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

[00:00:00]
Brian Mackey: From Illinois Public Media, this is the 21st show. I'm Brian Mackey. And we begin today talking about the laws of Illinois. Specifically, 14 of them that have taken effect today, and hundreds and hundreds more that could be signed by the governor or maybe vetoed in the next couple of months. Joining us to talk through all of that is Ben Zelinsky, state House reporter with Capitol News Illinois, the nonprofit news service. Ben, welcome back to the 21st show.

[00:00:36]
Ben Zelinsky: Hey Brian, good to talk to you.

[00:00:38]
Brian Mackey: So, all right, let's get right into it. You've identified 14 new laws taking effect today. These are not, I think for most people, earth-shattering sorts of things, not like the legalization of cannabis some years ago or anything major like that. But, you know, obviously each of these was important enough for someone to go through the trouble of getting it enacted. So, let's take a quick tour, starting with cocktails to go. What is that about?

[00:01:03]
Ben Zelinsky: Yeah, so this is that pandemic-era law that allowed restaurants and bars and other businesses that sell alcohol to continue selling their product to customers during the pandemic as those establishments were closed, and this is going to make that pandemic-era rule permanent. And I think lawmakers viewed it as something that was really beneficial to businesses — it made their products more accessible. Created a way for customers to use a business without actually having to go and sit down in the restaurant, for example. And, you know, we didn't see a lot of problems that came out of it either. You know, we still have drunk driving laws in the state, there's plenty of rules on this about, you know, being in sealed containers and whatnot, so I think lawmakers viewed this as a big win-win for customers and businesses.

[00:01:53]
Brian Mackey: I see it also covers delivery of drinks. I'd love to know if somebody's like DoorDashing a Manhattan on a Friday night or something, but hey, to each their own. Another one of these laws has to do with AI and cyberbullying. What's happening there?

[00:02:09]
Ben Zelinsky: Yeah, so the state is basically trying to update cyberbullying and bullying laws that already exist for schools to keep up with the times, essentially. You know, it's really easy these days to create any sort of image with artificial intelligence, and that includes sexual images of students. So this is designed to basically give schools the tools to punish and address instances of unauthorized images being created of other students, you know, getting posted online, used as cyberbullying. And, you know, this puts it under existing statutes already in state law. There are already state laws that do govern — you know, you can't create child pornography with AI even if it's of a fake child. But, you know, this is really kind of part of this broader effort by state lawmakers to continuously regulate artificial intelligence, especially its presence in schools, as it just becomes a more continuous presence in our daily lives.

[00:03:12]
Brian Mackey: Some of the other new laws taking effect have to do with the way state government runs and is organized. One of these is a Department of Early Childhood. This is like a cabinet-level agency. You don't see the creation of these things every year. There have been additions over time, but what's this one about?

[00:03:30]
Ben Zelinsky: Yeah, this is a pretty rare thing that's starting today. It's the new Department of Early Childhood, and this was a huge initiative of JB Pritzker for his second term. It's really designed at housing all of these various functions of early childhood education, childcare and other services for toddlers and children up to maybe age 5 or 6 years old under one roof, under one single state agency — because all these services have been spread out throughout state government in DCFS and the State Board of Education, and this is putting it all in one place so the resources are more consolidated, more accessible, budgeted better. And this was a huge initiative, part of the governor's big broad childcare agenda that's been kind of the mainstay of his second term — making preschool more accessible, childcare more accessible, boosting funding for those things. This is kind of the culmination here, as we get to the end of his second term, of his big initiative for the second term.

[00:04:31]
Brian Mackey: Another sort of state administrative thing has to do with a statewide public defender. What's happening there?

[00:04:38]
Ben Zelinsky: Yeah, so eventually we are going to have an office of a state public defender in Illinois, which is designed to improve access to public defenders throughout the state, but especially in those rural counties where maybe there is only one public defender handling multiple counties. And, you know, these people face extremely high caseloads, and this is really designed to put more resources into public defense by creating more funding, potentially allowing for more positions to be available for public defenders. So what's really starting here this month is the bones of that office are being created. There's a commission that's going to be set up. They're going to kind of review those costs and what sort of funding is going to be necessary to establish this office, which is going to largely take effect more so in 2027.

[00:05:31]
Brian Mackey: Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, I used to be a statehouse reporter. I actually started out as a legal affairs statehouse reporter. And there was this moment when we still had the death penalty in Illinois. And so they had this thing called the Capital Litigation Trust Fund, I think was the term for it. And basically, if you were charged with the death penalty, you had like decent access to lawyers for a time because there had been so many mistakes and wrongful convictions, or really [malfactors] in wrongful convictions. And then when the death penalty went away, that funding went away and it's kind of become harder now for people charged with the most serious crimes to get that sort of significant level of defense. So, what did you say the timeline was for this ramping up to try and address this?

[00:06:14]
Ben Zelinsky: Yeah, so the office is going to take effect on Jan. 1, 2027, but over the next few months, what needs to be done to actually set that office up is going to be identified, so by the end of the year, I think we're going to have a better idea of exactly what's going to be in place to actually start the new public defense office.

[00:06:39]
Brian Mackey: OK, and then the last one of these new laws — before we move on to some of the pending legislation on the governor's desk — I wanted to ask you about has to do with the Department of Corrections and a contraband report. There's been a lot of controversy over, you know, whether things like drugs are being smuggled into the prisons like embedded on paper, and a lot of people — that they've lost people in prison — have lost access to mail. Talk about what's happening there.

[00:07:05]
Ben Zelinsky: Yeah, this has been a big issue in the Illinois correctional system where contraband has been getting in. It's not exactly clear how a lot of that contraband is getting in. Mail is blamed, other folks say it's not the mail's fault, some people even think it could be a prison guard's fault. So the bottom line is state lawmakers are going to be getting regular annual reports from the Department of Corrections about what sort of contraband is found in those facilities, where it was discovered, how it got into the facility, and any sort of disciplinary action that was taken as a result of finding it. So this is, I think, probably going to answer a lot of questions that lawmakers have, because frankly, the Department of Corrections has not provided a whole lot of information about this. We have a ton of questions about what exactly is causing all this contraband and substances to be found in facilities that's causing inmates to get sick, prison guards to get sick, and lawmakers have had enough and they are looking for some pretty serious answers here from the department.

[00:08:11]
Brian Mackey: All right, let me remind listeners we're talking with Ben Zelinsky today of Capitol News Illinois. He's a statehouse reporter about some of the new laws — we've kind of covered the new laws that have taken effect for today. There are others, and I should say, after the show today, we'll have a web post and we'll link to Ben's story on this and other topics if you want to go deeper on some of these issues. But we're also going to be talking about — I checked this morning — 369 pieces of legislation on the governor's desk as we speak. He's already been busy signing some of them, so let's get into some of that, and we'll start with obviously the biggest piece of legislation the governor does every year: the budget for Illinois.

I understand there was a $500 billion mistake in this year's budget legislation. It would have given that amount of money — $500 billion again, which I don't know, that's like what, multiple aircraft carriers maybe — to an NAACP branch in Chicago. What happened?

[00:09:12]
Ben Zelinsky: Yeah, it's a good question of what exactly did happen here. The state budget, for context, is only about $56 billion, so this would make it like nine times out of balance if you put something like that in there. What happened here, it seems, is basically the product of late-night homework and a late-night drafting error. You know, the budget was ultimately approved at 3 o'clock in the morning in the Senate. There was an amendment filed — the final version of the budget was actually filed at some point after midnight on June 1st before lawmakers took a vote on it — and that's when this big $500 billion error ended up getting into the budget somehow, some way. It seems that it was kind of just a typo where they forgot to delete some numbers, so it ended up being a lot bigger than it should have been. But it kind of just goes to show that — on one hand, you know, Governor Pritzker has the power to veto out specific spending items in the budget, so given his ability to do that, that kind of saved us from having a significantly unbalanced budget with that, that lawmakers themselves would have had to go back and fix.

[00:10:28]
Brian Mackey: But, and I often press these legislative leaders on, you know, what Hendrik Hertzberg called their undergraduate work habits, right, staying up late at night — like, mistakes do happen. Speaking of which, fact check: 38 aircraft carriers is what you could buy for $500 billion. So, yeah, OK. Mistakes happen. I guess this one has been corrected. Let's talk about some of the other ones that he's been signing. One is of importance to people in public media, so I'm going to spend a minute on that, or ask you to spend a minute on that. What is this legislation — or law — about now?

[00:11:03]
Ben Zelinsky: Yeah, this is really designed to give, you know, a public radio station that is associated with the university like this one —

[00:11:10]
Brian Mackey: Disclosure, yes — we are a licensee of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. And I think every station where people are listening to us now, be it WNIJ in Northern Illinois, WVIK at Augustana, SIU Carbondale, and UIS in Springfield — so we're all, yes, if you're listening to this on the radio, this law does apply to the people who bring you the news on this NPR station. Sorry to interrupt, Ben, please continue.

[00:11:37]
Ben Zelinsky: No, exactly, and this law that the governor signed last week is really designed to protect your journalism independence from influence by the university. So it basically says that Illinois university officials do not have to review any of the content that a radio station like this one is putting out. This also extends to students and student journalists — they are able to continue functioning as independent journalists despite working for a newspaper that may be on the campus of the university. The [Daily Illini] — those students are protected under this law, basically allowing them to continue to work as independent journalists, just like you and I, without any influence from the university, despite, you know, being a university publication.

[00:12:28]
Brian Mackey: And I can think of at least two instances over the past couple of decades — and I'm sure there have been others, just off the top of my head — one involving allegations of sexual harassment against a dean, the other involving accessibility for students with disabilities on campus, where university administration was not happy with the reporting. So it goes. Frankly, glad to see this happening.

Uh, one of the other ones I thought was interesting has to do with speed control devices for people who are caught speeding, which seems to be a lot of people who are driving recklessly these days. What's this about?

[00:13:07]
Ben Zelinsky: Yeah, there are actually devices out there that can be installed in your car that know the speed limit of the road that you're driving on, and it will prevent your vehicle from driving above that speed limit. So what lawmakers have done is they've created this new program for drivers who have had two infractions within one year of driving 26 miles an hour over the speed limit. They can, instead of having their license suspended for those infractions, instead have this device installed in their car to prevent them from speeding again for a certain period of time. And, you know, really the idea behind it for state lawmakers is that it prevents — you know, when someone has their license suspended, they're not able to get to work, they're not able to participate functionally in society. Their life is pretty seriously disrupted so long as they're following their license suspension. So the idea here is they're going to be able to continue to drive safely without being punished by not being able to participate in their daily lives.

[00:14:14]
Brian Mackey: All right, we're coming to the end of our time together — less than a minute and a half, I would say. The last thing I want to ask you about is this U.S. Supreme Court decision that could have been a significant change in the timing around voting in Illinois. Our law allows for ballots to be counted for up to 14 days after election day, as long as they're postmarked on election day. I'll say that, in his efforts to sow suspicion and doubt about our election processes, President Trump has been focusing on this, among many other things, in our election systems around the country. This one particularly would have affected Illinois. What did the U.S. Supreme Court have to say about this?

[00:14:50]
Ben Zelinsky: Yeah, the Supreme Court said that states like Illinois, states like Mississippi — they can continue to count ballots that arrive after election day. So here in Illinois, you have 14 days for your ballot to arrive at your county clerk's office if you're mailing it in after the election. The key is it has to be postmarked by election day for it to be counted, but this gives the state and those local election authorities more time to continue to count these ballots that are coming in. The big fear here was that the Supreme Court was going to issue a ruling that was going to stop that — that counting had to be done only on ballots that were received by election day. So if you put your ballot in the mail, you know, a day before election day and it wasn't received, your ballot's not going to be counted. But more than likely it will be received within those two weeks, and now the Supreme Court said yes, the state of Illinois and others can continue to count it in the weeks after election day.

[00:15:47]
Brian Mackey: Fascinating. Well, thank you, Ben Zelinsky, for talking us through some of the new laws and the big Supreme Court decision and other stuff happening in state government these days. Much appreciate your coverage at Capitol News Illinois, and thanks for being here.

Ben Zelinsky: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Mackey: Coming up after the break, we are turning our attention to the World Cup. We're going to talk with an Illinois reporter who has been covering some of the things there, as well as a big signing for the Chicago Fire soccer team. And then we'll talk with someone who has been a part of the World Cup from Illinois to Mexico. This is the 21st show. We'll be right back.

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**Flagged for Human Review**

- **[00:05:31]** — Brian Mackey uses the term "[malfactors]" in what appears to be a reference to misconduct related to wrongful convictions. The intended word may be "malefactors" or possibly a different term entirely. The audio should be reviewed to confirm the correct word.
- **[00:11:37]** — Ben Zelinsky refers to what sounds like "the Daily Alignite," which has been inferred as "[Daily Illini]," the student newspaper at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The audio should be reviewed to confirm this is the intended reference.
- **[00:10:28]** — Brian Mackey attributes the phrase "undergraduate work habits" to "Hendrik Hertzberg." The original transcript spells the name "Hendrick Hertzberg." The audio should be reviewed to confirm the correct spelling, as the journalist Henrik Hertzberg spells his first name with a "k" but without the "d."