// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00]
Brian Mackey: This is the 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. Late last night, or I guess I should say early this morning, the Illinois General Assembly finished the work of passing a state budget. The Senate passed this year's spending plan around 3. The House followed at 4 a.m. Springfield time.

Once again, there are also issues that did not get resolved, including incentives aimed at keeping the Chicago Bears in Illinois. Tomorrow on the program we're planning to talk with all four of the top legislative leaders, Democratic and Republican, but we wanted to spend at least a few minutes today catching up on what did and did not happen with the General Assembly.

So we are joined now by Isabela Nieto, statehouse reporter for public radio stations across Illinois. Isabella, I know you were up late or early, I guess I should say. So thanks for making time to be with us today.

[00:00:56]
Isabela Nieto: Of course, thanks so much for having me.

[00:00:58]
Brian Mackey: So there are some new taxes in this year's budget. What do those cover?

[00:01:04]
Isabela Nieto: Yeah, so there's quite a few of them. The nearly $56 billion budget, which is slightly up from last year's, creates new taxes on digital advertising, social media, prediction markets, cryptocurrency, and fantasy sports. And it also reallocated the sales revenue from a tax on sugary drinks to the general revenue fund instead of sending it for capital projects.

[00:01:31]
Brian Mackey: So, I understand there was also a postponement in the gas tax increase. What's that about?

[00:01:37]
Isabela Nieto: Yeah, so they decided to freeze the $1.3 [cents] gas tax increase that was scheduled for July 1st. It's been pushed to January, and there's also a — they've also pushed the, or at least suspended the sales tax on school supplies for a brief time in August.

[00:01:57]
Brian Mackey: Yeah, 1.3. I just want to emphasize you said cents, not percent. So, if you have like I do, like a 17-gallon fill up, that's a whopping 22 cents that's gonna save — I guess every little bit counts.

Um, we'll also talk — so I mentioned the Bears. This is getting a lot of attention today. The Senate did pass legislation intended to entice the Bears to build a new stadium in Arlington Heights. The House adjourned without taking action on that. What happened?

[00:02:26]
Isabela Nieto: Yeah, so we were following it, obviously throughout session. My colleague [Mawa Iqbal] really did the boots on the ground with that, and I have to give her props for all the work that she did. But she was following it. We were watching it pass in the Senate at around 3:30 this morning.

You know, they ended up overhauling the original bill, which would have created the payment in lieu of taxes plan. Senate Democrats said they weren't a fan, as we were hearing some kind of chatter. They changed the bill to authorize Cook County municipalities with populations of at least 70,000 to create their own authorities for publicly owned stadiums, which would essentially eliminate the Bears' property taxes if the bill had passed. It passed out of the Senate and the House decided not to call it up for a vote, and Speaker Welch kind of ruled out calling a special session to get it passed in the summer.

[00:03:32]
Brian Mackey: So I guess we will see if the Bears were bluffing about becoming the Hammond Bears in the near future, because they say they're going to stick with their same timeline for early summer of making an announcement about their building location. Interesting.

Well, let's see if we can breeze through a couple of other pieces of legislation that made it through the legislative process in the past week. There's one that would let the state Department of Insurance regulate the cost of auto and homeowners insurance. Governor Pritzker was pushing on this over the past year. There was a lot of opposition to that. Can you just briefly tell us what happened there?

[00:04:06]
Isabela Nieto: Sure. So basically, they passed two bills, one on home insurance, one on auto insurance. They're both waiting for approval from Governor JB Pritzker. The bills would require insurance companies to notify their policyholders long before any rate increases of 10% or more and to give the state's Department of Insurance authority to review and block unfair [rate] hikes.

[00:04:32]
Brian Mackey: And the idea here I guess was that a lot of people got some pretty stark increases, especially in homeowners insurance in the past few years, and there's some dispute. The insurance companies say the cost has gone up here, but some people are suggesting that maybe Illinoisans are paying for costs in, you know, hurricane states, for example.

Another thing that passed quickly is Governor Pritzker, who's wanted to ban students from using cell phones during classes. What is the story with that?

[00:05:02]
Isabela Nieto: Yeah, so the legislation requires school districts to basically set policies to ensure students don't use their cell phones during class time. Now there are some exceptions for people that use a cell phone as a communication device or for medical reasons. The bill kind of gets into that, but they did pass that last night as well. And that's one of Pritzker's efforts as well. It was proposed, you know, early 2025, and now it's waiting for his signature.

[00:05:39]
Brian Mackey: All right. And then other things that happened that we're not gonna have time to talk about today are artificial intelligence regulation and a lot more.

Isabela Nieto covers the statehouse for public radio stations around Illinois. She's based at WBEZ. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today here on the 21st Show.

[00:06:02]
Isabela Nieto: Thank you for having me.

[00:06:03]
Brian Mackey: And again, listeners, we're gonna have a full program — or at least we're planning to bring you a full program — on state legislative topics and what happened and what didn't happen. We're planning to talk with the Speaker of the Illinois House, president of the Illinois Senate, as well as the minority leaders, both Republicans, tomorrow here on the 21st Show.

If you have questions, let us know. Talk@21stshow.org. Coming up after the break, a visit to the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. This is the 21st Show. Stay with us.