Democrats passed a $56 billion Illinois budget in the last hours of the session.

Why Republicans say taxpayers are getting the short end of the stick.

A top Republican leader speaks out on The Cities.

[lively music] [music ends] Democrats say the $56 billion budget passed by lawmakers helps make up for revenue lost from cutbacks by a Republican president and a Republican Congress.

But Illinois Republicans say it's the Democrats who cannot get their fiscal house in order.

The final hours of the 202 session ended with a whirlwind of major decisions, coming down to the final hour with little, if any, Republican input.

In a way, what else is new?

We talked with the Hous Minority leader, Tony McCombie, a Republican from Savannah, about the end of the session, the new taxes you'll see, and how Republicans plan to run against the laws passed.

Well, Leader McCombie, thank you for joining us.

Tell me all about the last hours of this legislative session, because it's all about the budget.

And I want to talk about the Bears as well.

But let's talk about the last hours and and trying to formulate a state budget.

Yeah, very similar to every year since I've been in office after midnight is when all the action starts.

And, you know, it's kind of interesting.

I think it was because of all the Bears action or inaction.

We had a lot of press in the dome and really kind of saw how things are and shouldn't be.

So like always, we passed a budget at 4:13 in the morning in the House.

But kind of interesting, we passed the budge implementation bill, the Revenue a.k.a., the tax bill, the Capito bill, all before the budget.

So we were certainly backwards.

And, you know, once it goes after midnight, it takes 70 votes compared to 60.

And last year we saw some issues with Dem votes after midnight.

This year they had it all together and, and all voted.

Well, I mean, time again, you, you point out that the Republicans, of course, are the minority party and that they don't have that big of a say in the budget.

Did your party have more of a say this time around, whether it was during, committee or at any time on the floor?

Yeah, I wouldn't say, I say, I think, that the speaker said collaboration.

Certainly no collaboration.

But I will give kudos where they're due.

We did have a very high level.

The speaker and I, very high leve conversation about 20 minutes.

About a month ago.

And the day after that the budget chairs in the House, the Republicans and Democrats sat down and had a lengthier conversation, just really talking about, you know, some priorities, how the process is going to go.

And then we didn't hear anything again until Sunday of the budget.

So May 31st.

But I'm not going to disregard that because we sat down with, well, I wasn't there, but our budget chair sat down with staff and the House Dem staff, and that is very beneficial for our staff to try to get a handle.

The staff really get, you know, run through the wringer on this process you know, there for 2 or 3 days getting about six, seven hours of sleep.

So I am thankful for that at least.

But there is a better way to do this.

The governor proposes his budget in February.

We could be sitting down, offering solutions, offering, shared priorities.

And, you know, it would be great to vote for a budget.

It would be grea to have bipartisan legislation.

The difference with this speaker, compared to the last, bipartisanship isn't an important priority.

In the last, not this one.

Correct.

Okay.

Okay, I just wanted to clarify that.

I mean, because the days of Madigan I think is what you're referring to, are gone.

So, I mean, do you notice that I mean, that that that, how do I say that the shadow of Speaker Madigan is somewhat, out of the legislature now?

Oh, completely.

I would say I mean, here you have, you know, Speaker Madigan wanted bipartisan legislation because he wanted some damage control for his own members.

Today we're under a unwritten rule of 60, meaning any piece of legislation that comes forward has to have 60 Democrats before it comes to the House floor.

So that doesn't that doesn't bode wel for bipartisanship in the House.

It doesn't bode for advocates, associations, you know, organizations that you you belong to, to advocate with Republicans to get votes because it doesn't matter until they have their 60.

So it just kind of put everybody in an awkward position adds to the divide in the house, which is really unfortunate.

Now, you did say that you were looking for shared agreement on the budget.

What would you say one of the biggest ones was?

I mean, we're talking about a $5 billion budget, some 3900 pages that were delivered to you by the end of the weekend.

Is there any shared budget agreement that that you were pleased, made it?

Certainly some of our priorities that were were met as well as, with the Democrats is the pension payment was paid.

That's extremely important with the the outstanding liability that we have there.

Fully funding the evidenc based funding model as agreed.

You know, last year, as you remember, $50 million was cut from the property tax, grant relief part of that.

So that was put back into the budget, increasing some funding for, our, the those folks that take care of our most vulnerable.

That was increased.

But in the next breath, it was the the rate of pay was increased but then their decrease of that, they decreased the hours they could work.

So it really wasn't a pay raise.

And, you know, ou most vulnerable certainly need more care, than an average, you know, person.

So, there was certainly some, some good that we agreed with and, and would have supported regardless.

But, you know, our priorities, we, we would like the HBIS the health care for the non- citizens, illegal immigrants, to be out of that.

The welcome centers, the funding for non-citizens to be excluded from the budget because especially in this time of affordability and when we're all trying to make it here they go ahea and fund with our tax dollars, a population that are not Illinois citizens as well as Jim, like every other year, feel it's necessary to give us a raise.

I found it interesting.

The governor was, asked about that and he said, well, everybody's suffering from inflation.

Well, I, I gotta push back a little bit on that.

You know, maybe if we weren't taking a, a pay raise and the Democrats were passing pay raises, that would that would go over a little bit better, but not in this case.

Well, let's also talk about an estimated $800 million in new taxes.

Taxes on social media companies, based on the number of users, digital assets, fantas sports, tobacco, sports betting.

Is this a proper way to raise revenue?

I mean, if you're if you're going to increase taxes, is this not the way to go?

No.

And I think we need to qui talking about increasing taxes.

Let's give that a pause.

This will be the, third.

Well, every year since the governor's been in, but the last two years was $1 billion.

$1 billion in this year is 800 million.

So $2.8 billion in just three years of nickel diming.

It was interesting.

You know, the Senate president said no working families or humans, were going to be taxed.

And, you know, he's talking about the the social media, the fantasy, the digital, the prediction markets.

But, Jim, you and I both know, humans are the users of those, and those fees and taxe are just going to be pushed down to the users.

So it certainly is a tax, for us.

It might not be a tax for me because I don't, get on the prediction markets or, bet on fantasy sports or play in the crypto world, but it is going to be on others and it just ends up getting passed.

We need to really look at more of a structural way to reform how we collect taxes, how we pay taxes, and quite honestly, how we grow our state.

Because the more people that leave Illinois, the less peopl that are here to pay the bill.

That is not going down.

Well, and the other argument for Republicans is, is also, if you have that many taxes in Illinois, it doesn't attract business as well.

And I mean, are you worried about that climate still?

Oh for sure.

You know, I'm just kind of looking up on my sheet here.

I always keep it on my billboard, but we are one of the highest states for overall taxes.

So certainly that is always a concern.

And as people get older and look to retire and you put that into the, you know, the Google machine to try to figure out where is the best place for you to retire.

Illinois is at the bottom, and at one time, was at the top.

Let's talk about the Bears.

That was a big, in the 13th hour attempt to, try to find a way to offer a way for the Bears to stay in Illinois.

The Senate had approved, kin of a sports stadium authority, basically allowing communities of 70,000 and more, which was basically Arlington Heights, to create these type of entities so that they could own the stadium and the bears would not be paying taxes on that.

Are you at all worried that the Chicago Bears are going to end up going to Hammond, Indiana, and that the legislature didn't do enough to keep them in Chicago?

Yeah, absolutely.

The the bill that we sent over, gosh, well, over a month ago, really was more of a megaprojects bill that had a that would have helped the Bears.

And this is something that folks have been working on for, like, three years.

You know, if you had a $100 million investment or more, I think originally it was $500 million.

And you're going to come to, you know, invest here.

There are some things that are going to be helpful to you, ways to attract just what I'm talking about, growing our economic base.

Right?

But that failed.

We that was a bipartisan bill as well.

It wasn't perfect but we knew over in the Senate they were going to put in the property tax protection language that was missed in the House.

But unfortunately, they didn't have the members to vote on that.

And then they, like you said, came over in the final hours with something similar to what Texas had did and other states have done, to get, the Bears and other NFL teams across the natio to have property tax certainty.

I think it would have been what they needed.

There would have been so much work for Arlington and the locals to still figure out all the different revenue sources and how that's all going to be shared.

But they they would have been able to figure that out.

I think with the, the Democrats having the super majority of the House and the Senat and the constitutional officers, the the lack of them sitting down at a table with the Bears is really going to be the demise of us passing anything, because there's going to be no special session called.

You heard the governor basically say it.

You've heard, [?]

say it.

You heard Harmon say it.

We're not going to go bac to the third week of November.

You're hearing the Bears say they're going to be making a decision in the next month or this summer.

And here we are going to be in November with no tools for the Bears or any, investor to come to Illinois.

So I'm, I am worried about that.

And they're going to have to own this.

Does it bother you when you have a sports teams like thi that are basically saying, look, we need money or we're out the door?

And taxpayers look at that and go, wait a second.

These are businesse that make billions of dollars.

Yeah.

They just want certainty.

They don't necessarily are looking for a handout.

I mean, Indiana has given them a pretty good deal.

I don't think that they were asking for that, deal.

And they certainly were no going to get that from Illinois.

And and they knew that.

But to build a huge stadium like that and to possibly be, taxed at this, were the second highest property tax in the nation, you know, to have, you know, $30 million or $300 million, whatever the case may b for their property tax payment, why would they build there and invest there?

They wouldn't.

So I think to have that certainty, I don't think is unrealistic, at all.

Regardless of big corporations or little companies.

And we have TIF districts.

that's the very true.

That's the very true.

Let's talk about education, though.

I wanted to pivot to that real quickly.

Fully funding K through 12 education.

But also, you passed that school cell phone ban basically the bell to Bell ban.

There are some exceptions, of course, but for the most part, students will not be able to use cell phones, in the classroom.

It I guess in a way, Illinois is really kind of following other neighboring states that have already done this.

Yeah, that was an initiative of the governors last year.

And, you know, a lot of the schools in, in my district here in northwest Illinois have already put processes in place for not having cell phones in the classroom.

So for me, in my area, it's probably not going to make much of a difference.

And I'm going to assume that it's a a lot of schools around the state have done that, especially in anticipation o this bill coming out last year.

You know, the big piece for us was that we wanted to make sure that there was still local control, and the school boards could determine on on wha the rules were going to be.

So, this was, one of the initiatives that I certainly supported because my district support it.

Also, high tech was, kind of issues that were looked at by the legislature, whether it's, artificial intelligence or what was called the Power Act, which had to do more with data centers.

Power act didn't, pass.

It didn't get through the legislature.

Is there more that the legislature needs to do?

Because you're seeing state after state, particularly community and community and county by county, trying to rein in and understand the impact of data centers, either on the environment or on the county or city municipality.

Yeah.

That's another shared priority.

You know, we want to make sure that, water use is used properly.

And now they have the closed loop so they can be reusing their own water.

And that's great.

Bringing their own power I certainly think is important.

And how they do that, whether it's through a small nuclear, reactor or, whether that's solar, they're on their rooftops, however they can bring in.

Certainly they take a lot of power in as a concern, but a big piece of all of that is zoning and just the uncertainty.

Now the data center incentive was pro, but it was not remove.

Those dollars were not removed from the budget.

So that could still come back because other states are doing that.

If the governor really want to take energy generation, work with the Clinton nuclear plant to get that other reactor up.

Take away the the closure dates for the coal and the natural gas that are, you know, that were passed in CEJA.

Those are things that we could fix to it.

You know, businesses know that they're going to have energy, some certainty it would certainly lower rates if we were generating more.

I mean, today we're closing down coal in southern Illinois, but we're bringing coal in that didn't manufacture, and at the same way that we did here in Illinois with clean coal, they're bringing it on rail into Illinois.

It makes absolute zero sense when we have coal right here.

With good, clean processes.

Let's tal about the end of this session.

If you were to give yourself and the legislature a grade, well, what would you say?

I mean, how did this session compared to the last.

Well, House Republicans, of course, deserve an A, for exposing and opposing bad policy, calling out, the lack of transparency.

Were the only checks and balances in a supermajority, one party rule.

So certainly I would give us an A, and quite honestly, I would give the Democrats an F because they talk about the budget being a, document of priorities, but it was a, self-serving document of their own priorities not taking into consideration, the 102 counties, the Democrats that live in Republican districts.

And so I'm going to have to give them a an F they did nothing to, amend our property taxes.

They did nothing to address ethics.

And on top of it, they gave themselves a raise.

Yeah.

This sounds like these are the issues that Republicans will be able to campaign on coming into the November election.

Yeah.

I even told one of th budgetteers, I said, you know, we're going to hit you on the pay raise.

And he he kind of chuckled.

He goes, I know you are.

And he goes, and it's a good hit.

And I said, then take away our power.

Don't give us that.

But I tell you, it is a wil place that we work down there.

Well, [ha, ha] I didn't expect you to say that.

But.

okay.

Well, how do you campaign from this point forward?

I mean, what what do you think is going to be, the issues?

Because, I mean, you've talked about budgets and you've talked about taxation.

Those are issues that haven't gone away for Republicans.

What's the big tangibl one that's going to be different in 2026 that might, you know, move the dial and get more Republicans in the legislature?

Well, unfortunately we are in a midterm and midterms are never good.

On a state level for the part in power on the federal level.

So I really hope, that the gas prices go down.

I think that is something that's certainly important to all of us, especially, you know, all of us that live in rural areas and spend a lot of time in our vehicles.

And, you know, really just to continue to get people engaged because when you see things like this happen down in Springfield, peopl get so disengaged in the process and they're like, it doesn't matter.

Our vote doesn't matter.

They're going to do what they want to do and not tell us about it until it's already passed.

We have to get out of tha mindset and and go to the polls and vote with our, you know, our checkbooks.

Because if you're looking a the budget, it hurts everybody.

And the Democrats have been in control for 50 years an they've had their opportunity.

So under this map, it will be difficult.

But we still have some opportunity, opportunities in the state and certainly, locally.

Our thanks to House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, Republican from Savannah.

Were inching closer to the Independence Day holiday with America marking its 250th birthday.

But there's also a lot going on in the days leading up to the fourth.

Here are some ideas for you.

Thanks to visit Quad Cities.

Check out the things t do this week in the Quad Cities.

Start your week off by hoppin on the Celebration River Cruise.

Enjoy a lunch buffet and a two hour cruise alon the majestic Mississippi River.

Next, every Wednesday night, you can experience live music on the rooftop of the Up Sky bar.

There will be appetizers cocktails, and beautiful views.

Then experience three days of comics, toys, panels, video games, and so much more at the Planet Funk Con.

Next, grab your running shoes for the Pride 5K at Bass Street Landing.

Sign up for the 5 K, 10 K, or the costume contest.

Finally, end your week with free Yoga by the Bandshell.

All ages and all levels are welcome.

For more events like these, check out our events calendar at VisitQuadCities.com [music ends] The Mississippi River has been the source of music for hundreds of years.

It still is.

Musician David G. Smith got a lot of inspiration while living in Iowa.

He's from Dubuque County, but now calls Nashville home.

His new album, Hero Street, is being released next week.

Here's David G. Smith performing for us a few years ago with Listen to the River.

My wife is sitting right off camera here.

That is an anniversary gift from, my wife.

[guitar strumming] And, Now, I like to tell it that we were out looking for sewing machines.

It's true.

We were looking for sewing machines.

And, but we walked by this music store first.

And, she saw that guitar, sitting in the window.

And she said, what's that?

And two hours later, we walked out with it.

She bought it for me.

Anniversary gift.

Oh.

[guitar strumming] A blue jay was a friend of mine.

He used to sing to me all the time.

There was his reputation but then again Hed sing to me, and Id sing to him Well, I'm down here by the river A sittin beneath a tree I'm gonna listen to the river River gonna talk to me Summer wind was a friend of mine From the ocean to the mountain pine Used to send a soothing rain Now it's fload and hurricane Well, Im down here by the river Sittin beneath a tree Im gonna listen to the river The river gonna talk to me [guitar strumming] Mother Earth was a friendly face With her fertile beauty and her patient ways I throw her seeds from burlap sack You know, I gave to her and she gave back Well, Im down here by the river A sittin beneath... [David] I wrote that song, goodness.

A long time ago.

I don't want to date myself, many years ago.

It's about our environment.

Kind of some of the things that, maybe it was just a prescient moment I had, when I wrote it.

You know, again, 20, 30 years ago about what's going on in these days.

And, uh so it's, you know, to keep it short, it's it's it's about, environment and it's about, I guess, climate change.

And, some of those things.

...what are we doing to you?

Well, I'm down here by the river Sittin beneath a tree Im gonna listen to the river River gonna talk to me Well, Im down here by the river Sittin beneath a tree I was gonna listen to the river But the river wont talk, the river wont talk To me [guitar strumming ends] David G. Smith with Listen to the River.

His new album, Hero Street, is being released on Thursday the 25th, and you can preorder by heading to his website DavidG.SmithMusic.com 250 years ago, in 1776, a nation was created.

But decades earlier, in 1730, a public library was founded.

Ben Franklin created the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Before then, libraries were private collections of books, but not in this new country.

Well, we've spent the past year asking people about their Civic Spark, what motivates them.

And we ask that question to the head of a modern day library.

Here's Angela Campbell, director of the Rock Island Public Library.

[soft music] Librarians and public libraries especially are unique to public culture in the United States.

We're one of the only areas that have a public library where people can just better themselves.

So when, I knew I wanted to be a librarian since I was 14 years ol and I had my first library job, and I saw how we positively affected everyone's live that walked in, either through job help, or just reading or literacy or all the programs that we offer.

It's the one place everyone's welcome and it's free to use, and it's crowdfunded.

And I just think it's the greatest place on earth.

[music ends] Our thanks to Angela Campbell, director of the Rock Island Public Library.

On the air, on the radio, on the web, on your mobile device and streaming on your computer, thanks for taking some time to join us as we talk about the issues on The Cities.

[lively music] [music ends]