Every year, the LWVIL Issues and Advocacy Committee encourages local Leagues to solidify their relationships with their state senator(s) and representative (s) by holding Legislative Interviews. The primary purpose of the interview is to strengthen the lines of communication with legislators and build goodwill. The emphasis is on a respectful exchange of views and information, setting the stage for future action in your community. Two interviews are reported below of US Representative Sean Casten, State Senator John Curran, and State Representatives Anne Stava-Murray and Terra Costa Howard.
Legislative Interview with US Representative Sean Casten.
Do you support the For the People Act, often referred to as HR1,which would expand voting rights, limit partisan gerrymandering, and curb the influence of private donor money in politics?
a.If yes, what is your strategy in getting the bill passed in the 117th session?
b.If no, why not? Are there any parts of the bill that you do agree with?
Representative Casten replied (with a chuckle) “Yes—like 300%. He went on to list other Representatives that he was working with and efforts they were spearheading to help the bill pass. He seemed to feel that his support of the HR1 is so strong and obvious that the question was superfluous. We did not pursue the question further.
This election showed us that there are still many barriers that voters face when going to the ballot box, especially voters of color. Do you support restoring the Voting Rights Act?
Yes, absolutely, but the barriers are in the Senate. Referring to his answer to the previous question, Rep. Casten felt that voting rights reform will be very difficult to get through the Senate.
The League has been supportive of the Justice in Policing Act in the past. What federal legislation or reforms can we move forward to eliminate racism in our country and address police brutality?
We thanked Rep. Casten for cosponsoring HR1280, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Rep. Casten believes systems need to be reformed. The discussion in Congress has been around how ambitious to be. Racism has root causes in systemic problems such as inequities in housing policy and drug sentencing. House members agreed to defer to the Congressional Black Caucus, which decided the bill should focus on specifics. Biden's plan contains a proposal to eliminate exclusionary zoning, which would help address housing inequities; Rep. Casten sees no hope for bipartisan support
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Legislative Interview with State Representative Anne Stava-Murray, District 81 on April 7, 2021.
Issue 1:__Education: She supports evidence based funding and fulfilling commitment previously made. She is open to adjustments when data is available. She favors early childhood education, including funding of full day kindergarten. She notes that Illinois has great disparities amongst school districts and that this need to be addressed. A diverse teacher force needs to be recruited the technology divide needs to be addressed with both state and federal money.
Issue 2:__Redistricting: The Illinois Constitution and the Voting Rights Act may be in conflict. There is a need to keep some continuity in the districts. If the legislature does not come up with a map that is approved by the governor by a certain date, the process will go to a bipartisan (not an independent) commission, which she does not feel would have an incentive to work together. If this commission fails to make a map by deadline, it will go to a coin flip. For information, public hearings, go to: il.house.dems/redistricting/
She is willing to attend meetings
Issue 3:__Environment and CEJA: She is a supporter of CEJA and co-sponsor of the bill. She thinks green energy could be supported by Capital Development funds and cited using them to install solar panels at the Downers Grove Township senior center. She also mentioned progress being made in Naperville. She is not in favor of subsidizing fossil fuels, but wants to learn more about nuclear energy before deciding on that issue. She thinks that carbon taxes might be better implemented at the federal level. She was in favor of banning styrofoam food containers, but taxes on plastic bags could adversely affect low income residents. She will reach out to people in her district for their thoughts.
Issue 4:__Criminal Justice: She is in favor of the recently passed Safety Act (HB3653.) She strongly feels that police reform measures must be at the state rather than local levels. She will be having a town hall with Carlton Mayers on the Safety Act the Heartland Alliance. She is hopeful that the body cameras and duty to intervene will make a positive difference. She responded to a concern about HB 1727 Bad Apples in Law Enforcement Accountability Act which would remove qualified immunity if passed. She does not think that this will have an adverse effect on police turnover._She compared the private insurance of police officers to medical malpractice insurance — those with good records would have low premiums.
Issue 5:_Candidate information: She supports the suggestion that papers filed by candidates with the election commission include email as well as postal addresses for candidates. She even offered to bring it up for legislation.
Issue 6: Parent Notification Act: Since she represents a purple district, she wanted to hear from constituents impacted by this law before she could determine whether she would support its repeal.
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Legislative Interview with State Representative Terra Costa Howard, District 48, on March 15 with members from the Glen Ellyn, Wheaton and Downers Grove-Woodridge Lisle Leagues. Following is a summary of the meeting.
Legislating during a pandemic was mostly virtual and lacked the usual spontaneous negotiations that are an important part of bill making. Six to seven virtual committee meetings per day is common.
The three primary focuses of our conversation were: funding education, redistricting and environmental legislation. Other topics we covered were: her vote on the criminal justice omnibus bill and the governor’s budget.
In determining her vote on an education bill, or any bill, the representative will always consider how it affects her district, including taxes for constituents. She does not support the “Invest in Kids” initiative, a tax credit scholarship program, as it would take money away from public schools in DuPage County.
Representative Costa Howard was the lead sponsor of the Fair Maps Bill that ultimately did not get voted on in 2020 because the COVID pandemic drastically interrupted and shortened the legislative session. The legislature will begin working on the 2021 redistricting plan soon, with a virtual, town hall meeting in DuPage County in April.
She stressed that voters need to understand that you can’t tell whether a map is fair just by looking at the district shapes. What’s important is making sure that communities aren’t split across districts for partisan reasons.
Citizens of DuPage County and D48 are supportive of environmentally related legislation. She will support the Clean Energy Jobs Act (CEJA) and believes it will gain bi-partisan support.
The representative did not vote for the Criminal Justice Reform omnibus bill. She explained that voting for an omnibus bill, which includes many diverse issues, requires an “all in” or “all out” vote. She supported some issues included in the bill, but not all. In addition, voting against it seemed to be important to her constituents as witnessed by the overwhelming number of calls she received opposing the bill, while there were no calls in support of it.
Representative Costa Howard is in favor of decoupling the Illinois tax structure from the federal structure as it applies to the COVID relief 2020 CARES Act. Under the current structure, certain large companies in Illinois would be able to claim losses against gains going back 5 years. Decoupling would remove that provision, allowing the same companies to still deduct losses going forward one year. Without decoupling, Illinois could lose $500m to $1.8b in revenue. This is something the governor also supports.
Contact the representative at REPTCH48 [at] gmail.com to let her know if you support or oppose any of these issues. Constituent opinion is important to her.
Rita Doyle Legislative Liaison, Wheaton LWV
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Legislative Interview with State Senator John Curran, District 41, on March 24 with members from the LaGrange Area, Naperville, and Downers Grove-Woodridge Lisle Leagues.
Education: Voted in favor of the evidence based funding distribution legislation and thought at the time that the mandate was an attractive component of the legislation. While the mandate was met for 2 years it has not been met for the last two years. This was one of the most unattractive parts of the proposed budget this year and felt there is probably bi-partisan support to address this concern.
Redistricting - Sen. Curran supports the League position that an independent commission should do the remapping. He also thinks that once a map is proposed there should be ample time for public comment. Short notice of public meetings going on now prior to the map being drawn has been a problem that the Senate Redistricting Committee is aware of and trying to address. There is discussion of what data to use since Census Data will most likely not be available within the time frame designated and it may be that ACS (American Community Survey) data will be used for drawing the map.
Environment - Sen. Curran thinks the state needs a diversified energy portfolio because he believes wind and solar energy are not scalable to the extent required to address the state’s energy needs. He thinks CEJA (Clean Energy Jobs Act) has many good elements and thinks that it will be part of a broader package that will be approved to address the energy needs of Illinois.
Criminal Justice - He is part of ongoing negotiations with Sen. Sims on amendments to the recently passed Criminal Justice bill. As it stands now there are problems that need to be addressed through amendments. The Police Accountability component is good as it had a lot of input from those involved with the assistance of Attorney General Kwame Raoul. Other elements such as the Cash Bail and Detention have conflicting standards within the legislation. Funding for body cameras is a problem since they will create new evidence that will need to be viewed creating staffing issues for Public Defenders offices that will have to view this evidence. Another concern is that a police officer cannot review the footage prior to writing a report and the penalties for filing a false report have been increased. Issues such as this need to be worked on collaboratively with law enforcement. He thinks that amendments will be forthcoming during this session although not with the Pre-trial Fairness section (Cash Bail) as that has 2 years before it goes into effect.
Budget - He thought the Governor proposed a more austere budget than he anticipated but the Senator wants to ensure that the federal money that will be coming is used wisely and does not create programs that will create future budget problems.
Money in Politics - He thought that legislators in the GA and any family members with whom they have commingled funds should not be lobbyists, but “family” should not be extended too far. He thinks that the 2 year “cooling-off” period before becoming lobbyists is arbitrary. He thinks legislators should not be able to lobby for the duration of the term to which they are elected; ie, if they resign early they can’t lobby for the duration of their elected term. He stated that the Legislative Illinois Inspector General should have jurisdiction over actions tied to a legislator’s position to which they are elected. IIG’s should have the ability to investigate but clarifications need to be made and he said we should see improvements in this legislation this session.
Elections - We asked about the possibility of requiring email addresses when a candidate files to run for office. He thinks that the US mail is more reliable than email and was not aware of any legislation about this issue.
Stated that his priorities for this session are Infrastructure and Ethics. He thinks a bi-partisan Ethics proposal is possible.
Laurie Braun, LaGrange Area LWV
