Illinois’ pension reform ideas leave something to be desired

I’ve read some well-considered bills. Unfortunately, some pension reforms aren’t.

Illinois legislators seem to appreciate that pension funds and the investments they have for workers are vital, and even Congress occasionally concedes the need for job-related benefits for stable retirements. (In fact, the Biden administration through a federal rule has ensured that investment advisers must prioritize the long-term interests of clients over their own short-term profits by mandating that investment advisers to be fiduciaries, not just salespeople.)

In Springfield, the General Assembly has accepted the reality that the “Tier 2” pension plan foisted on some state employees in 2010 is not just unfair, but destined to be illegal, requiring legislative action.

Acknowledged by Gov. Pritzker in his proposed 2025 budget, “Tier 2” – which provides less for those hired after Jan. 1, 2011 – soon will fail to comply with federal law and needs reform before it’s too late.

State workers who qualify for pensions aren’t eligible to collect Social Security, but by law, their pension plans must provide benefits equivalent to Social Security under the Internal Revenue System’s “safe harbor” test. Illinois’ pension plans – collectively underfunded by more than $140 billion because of lawmakers’ failure over decades to meet required contributions under both Republican and Democratic administrations – eventually won’t be able to meet that obligation.

Some unions, notably AFSCME, want to eliminate “Tier 2” and bring newer workers into the main plans, campaigning to “Undo Tier 2.” While an ideal goal, that ambitious approach may not be financially feasible and probably would hurt the state’s entire pension system and cost Illinois taxpayers billions.

An option advocated by an informal coalition of the Better Government Association, Chicago’s Civic Committee, and the Civic Federation would still need billions of state contributions for more than 20 years to at least achieve compliance with federal law, but it would fall short of making Tier 1 the only tier. It also would be less expensive.

“Anything beyond that [improvement to meet federal mandates] would represent a reversal of recent, responsible pension policies and a return to the irresponsible behavior that has created such a costly mess for the taxpayers of Illinois,” leaders of the three groups wrote.

Meanwhile, the realization that Illinois has made meaningful, positive steps tied to pension funds demonstrated that the state can improve pension.

Illinois was one of just five major pension funds who’ve committed $1 trillion requiring strong labor standards in pensions’ investment with private-equity interests, which have been blamed for their influence in limiting wage growth, job losses and anti-union actions.

Public pensions have up to half of all assets under private-equity management.

Weeks ago, Biden administration officials met with representatives of Illinois’ pension funds – plus CALPERS (California’s public worker pension fund), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union, New York City’s pension funds, and the New York state public-sector workers pension fund – to show other pension funds how to maintain pension benefits while protecting workers.

The five funds meeting in the White House have committed to standards promoting unionization and the power to bargain union contracts, plus the elimination of using of forced labor and child labor, and workplace safety.

“This is very good for the economy,” National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard told The Washington Post. “It is doing what the president has emphasized, which is building the economy from the middle out and the bottom up. And it ensures that workers have careers with family sustaining wages.”

Obstacles range from political will in government outside “Blue” states and cities, and control. The federal government governs only private pension funds, and states administer public pension funds. However, states are swayed by pension policy set by the federal government and are starting to adopt pro-labor policies with support from Washington.

Biden needs allies in pension funds with progressive policies to show positives in enforcing labor standards, to exert pressure to adopt worker-oriented policies, and, of course, willing legislators to ensure they are implemented.

Whether labor-friendly policies, or making different benefits less brutal (or violating federal law), Illinois could be a leader in fulfilling the agreement to pay benefits promised to workers.

Union-busters hope to get U.S. Supreme Court to gut labor law

“Four score and seven years ago,” the U.S. Supreme Court declared the National Labor Relations Act to be legal and constitutional. However, a current flood of corporate challenges to that 1937 landmark decision could weaken, if not destroy, the federal law and its agency established to protect workers.

The suspected collusion by rich and powerful corporations accused or found guilty of breaking federal labor law could have a chilling effect on organized labor – AND on U.S. workers even seeking to unionize.

The 21^st century “robber barons” attacking the law include Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla and X [formerly Twitter]), the Albrecht family’s Trader Joe’s grocery chain, and Jeff Bezos (Amazon).

Musk – whose factories in California, Nevada and Texas have had frequent complaints about safety and labor relations – first filed his lawsuit in the 5^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a receptive venue covering Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas for conservative activists seeking sympathetic ears.

“Bezos jumped on the bandwagon,” said Jennifer Abruzzo, General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Decades ago, most U.S. companies opposed the law when it was passed but accepted the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that it’s constitutional. Despite that failure to derail the NLRA, 21^st century corporations seem to be using lawsuits to at least threaten and pressure the law’s NLRB from enforcing workers’ rights, said Abruzzo, who suspects the real goal is to get a free hand to treat workers however they desire, without “interference” by laws.

The law and Board are vulnerable. The NLRA was set up to safeguard workers’ rights, but the law didn’t give the agency the power to directly penalize lawbreakers.

The corporations are suing to avoid answering to the Board for employers’ labor law-breaking in general “and for repeatedly violating workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain,” Abruzzo said.

“These esoteric arguments came about why? Because we dared to issue a complaint against SpaceX after it unlawfully fired eight workers for speaking about their workplace concerns, Abruzzo continued. “And then Amazon jumps on the bandwagon, Starbucks jumps on the bandwagon, Trader Joe’s, others get in on the action just because we’re trying to hold them accountable for repeatedly violating workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain through representatives of their free choosing.

“Unfortunately, it seems to me they’d rather spend their money initiating court litigation rather than improving their workers’ lives and their own workplace operations,” she added. “There’s also this secondary goal, I think, which is to divert attention away from the fact that they are actually lawbreakers who need to be held accountable in a timely manner. And frankly, that strategy is working. There’s a lot of public reporting about the challenges as opposed to the law-breaking.”

Today, the NLRA is the nation’s only federal law that protects the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively. Indeed,             Congress is chronically gridlocked into non-action, and after Trump appointments, the federal judiciary has many more conservative judges presumably receptive to Big Business’ priorities, including keeping workers from unionizing.

Elsewhere, Starbucks already argued at the Supreme Court, whose Justices last month seemed open to the anti-union company’s claim that the NLRB oversteps its authority by having federal judges issue injunctions against employers that NLRB Administrative Law Judges determined had probably broke labor law.

Starbucks is challenging the long-accepted “test” for determining the appropriate time for federal judges to issue an injunction for some relief during a pending investigation. Injunctions can require suspected lawbreakers to reinstate workers fired for protected “concerted activity,” to negotiate in good faith, to reopen stores or factories closed as retaliation, etc.

Labor advocates argue that injunctions are vital because taking cases to federal courts can take months, if not years, to resolve, meaning victims of criminality continue to deal with the illegal consequences.

“It seems there are a lot of low-road, deep-pocket employers,” Abruzzo said, “searching for injunctions from the courts, to slow us down or to prevent us from engaging in enforcement against them.” (Also – oddly – some employers are seeking their own injunctions to halt enforcement of the law.)

The Supreme Court’s Starbucks decision is expected next month.

The overall campaign shows how far Big Business has come from accepting labor law that ended reduced workplace disruptions and the property damage and even violence not uncommon before its passage. Further, it shows how far the high court has fallen.

“These corporations seem to believe they will find a sympathetic audience before the conservative justices that occupy six of the Supreme Court’s nine seats,” commented Kate Andrias, a Columbia University law professor. “In a series of prior cases, the conservative justices have already weakened administrative agencies and cut back on workers’ rights.”

Examples in recent years include the Supreme Court ruling against precedents about public-sector unions’ fair-share fees, against farm workers unionizing, and permitting employers to sue for damages tied to legal work stoppages.

“The corporate attack on the NLRB also seems to be a response to growing support for unions among Americans,” Andrias said.

But this time of chronic law-breaking is clearly the wrong time to weaken the government’s ability to seek justice. And relaxing or eliminating existing enforcement tools, however feeble they are, could delay bargaining as well as unionizing campaigns.

“If these corporations prevail with their constitutional challenges, the NLRB will no longer be able to function,” Andria said.

More than a “chilling” effect, that outcome would freeze out modern labor relations and risk returning to the early 1930s’ actions and methods, where “labor peace” was an unachieved demand.

Dismiss campaign hype: The U.S. economy is strong

In recent years, wages have gone up; hundreds of thousands of American jobs have been added; unemployment fell; the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is growing better than other developed countries, according to the International Monetary Fund; the stock market is booming; and inflation has dropped substantially, and even mortgage rates have stabilized to a more typical level.

Nevertheless, Americans are skeptical, if not angry; just 35% approve Biden’s handling of the economy.

Again, GDP is up 3.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 38,000 (on May 3, it closed at 38,675.68 – about 24% better than when Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021, when it closed at 31,186.20). and the S&P 500 returned 26% including dividends in 2023, reported Goldman Sachs – more than double the average annual return since 1986.

“The economy is more than pretty good. It’s VERY good,” says Bob Bruno, a Professor of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois. “Consider that union members got 6.3% wage increases in the past year, the highest since 2001. Non-union got 4.1%.”

The intensely even-handed Associated Press agreed, reporting, “The U.S. economy is rock solid.”

Economist Frank Manzo IV of the Illinois Economic Policy Institute echoes their judgments.

“The U.S. economy is robust and humming,” he says. “Unemployment has been below 4% for over two years, payrolls have increased by an average of more than 200,000 jobs each month for the past year, the S&P 500 is up 33% since Biden’s inauguration, and Gross Domestic Product has grown faster than most economists predicted.

“While there are headwinds and cracks starting to form, the probability of a recession occurring in the next 12 months is generally pegged at around 30% or so,” he continues. “The biggest reason for optimism for the overall economy is the large increase in wealth that households have accrued – and can tap into. U.S. households now have about $150 trillion in wealth, which has grown by 34% in the last four years. The recent increase in immigration has also strengthened both the labor market and entrepreneurship, boosting employment growth by about 100,000 jobs per month.”

 

JOBS & PAY

Last month, more than 300,000 jobs were (experts predicted a gain of 214,000) – meaning about 15 million jobs have been added since Biden’s term started).

Last years, ended with a 3.7% jobless rate, with wages having increased 4.1%, according to the national Economic Policy Institute.

 

INFLATION

Year to year, the Consumer Price Index this spring showed food at home was up 1.2% and gasoline was up 2.2%, nationally and in the Midwest.

Mortgage rates – which skyrocketed to 18% during the Reagan administration in the 1980s – are now below 8%, according to U.S. News’ Erika Giovanetti, who wrote, “While today’s mortgage rates are high compared with just a few years ago, they’re actually quite typical from a historical standpoint.”

Two years ago, inflation was about 9%; now it’s about 3% (See chart).

“Inflation in the U.S. has fallen as quickly as it shot up,” Manzo says. “It remains a global problem, with rates of inflation as high in countries like Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Japan as it is in the United States. Inflation also remains over 4% in Mexico.

According to The Economist magazine, since the end of 2019 the U.S. economy has grown about 8%, while the European Union has grown about 3%, Japan 1%, and Britain not at all. Also, economic analyst Steven Rattner and economist Brendan Duke reported that entrepreneurship in the U.S. is booming, with 5.2 million “likely employer” business applications filed between January 2021 and December 2023, more than a 33% increase over those filed between 2017 and 2019.

Inflation is worldwide, and no U.S. President has control globally. The U.S. annual inflation rate is up 2.8% over the year, the CPI said in March, compared to the European Union’s 3.1%, Japan’s 3.21% and the United Kingdom’s 3.25 – much less Turkey’s 68% and Venezuela’s almost 200%.

“I’m not sure inflation is really a problem in the U.S.,” Bruno says. “Consumers and employers have largely shook higher prices off. Interest rates are a drag but still, growth continues.”

Before Biden took office, the Federal Reserve started “quantitative easing” (buying a lot of mortgage bonds and government debt); the Trump administration and the 116^th Congress spent trillions in reaction to the COVID pandemic, increasing the budget deficit; and housing costs ballooned 14.6% from mid-2020 to early 2021.

“You put that together and it is challenging to make the case that there would be no inflation,” said Campbell Harvey, a Duke University finance professor. “But again, we just don't know the counterfactual” [ – a psychological concept involving the tendency to conjure alternatives to events that have already happened].

Indeed, before Trump left office, nonfarm employment had fallen by 1.4 million jobs in March of 2020 and another 20.5 million the next month; joblessness was at 6.3%; GDP was down 3.5%.

“Inflation was driven by supply-chain shocks associated with the pandemic and global wars – not increases in consumer demand or worker wages. Historically, inflation has been linked to war and conflict. That’s because governments directly involved issue more currency and borrow to finance the wars, demand shifts and the supply chain has to adjust which drives up prices, and war-torn countries produce fewer goods and services. We have major wars right now with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war in Palestine. Ukraine, for example, is a major producer of agricultural products, like wheat and corn—which has driven up food prices.”

 

2/3 OF US ARE DISSATISFIED.

The 35% of U.S. adults approving of Biden’s handling the economy is up slightly, according to an Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which said the same percentage sees the national economy as good.

“Economic and consumer sentiment has become more politicized than ever before,” Manzo says. “When the Presidency flips, people who identify with the losing party go from being optimistic about the economy to thinking the sky is falling. With that said, the primary concern is about inflation—and specifically the price level, not the rate of change. Consumers are seeing food prices rising by 25% and their homeowners insurance and car insurance premiums doubling, which has negative impacted their outlook.”

 

FLOODED BY A FIREHOSE OF LIES, DISASTER LOOMS

If the economy’s good, why’s the mood bad? Consider the outrageous rhetoric coming from Trump.

At a Georgia rally in March, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said, “Inflation wouldn’t have happened” if he’d been re-elected in 2020, ignoring the after-effects of the pandemic.

He’s called the United States a “commercial wasteland,” a “cesspool,” a “disaster” and claimed, “Under Biden we have a three-year inflation rate of almost 50%. Under me you had no inflation.”

If voters accept the hogwash, a second Trump administration could spell economic disaster, with the ex-President promising to cut the labor supply by deporting immigrants (even those here legally); devalue the dollar, launch tariffs of at least 10% (which, since tariffs are basically a tax on imports, are passed along to consumers, who pay more), and strip the Federal Reserve of its independence (according to the Wall Street Journal). Plus, returning him to the Oval Office could revive the chaos from before, which will shake investor and consumer confidence.

For all the facts at hand and the dangers ahead, Trump’s political handmaidens, such as Central Illinois’ Congressman, U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Peoria)m echo Trump’s lies. Darin LaHood commented, “By every measure, our country was better off with President Trump’s leadership in the White House.”

 

THE REAL CULPRIT: PRICE GOUGING

Asked whether public discontent stems from grassroots expectations, misinformation or something else, Bruno says, “Think post-COVID hangover and the initial sharp spike of inflation in basic goods.”

The real reason groceries and gas cost what they do, according to AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, is “greedflation.

“Corporations used the market chaos of the pandemic as an excuse to price-gouge working families to pad their profits,” Shuler said. “Even as supply chains returned to normal, corporate greed drove 53% of inflation for the second half of last year.”

Manzo agrees.

“There is some evidence for the price-gouging theory,” he says. “Corporate profits after taxes have increased by about $1 trillion since prior to the pandemic, growing nearly 50%. That’s much faster than the 21% total rise in inflation since January 2020. Corporations saw their profits rise substantially in 2021 and 2022, and instead of cutting prices as their input costs decreased and passing it onto the consumer, they have largely decided to keep their prices high to in order to retain high profit margins and satisfy shareholders.”

In fact, corporate profits are breaking records, reaching an all-time high last year: $2.8 trillion, according to the Commerce Dept.

A few examples of 2023 profits, according to Macrotrends.net: Albertson’s grocery chain $21 billion, Apple $100 billion, Nike $22 billion, Verizon $79 billion, and Walmart $155 billion.

Economist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said, “The structural driver of inflation [is] the concentration of the American economy in the hands of a few corporate giants with the power to raise prices,”

 

IN HINDSIGHT, BIDEN INVESTED IN THE COUNTRY.

In “free market” economies – especially one like America’s, still operating after years of Republican deregulation – government has little say in product pricing. However, under this system, Biden didn’t upend the economy but skillfully used politics. Instead of exaggerating or alienating Congressional opponents (much less his own advisers), like his predecessor, the President worked with Republicans and ensured bipartisan government investments in the nation to the tune of $4.2 trillion, including the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act.

A conversation with WTVP-TV’s board chair... and its new CEO

If Peoria's public TV station was a runaway horse in the last year, John Wieland says he’s ready to turn over the reins. The 64-year-old chairman of the station’s board of directors is confident that newly named CEO Jenn Gordon will corral the steed and convince the community that WTVP really isn’t a wild nag but a thoroughbred.

Smiling, Wieland relaxes in a casual meeting room in the back of MH Equipment off Allen Road and reflects on relinquishing the attention.

“My 15 minutes in the sun is quickly coming to an end,” says Wieland, who explains some of the mostly private actions that have taken place since September, when WTVP President Lesley Matuszak and finance director Lin McLaughlin resigned, and Matuszak committed suicide. Weeks later, previous board chair Andrew Rand said there had been “questionable, improper and unauthorized” spending, and the board cut the budget 30%, laid off nine employees and shut down its Peoria magazine (which was a big factor in an $870,000 shortfall, according to an internal audit released later).

By February — while investigations continued by the Peoria Police Dept., the Illinois Attorney General’s office, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — most of the board resigned and new board members were seated.

Learning experience

“When I came on the scene I was at the lowest level of incompetence,” he says. “I didn’t know what I didn’t know.”

Wieland says he got involved after he and a group of friends that meets every month to share thoughts and challenge each other to be better, discussed the station’s woes.

“It came up — this disaster — that CPB was going to withhold funds and the rumor to shut it down. I wasn’t a frequent user of WTVP before, [and] I didn’t know Leslie. I did not know Andrew. I did know Helen [Barrick], who I’d worked with 40 years ago at Peat Marwick, and her husband Bill was on my board at MH Equipment.

“Anyway, my friends and I talked about if we could create something to provide a financial runway and give the community a fresh board.”

Wieland shared the thought with Dr. Andy Chiou, and he “made the introductions around Thanksgiving, I think,” Wieland recalls. “I met with Andrew and their executive committee and threw out this idea. They talked with their board [and] they thought it sounded like a decent plan. I didn’t pick the people who would stay or leave. We did have to come up with new board members.

“Throughout the whole deal, I sent out emails to the 7,000 or so people on the [station’s] list. We had a ‘litmus test’ — ‘Are you fully committed to fulfilling the mission of WTVP, which is to provide educational, scientific, entertainment and cultural content?’ ”

New life

Asked about criticism that former board members were insiders and the new board is, too, Wieland disagrees.

“I didn’t know who six of the new board members were. A lot of people on the board didn’t know each other,” he says. “I guess we’re insiders from this standpoint: We’re committed to the mission of WTVP.”

Wieland says the search for board members went beyond a handful of local power brokers.

“After the litmus test, we wanted to get people of different ethnicities, from outside Peoria, from Galesburg, Bloomington, and we’re still looking.”

Wieland says he’s read several books about Lincoln, including Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” and he appreciates a variety of voices. Especially for public broadcasting, that’s fitting. After all, as the public media marketing consultants Market Enginuity says, “If one were to combine the average statistics for PBS viewers on a national level, they would likely find a married, homeowning woman who is in her 30s or 40s and has at least one child under the age of 11.”

Weiland says, “Could another board have gotten on top of it sooner? Sure. Could another board get on it later? Sure.”

Right people

Asked whether the diversity of the board could improve since at least 13 of its 19 members have exclusively voted in Republican primaries, according to election records, Wieland says, “I didn’t know who’s in what party.

“It’s a good question; maybe it’s worth balancing it that way. Optics don’t have to be true to be people’s reality.

“To be honest, I don’t care if someone’s Republican, Independent or Democrat, whether they’re Christian or from the Jewish community or wherever. We would not let someone use this station for some kind of political, religious or social platform. Are such things OK? Sure. But that’s not the mission of WTVP.

“I’m so apolitical,” he adds. “Politics isn’t the answer; it’s a change of the human heart. Politics doesn’t do that.”

WTVP has been and will be even-handed, he says.

“WTVP has not strayed too far Left or Right, [and] we’re not going to the Left or the Right. We want our kids to learn their 1-2-3s and their A-B-C’s, and see good programs like Ken Burns does. [So] I’m not going to say we need a Democrat.”

Private runway

Back to the financial “runway” to return WTVP to fiscal stability, a key factor is a foundation’s pledge of $1.2 million, up to $3 million, to supplement area contributions and CPB funding (on the condition there is CPB funding). But the name of the foundation wasn’t disclosed. Wieland has a foundation, His First Foundation, which has donated to institutions such as Dream Center of Peoria, Peoria Christian School, and Unlimited Grace Media, at Grace Presbyterian Church.

Wieland says keeping the pledge private is a matter of putting the focus on WTVP, not a donor. “It’s not about a foundation,” he says, “It’s about WTVP. I want the focus not to be on the foundation. I want it to be about WTVP.

“I’ve been on TV a lot [but] it’s not about me, the board, the foundation or Jenn Gordon,” he continues. “I bought MH Equipment when it had about 50 employees; now it’s about 1,100. But, again, it’s not about me; it’s about the enterprise.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where most of this came from,” he adds. “In a couple of years, people will be able to look at the 990 (federal tax form for charities, which are public).”

As far as getting a new CEO, Wieland says the board’s search was methodical, but the process wasn’t open and the public wasn’t told. More than 70 people applied, the governance committee (Wieland and Vice Chair Andy Chiou) was joined by others including board members Barrick and Heather Acerra to conduct due diligence on 11 applicants, talk to 5 and interview 3 again.

“Could it have been done better? Of course,” Wieland says. “I did not know [Jenn] except we served on a common board at Grace Presbyterian Church. At the end of the day, we were lucky.”

Meanwhile, Wieling says he feels fortunate to be able to step back some.

“I’m comfortable being in the public; I’m comfortable not being in the public,” he says. “This probably is my last interview.”

Even if he’s out of the limelight, he says, he’ll follow how WTVP is doing.

“I do care if they’re committed to making this a family-friendly station for generations to come, committed to fulfilling the mission of WTVP.”

 

And a Q&A with the station’s new CEO-

WTVP-TV 47 said it received dozens of applications to its announcement that it sought a new CEO, formed a search committee, crafted criteria for assessing people’s qualifications, and narrowed the field to three finalists.

By unanimous vote by the search committee and the full board, 42-year-old Peoria native Jenn Gordon was named CEO of the region’s public television station on March 21.

Probably best known to readers as the executive director of ArtsPartners of Central Illinois from 2015 to 2022, Gordon was executive administrator at Peoria’s Grace Presbyterian Church until starting at WTVP on April 22.
Recently, she took time to answer a few questions before a scheduled phone call with Paula Kerger, president of the nation’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Q: At this point, do you anticipate your approach to the public to be reassuring the community or challenging them?

A: Maybe some of both. The first piece will be to restore confidence, I guess. Anyone who donates money to any type of nonprofit organization, if there’s a breach of trust [or] mismanagement of funds, you do need reassurance moving forward that things are going to be different. I want members who’ve been supporting the station and gotten us through this critical time [to know] their donations will be going toward exactly what we say they’re going toward.

The second piece is going to be a challenging component, to challenge the community to re-engage and rediscover what we have … the critical resources offered. From Day 1 with public broadcasting, this vision of commercial-free, quality content [shows] we’re not just building consumers of media; we’re building learners from media.

Q: Do you have a sense of what WTVP and the public should expect from the investigation and audit by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?

A: I’m hoping — everyone is hoping — that it will be totally transparent, just to be able to structure a clean slate to move forward and still be eligible for (CPB) funding. There’s still a criminal investigation going on. It’s in the best interest of WTVP to have (outside observers).

Q: In March, WTVP sought feedback online and the board felt there were positives as far as general satisfaction. But wasn’t it rather unscientific, sort of reaching out to viewers Channel 47 already has instead of the public throughout the 20 or so counties the station serves — those who may not watch or donate?

A: That survey was a first step. We have to get a better pulse of viewers and supporters, and then we need to go way beyond that because (the station) is designed to be a community resource. I want to get a snapshot of what our engagement is like with (the public). Where are there gaps?

Q: As CEO, will you have to deal with some perceptions that the former board was made up of insiders who’ve been replaced by a different group of insiders?

A: First, a CEO has very limited influence on that; you inherit it. Nothing about this last year for WTVP has been normal. But before I ever thought about this opportunity, I was relieved to see the emergence of a new board; it was a fresh start.

I was glad to see a diverse group — women and different neighborhoods and facets [on the board]. You want to aim to be a board representative of the community you serve. Hopefully we can all move forward with a lot of positivity.

Peoria landfill: trash talking

This winter, a year-long delay seemed to be over in building a required landfill to accommodate Peoria waste after the current landfill is at capacity, but plans have not resumed.

The Peoria City/County Landfill Committee plans to construct Landfill #3, made necessary because the current Landfill #2, which opened in 1998, is expected to reach capacity in the next several months.

The process started 15 years ago, and during those years, Peoria Disposal Company (PDC) found no evidence of underground mines that could affect the proposed site, which is adjacent to existing landfill space, and state agencies agreed.

Building landfills above mines risks tons of trash collapsing into space below and possibly damaging landfills’ liners, which protect groundwater from contamination.

Landfill #3 construction bids had gone out, but in April of 2023, a reference to an abandoned underground mine (Black Jewel No. 2, which operated in the 1930s and ’40s) was noted in records of the Illinois Geological Survey – which neither PDC, the Committee nor the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) realized.

Required to notify the state EPA, the Committee stopped work and arranged for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) and engineers and consultants to investigate. From November through January, 10 exploratory borings were done, which confirmed Black Jewel’s presence but added that it was in a different coal seam than previously assumed and seemed to have been stripped out.

Now, Committee members believe that there’s no extraordinary risk from Black Jewel, and Landfill #3 construction could proceed.

“The news we received from IDNR was welcome and appreciated,” said Peoria County Administrator Scott Sorrel. “We now are waiting on IEPA to remove the hold on the construction permit issued to GFL [Green For Life Environmental] on behalf of the City-County Solid Waste Management Committee.

“This delay, caused by the extra analysis required by IDNR and IEPA, has put the opening of Landfill #3 in question,” he continued. “We are currently exploring all options and contingencies. At this time, it is too early in this exploration to have a definitive solution.”

GFL, which in 2021 acquired PDC and its holdings – including the contract to build Landfill #3 – hasn’t seemed eager to fulfill that obligation. In 2022, GFL asked to postpone Landfill #3, but the Committee rejected the idea and considered legal action to enforce the contract, and GFL dropped its request.

Also asked about how a Landfill #3 might now proceed, Landfill Committee chair Stephen Morris, who’s City Treasurer, said, “In short, I do not know. The City, County, and [the] Landfill Committee are exploring all options to ensure affordable and reliable waste disposal.

“The timelines for closure of Landfill 2 and opening of Landfill 3 remain unclear,” he added, “so we really have no choice but to prepare contingencies for various outcomes.”

Completing Landfill #3 will take a while, and it’s unlikely it will be ready when Landfill #2 is full. Contingencies include using a “transfer station” to collect and then transport garbage to some existing landfill, such as GFL’s Indian Creek Landfill in Tazewell County.