Lawmakers talk energy, grocery tax at GEDC’s legislative breakfast

The lawmakers from left to right: 75th District Rep. Jed Davis, R-Yorkville, 106th District Rep. Jason Bunting, R-Dwight, 79th District Rep. Jackie Haas, R-Bourbonnais, 38th District Rep. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, 40th District Sen. Patrick Joyce, D-Essex and 53rd District Sen. Tom Bennett, R-Gibson City and Grundy County Economic Development Commission President and CEO Nancy Norton.

State lawmakers joined the Grundy Economic Development Commission and many elected officials, business owners and leaders Monday morning for the annual Legislative Breakfast.

The lawmakers discussed the current proposed policies, what could be proposed in the future and how those policies could benefit their constituents.

Lawmakers speaking included 38th District Rep. Sue Rezin, R-Morris; 53rd District Sen. Tom Bennett, R-Gibson City; 79th District Rep. Jackie Haas, R-Bourbonnais; 106th District Rep. Jason Bunting, R-Dwight; 75th District Rep. Jed Davis, R-Yorkville; and 40th District Sen. Patrick Joyce, D-Essex.

Grundy County has so many representatives because of how the district maps are drawn, which GEDC CEO and President Nancy Norton said she thought would be a challenge.

“Some people said, ‘Oh, you all got divided. Isn’t it terrible?’” Norton said. “I can tell you it’s not terrible at all. It’s really great, and I’m thankful for their teamwork.”

Having so many lawmakers representing Grundy County has given Grundy County a large voice in legislation, especially in the energy sector.

Rezin said Grundy County has seen benefits from the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Joe Biden signed in August 2022 after Democrats passed it through Congress on a party-line vote. The act included funding to support new nuclear energy projects, including small modular nuclear projects.

“There’s funding, and there’s a sense that new technology – anytime you have new technology in any space, especially energy – is very difficult to make money because it’s very expensive,” Rezin said. “So the government’s role should be to incentivize technology to get it where it can drive costs down so we can commercialize it and roll it out.”

Rezin said it’s unfortunate that Congress is trying to roll back the Inflation Reduction Act because it currently has the funding to support nuclear energy projects.

Bennett said carbon capture is making a big return as an issue, and he remembers Illinois losing out on a carbon capture plant in Mattoon to Texas during George W. Bush’s presidency.

“It’s getting a lot of interest,” Bennett said. “There are a lot of concerns now and issues around safety even in my district and in the southern part.”

Bennett said an ethanol plant in Gibson City, one of 13 in the state, is included in his district.

“The discussion of carbon dioxide and, you know, carbon capture, carbon sequestration, all those things are a big part of what’s being discussed in that part of the energy sciences,” Bennett said. “There’s a lot of discussion and a lot of emotion. There really is.”

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, “carbon sequestration is the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

He said Gibson City has researchers from the Prairie Research Institute who talk about what carbon capture and ethanol production do to plants and soil, and the opposition to ethanol is largely based on safety.

Bennett said Gov. J.B. Pritzker is supportive in some ways, but he still expresses safety concerns, and more education is needed among the population.

Bunting said public safety is his No. 1 concern, and he understands where the anti-carbon sequestration people are coming from.

“As a farmer, as a person trying to run a business, and as a sixth-generation farmer hoping he’s raising the seventh generation, we’ve got to give our consumers and our customers what they want,” Bunting said. “It has come down to not only the national stage but the world stage that we need to talk about carbon sequestration.”

Bunting said everyone has to deal with this issue, whether they believe in climate change or not, and it’s important to be open and upfront. He said for every person against carbon sequestration who comes up to him, there’s another who’s for it.

“There’s a far left and there’s a far right,” Bunting said. “Somewhere in the middle lies the truth.”

Joyce said he is an “all of the above” type of senator, and he and Haas passed legislation that expanded a natural gas pipeline to an area that needed it.

“When you go into southern Illinois, you have coal,” Joyce said. “You have to weigh in reliability, affordability, jobs, and all those things need to be taken into consideration.”

Jobs also were part of the discussion, specifically the Canadian National Intermodal facility proposed in Minooka.

Davis said his background was in land entitlements before becoming a lawmaker, so he understands a bit of what goes into selling a city on a facility, although he was on the residential side of the equation.

“There’s a give and take between government and the developer, and we have to get to the bottom of all the issues,” he said.

Davis said the No. 1 issue he’s heard about is traffic and how to improve Route 6 to the point that it can handle up to 5,000 trucks daily.

Rezin said that will have a tremendous influence, and there are many ways it can go wrong. She cited Wilmington, which sees hundreds of semitrailers run through its downtown because of a transportation hub it doesn’t receive tax money from.

“This is in a very small, concise area where you could have upward of 7,000-plus trucks going in and out on Route 6, over the viaduct toward Brisbin Road, if they go toward Brisbin, to hop on Interstate 80,” Rezin said. “That creates a tremendous amount of challenges for all taxing bodies, from the state level to the county level to the township levels.”

She said everyone has to figure out how to move the traffic, how much to build out the road, how to build out the overpass and who pays for it.

The representatives also were asked about eliminating the grocery tax, which Pritzker proposed, although Haas said it hasn’t been attached to any particular bill yet.

Haas and the other lawmakers agreed that it was a good idea during the COVID-19 lockdowns. It would be nice to see Illinois eliminate a tax. Still, the grocery tax would eliminate more than $1 million from city budgets.

“The suggested replacement is that municipalities replace it with their own tax, and that isn’t a suitable answer to, I don’t think, most of us sitting here on this panel,” Haas said. “We certainly applaud any attempt to lower a tax burden on all of our constituents, but this doesn’t seem to be the right way to fix that.”

The lawmakers also discussed the potential for a new Chicago Bears stadium. Norton asked which they thought was more likely, the Bears winning a Super Bowl or the team getting a new $4.7 billion stadium along Lake Michigan.

Each representative agreed that the Bears were likelier to win the Super Bowl, and some didn’t even think the odds of a Bears title were that low.

“With this draft here over the last week, is it too early to say 17-0 this first year?” Bunting said.

Michael Urbanec

Michael Urbanec

Michael Urbanec covers Grundy County and the City of Morris, Coal City, Minooka, and more for the Morris Herald-News