Democratic state Rep. Sharon Chung is taking a victory lap after several wins in Springfield.
Chung, who represents part of Bloomington-Normal and lives in Bloomington, championed a bill passed during the spring legislative session that aims to protect public media organizations based at public universities from meddling in news coverage by their home universities.
The bill (HB 4420) affirms free press and speech protection for full-time employees working in public media at state-funded institutions of higher education. Chung said the bill expands a law that protects student journalists at public universities to now include full-time journalists too.
It also clarifies that "public media produced at a state-sponsored institution of higher learning is not subject to prior review by public officials of the state-sponsored institution of higher learning."
Chung said the bill would also protect public universities from lawsuits that are against public media organizations and have nothing to do with the university.
“By putting this in statute to just make it very clear that university administration can't ... decide what can and cannot be covered to afford these extra protections to their full-time staff,” Chung said.
The bill now goes to the governor’s desk.
WGLT is part of Illinois State University and would be impacted by this press protections legislation. WGLT reporters are employees of Illinois State University, which provides financial support to the station. WGLT management advocated for the bill and does not interfere with newsroom coverage decisions.
Data centers
Data centers were a big issue this year as local governments started enacting moratoriums on data centers or canceling projects because of local opposition to data center construction.
People worry data centers will cause more issues like using up water, raising electricity prices, noise pollution and light pollution, which they say outweigh the potential economic benefits.
Illinois lawmakers did introduce a bill, the POWER Act, to regulate data centers by requiring them to disclose water consumption, and bear more of the burden when it comes to electricity prices. The bill did not get called for a vote.
Lawmakers still have veto session in October where they have two weeks to pass any bills that they did not pass before adjournment June 1. Otherwise they will have to start the whole process over next year.
Chung said she supports the POWER Act. She added local governments are already trying to enact parts of the proposed legislation.
“The McLean County Board, just trying to make sure that there's a lot of reporting around water usage, and then making sure that they're bringing their own clean energy,” Chung said.
There was a proposed pause on tax credits, but the pause was not part of the passed budget. Gov. JB Pritzker used executive action to pause the credits anyway.
Chung said she is opposed to the pause because the tax credits were one way to ensure that data centers would work with local unions.
“The tax credit was one way to really just try and ensure that if [data centers] were coming in, that they were putting in project labor agreements using local union labor. Those, for me, were safeguards for local union jobs,” Chung said.
Chung said she was unsure if Pritzker has the authority to pause the tax credits on his own without approval from the Illinois legislature.
State budget
Illinois is facing a slowing economy and increasing federal cuts. This led to a tight state budget this year as many programs saw cuts or increases below the rate of inflation, while giving more funding to programs cut by the federal government.
Republicans said all components to the budget were filed within 48 hours, which was not enough time to read it over in detail. They wanted every amendment to the bill to be heard in committee and have more time to read the budget in detail.
This did not change how the budget was introduced, with the budget bills that were passed only being introduced one day before the end of session.
Chung said there were drafts of the budget introduced in different bills, but these bills would not be the same bills that would pass on June 1.
"Maybe it was filed like maybe [about 1 week before deadline], so that people were able to look at it, maybe it was like a sort of initial draft," Chung said.
Chung said there are appropriation committees — holding hearings where interest groups in the budget request money — which are bipartisan committees. There were some bills that had a draft of the budget but the final budget bills that were passed were only filed the day before the deadline.
Chung said since she is not in leadership she was unsure of any changes to the negotiation process but that there were a lot of competing interests, which is why the budget can take so long to get passed.
Chung said there are still competing interests despite a Democratic supermajority. She added this is why there were last-minute amendments to the budget and why it took so long to pass.
“We all have a D... next to our name, but... we were all there to represent our district, so that's why sometimes things just might not get done as quickly as we'd like it to,” Chung said.
Cannabis
Hemp-derived THC products derived from cannabis could be banned if Congress does not act because of a loophole created by the 2018 farm bill. Congress reduced the amount of THC that can be in a product when they passed the bill to end the government shutdown last November.
Chung said she was put on a cannabis working group, a group of lawmakers talking with interested organizations to craft bills which find ways Illinois could continue supporting the growing cannabis industry.
The state cannot do anything about the ban, but Chung said Illinois lawmakers wanted to create a path for people working with THC to have an easier time transitioning to legal cannabis.
“People who have already had experience infusing intoxicating hemp... into other products, so say beverages or edibles... if they decide to get this infuser license, they'll be able to do that with legal cannabis,” Chung said.
The bill, which includes the new licensing, now goes to the governor’s desk to sign.
Illinois House honors Chicago Tribune
Illinois House Democrats passed a resolution congratulating the Chicago Tribune after it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the immigration enforcement operation in Chicago called Operation Midway Blitz.
House resolutions are typically passed unanimously without debate. A majority of House Republicans voted against the resolution.
House Republican leader Tony McCombie said the resolution was written to "villainize law enforcement.”
“I'll have to respectfully disagree with Leader McCombie's view on that," Chung replied. "The Pulitzer Prize is there to recognize really exceptional reporting. There's no sort of political agenda."
Chung said she relied on the Chicago Tribune to follow the immigration enforcement crackdown in Chicago.
