 million that he budgeted.

It's actually up over $1.1 billion.

Well, right there you actually blew almost a $900 million hole in the state budget.

So from the governor's introduced to March when he claimed it was balanced, suddenly there's a 900 million hole.

So all those things are now being crowded out, whether it's the 7% increase for higher ed or whether it's the, the educational, the K-12 EBF payment that's supposed to be 350 million for K-12 schools, or if it's development disabled funding.

Okay, and we can come back to that one in a minute, but that one's very important to talk about.

- Well, that seems to be where part of the holdup is because as you say, it is about five times what the governor was expecting in his original budget proposal for that program to cost.

Is that correct?

- Yeah, it's, yeah, that's exactly correct, almost six times because, and then there's also a move, as you know, to expand that healthcare program for illegal immigrants in which case in time, if you believe his own numbers, the governor's administration's own numbers, you'd have a billion and a half dollars program.

Again, he said it was $200 million back in his budget address when everything was balanced.

Now you're looking at a billion and a half if you take his numbers at face value, which by the way, I don't, everyone who's watching this has seen the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants come across the United States border in the last two weeks, as they've come across that border, there's a big sign in Texas says free healthcare in Illinois.

Where do you think they're all coming?

They're all coming here.

So the administration's own, own estimates are based upon the pool of eligible people not increasing.

Well, it's obviously increasing, it increased the minute, you know, Joe Biden bungled his way into opening the borders by accident and letting everybody come in without even bothering to Katie Bar the door.

- Supporters of that program though, also make the case that if that healthcare is not there for undocumented immigrants, you're still going to drive up cost at hospitals because if you don't have regular medical care, a lot of times what you do is you end up going to the emergency room, and that's expensive healthcare.

Right on the site.

- Let's be clear on a couple, let's be clear on a couple things here.

This is not for people who, who you know, elderly okay or infirm, the expansion that's under, that's under that they want to do here is for 18 to 40, you know, into their forties, okay?

People, if they came here legally, would actually be working with benefits and healthcare benefits on their own, but they're not.

So this is a huge problem for the state and it's crowding on everything.

And I wanna say one thing, by every moral construct, we have an absolute duty to take care of the development disabled, people who truly can't help themselves, right?

This is almost two times at current spin and three times if they expand it, what we should be spending on development disabled to because right now, under JB Pritzker, Illinois's 51st in the nation, we're, we're behind even the District of Columbia and doing what we should do for people who are development disabled.

This crowd out is real, and that's exactly why you don't have a budget on time.

- We got about a half a minute left, Senator Rose, one of the things I want to ask is, given the pressures that this puts on the budget, what do you think the Democrats are liable to do in the next 24 to 48 hours?

- Well, I think like any good Democrat, they don't know what to do because their appetite to spend has finally come up against what Maggie Thatcher called socialism, the problem with it is you eventually run out of other people's money to spend, and that's where they're at.

They've run out of other people's money to spend.

So now they're crowding out K-12, they're crowding out development disabled, they're crowding out higher ed, they're crowding out the environment, they're crowding out everything because they can't say no.

- Senator Chapin Rose, thanks very much.

Stay tuned, we will be covering this issue more in the following week I'm sure, thank you so much.

- Thanks, Jack.

- Up next on Illinois Lawmakers, we're talking with Democratic State representative Jenn Ladisch Douglas of Elmhurst.

Good to have you on the program.

- Thank you, very happy to be here.

- We've been spending some time during this session talking with lawmakers about specific bills that they've been working on this spring that could potentially influence a lot of things and affect a lot of people around the state.

And in this case, we're talking about House Bill 2189, the access to Affordable Insulin Act.

Tell us about this bill and what does it do, representative?

- Thank you for asking about that.

I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this bill.

The bill, first of all, has been work of six years.

We started work on this bill in 2017 before I was elected and the bill is a copay cap, that's how it started this session, to reduce the cost of insulin from $100 to $35 for state regulated health plans.

We were the second states pass a copay cap a few years ago, and it was set at $100, and since that time, other states have done the same thing, reduced their cost down to 35.

And the second thing the bill does is it creates a program so that people can take advantage of state contracting in that when the state negotiates contracts with manufacturers, they can get a reduced cost for insulin because of the bulk buying options.

And this is, this program is going to allow individuals who do not qualify for lower cost insulin to utilize the state rate and be able to get insulin at a lower cost.

So CMS is going to create this program to allow residents who are both uninsured and who have insurance with, for example, high deductible health plans to utilize that, that funding.

And it will have a net zero impact on the budget because it's a straight pass through to the individuals so that they can pay less.

And I actually have a vial of insulin with me here.

It's empty, but I brought it with me for this work because I'm very passionate about this issue.

I've had type one diabetes since 1992.

And so the cost of insulin has been a big issue for the community and it's a big part of why I'm here.

- It is a life-threatening situation for a lot of insulin users because people who are up against hard financial times have been known to stretch out their doses and everything and sometimes with disastrous effects.

- Yes, absolutely.

I, that is part of why I started working on this issue.

I kept seeing more and more people dying per news articles and kept seeing individuals with problems with their health overall with kidney failure, with amputations.

And to me, in this society today, this should not be happening due to lack of access.

And it's very important that people with diabetes have access to insulin and all the tools that go along with it to manage.

And we can live long and healthy lives as long as we have those things that we need.

- How is this received across the aisle?

This looks like one that you would have bipartisan support for it.

- We absolutely did.

In the Senate it passed unanimously.

I got it out of committee unanimously today, and I hope to have the same result tomorrow when we vote on it again.

I think people have realized that this is a really essential medication and it helps people stay alive.

And so far as I know, I've had a lot of support from both sides.

- And when will this take effect?

- It will take effect in July of 2025.

And this will give CMS time to put the program together.

I anticipate that it won't take that long for CMS to put the program side together.

We modeled this after a lot in Utah where they put this, the same kind of program together in just a couple months.

So I assume that we'll be able to get things started and ready to go.

- Representative, thank you so much for your time on Illinois Lawmakers.

State Representative Jen Ladisch Douglas of Elmhurst.

Thank you again.

- Thank you very much.

- Joining me now on Illinois lawmakers is Republican State representative Wayne Rosenthal of Morrisonville.

Good to have you back on the program, sir.

- Yeah, thank you, it's been several years.

I was gone for years, Jack, it's nice to be back.

- You were director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources under former Bruce, former governor Bruce Rounder.

And you're back in the house now.

Good to have you back.

You've got kind of a unique viewpoint on government service, not only in the house and as an agency director, but also as a retired brigadier general in the Illinois Air National Guard.

How does all of that service give you kind of a unique viewpoint into how the, how everything works at The Capitol?

- Well, you know, I've had, first of all, I've dealt with a lot on the federal level, having spent 30 years in the military flying F-4s.

And then I've also been involved with the soil and water conservation districts, the local school board, I'm still a trustee at Lincoln Land Community College And it's all about giving back to the local community and how we can better serve the people.

But, you know, I told people when I got elected the first time, the difference between the military and being on the house floors, it's just a different arena.

You still have to deal with people, you still have to figure out how to solve problems.

In a lot of cases, in this case, you know, the challenges, the super minority that we're in, and they're in the super majority.

- We're talking on a Thursday and the expected or the scheduled adjournment date is midnight on Friday night.

And from all accounts, it doesn't look like lawmakers gonna be able to make that.

- Well, it the, the budget needs to be heard three days and we're in the two days from the end and we have not had a budget plan put out yet or any kind of product.

So if it's assuming it gets out today, we can hear it today, tomorrow, and one day next week.

But it may not, may or may not get out today because there's a lot of work still being going on, you know, the last several years with COVID they were flushed with money and this year they're not.

And especially with the Medicaid, undocumented medical problems, you know, it just creates a lot of complexity.

- That's gonna be a large hurdle to clear as the Democrats especially have to work this out amongst themselves and the governor.

- Yes, you know, so we're, we will look at it when we get it.

We have no idea for sure what's gonna be in it.

And until we do then, you know, and like I said, most of the fighting's gonna be behind closed doors before it gets to us I think.

- I wanna talk to you about a couple of bills that you've been working on during this session.

Central Illinois of course suffered a terrible tragedy, tragedy back on May 1st that claimed to now up to eight lives.

- Eight after today, yes.

- Yeah after that big dust storm south of Springfield on I-55, you've got a bill, senate bill 2253 that would help those volunteers who were so critical in the aftermath of that situation.

What does the bill do?

- Well, so what it does is, is any volunteer firefighter that makes less than $10,000 a year and has put in at least nine months during the year would receive a $500 tax credit.

And so if you look, almost all the rural parts of Illinois are covered by volunteer firefighters and they're the ones that that show up first all along the interstates and in this case, that's who was there initially.

They had some help from I think Springfield, Lichfield and other places that have full-time firefighters.

But the first responders that were there were volunteers.

- And there's bipartisan support for this bill.

- Big time, and I think they've been working on it for several years but unfortunately the accident highlighted the importance of it.

- There's another bill that you're working on and your military experience comes into play with this house bill 2288 as it relates to veterans and the state procurement code.

What would that do?

- Yeah, so what happened was other minority businesses had passed this in the past and the veterans had just inadvertently got left off of it, so it was, I thought it was important to include the veterans.

So we added that and obviously I think it's gonna pass without any objection.

- And I understand there's a requirement that gross sales be something like, it was originally less than 75 million and now it changes that to what, 150 million?

- It goes up to 150 million because of, you know, with the, with all the inflation and everything, it doesn't take much for small business to get to 75 million.

So going to 150 million helps and includes, like I say, the veterans and the other minority businesses in small business were already included up to that.

- And where does that stand now in the, in the final passage stage?

- I think it's over in the Senate and I have not heard if they've accepted it and agreed with it or not.

- So we may still hear that, hear more on that in the next couple of days.

- I don't expect any amendments on it, so I would think it would just go from the Senate straight to the governor's office.

- Representative Wayne Rosenthal, thank you so much for your time on Illinois lawmakers.

Good to have you back with us, sir.

- Thank you very much, appreciate it.

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