During the last couple weeks of the spring state legislative session, Senate President Don Harmon got whacked twice by allies, including Gov. J.B. Pritzker, but still managed to keep his cool.

On May 14, the pro-choice powerhouse group Personal PAC issued a blistering press release blasting the Senate supermajority for an “unacceptable decision” to strip abortion services from the governor’s birth equity bill, which banned co-pays and other added insurance costs for most prenatal and postnatal care. Pritzker quickly chimed in, saying if the House-approved bill was indeed stripped of abortion coverage, he wouldn’t sign it.

Eleven days later — the day before the Senate took up the state budget package — an internal administration talking points memo was mistakenly sent as a blast text message by a member of Pritzker’s staff to House Democrats. The incendiary blast text was sent shortly after the Senate Democrats, in consultation with the Republicans, amended a House bill reforming the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.

The Senate’s bipartisan amendment included requirements like live-streaming Prisoner Review Board hearings, which the Pritzker administration claimed at the time would cost a fortune and, according to the mistakenly texted memo, was actually part of a plan to undermine the state’s Mandatory Supervised Release program because hearing officers would be intimidated into not releasing deserving prisoners while being video streamed.

“This is a right-wing wolf in disingenuous transparency clothing,” the administration’s text told House Dems. “It eliminates [Mandatory Supervised Release] by design. And it’s appalling that senate democrats [sic] are so eager to please their Republican friends that they would undermine justice and push to keep people incarcerated who, by measure of actual law, should be out on MSR.”

There was real fear in the building the accidental broadside could derail the budget.

Budget package stayed on track

Through it all, though, Harmon didn’t overreact. The entire budget package cleared his chamber with far more Democratic support than it received days later in the House. Things could’ve been so much different.

“It did not trouble me in a way it may have in the past,” Harmon told me last week after I asked if he had matured over the years.

The Senate, he pointed out, eventually “passed the birth equity bill, and in the form it was passed.” He later added, “I think there were some misunderstandings that could’ve been resolved by a telephone call.”

And Harmon said of the Prisoner Review Board amendment imbroglio: “We weren’t intending to pick fights. It was a bit of a surprise to me the level of engagement and the way it happened. I’d much rather work with the governor to make this work than to spin our wheels for nothing.” He said he’d be “happy” to have a conversation with the governor to “make sure all voices are heard” going forward.

“In the end, we’re judged by what we produce, not the rough drafts in between,” Harmon said. “The partnership with the governor, responsible budgeting has been a real anchor here for all of us, I think. And again, my priorities going into any session are to do the best I can to make sure the members of our caucus have the opportunity to advance legislation that’s important to them and to make sure we adopt a responsible, balanced budget. So, I try to focus on those things and not worry about the political flame-throwing that just seems to be part of our process.”

Harmon and the governor didn’t start off on the best terms. The two were old allies, but their top staffs just did not mesh well, to say the least.

But Harmon told me things started to change toward the end of the 2023 spring session. “I think the challenges we faced in passing the budget last year have solidified the relationship between the Senate staff and the governor’s staff and demonstrated our ability to work well together,” he told me.

Harmon wouldn’t specify what those “challenges” were, but it’s pretty obvious what he meant.

Last year, House Speaker Chris Welch agreed to a budget deal with the other two leaders. An announcement was made, but then Welch got heat from his caucus and needed to find more money for his members. Rather than walk away, Harmon and Pritzker and their staffs worked with Welch to find a solution.

Former House Speaker Michael Madigan wouldn’t have been nearly as accommodating, to say the least. Making accommodations and overlooking attacks just weren’t his thing. Times have indeed changed.

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.

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It’s boating season for sure.

The 4th of July weekend is the time to get out on the water. I saw several trucks with boats at a coffee shop this morning, likely heading out for the week. If I could, I’d spend the whole week flopped out on a boat. We put up with a nasty January for this. Whether you’re swimming, drinking, or the one driving the boat, there are sure to be shenanigans.

I’ll be the first to admit that I get the zoomies when I drive a boat. It’s almost jetski intense. I haul all over the lake, I won’t lie. Some of us start driving boats sitting in our family’s lap holding the steering wheel. And that’s not too far from the legal boating age in Illinois.

The Minimum Age To Drive A Boat In Illinois

Illinois seems to have similar boating rules to Iowa. According to the Illinois DNR, minors (12-17) can drive a boat under one of two circumstances: they have their Boating Safety Certificate from the Illinois DNR or they have someone 18 or older with them.

It also depends on the boat the kid is in. That rule applies to boats that are over 10 horsepower.

No kid under 10 years old can operate a motorboat at all.

Also, as a good reminder for the 4th of July weekend festivities, don’t let the most blitzed person on your boat drive it. We all know they don’t need to do anything besides try not to black out.

Illinois Property Goes Viral For Being ‘Like 7 Different Universes’

Illinois derailment empties town briefly

Emergency officials ordered what turned out to be a relatively brief evacuation after a freight train derailed in suburban Chicago on Thursday.

The Canadian National Railway train derailed in the village of Matteson around 10:30 a.m. The company issued a statement about 1:30 p.m. saying that about 25 cars derailed. There were no reports of fires or injuries, although one car containing “residue liquefied petroleum gas” leaked, the company said.

Steve DeJong, a firefighter with a statewide hazardous material response team, said during an afternoon news conference that the substance is commonly known as propane and the train was carrying only residual amounts.

Propane is flammable, and emergency responders didn’t know how much of it they were dealing with they arrived at the derailment, so they ordered a two-block radius evacuated as a precaution, Matteson Mayor Sheila Chalmers-Currin told reporters. The evacuation order applied to up to 300 people, she said.

DeJong said the leak was small and firefighters were able to contain it. The propane that did escape evaporated, dispersing so widely that it didn’t register on detectors, he said.

“We are now telling our residents there is no danger to any of them at this time and they can return home,” Chalmers-Currin said. “There is no danger. There is nothing toxic that will harm anyone here.”

Seattle officer guilty in ’19 on-duty death

A jury found a suburban Seattle police officer guilty of murder Thursday in the 2019 shooting death of a homeless man outside a convenience store, marking the first conviction under a Washington state law easing prosecution of law enforcement officers for on-duty killings.

After deliberating for three days, the jury found Auburn Police Officer Jeffrey Nelson guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree assault for shooting Jesse Sarey twice while trying to arrest him for disorderly conduct. Deliberations had been halted for several hours Wednesday after the jury sent the judge an incomplete verdict form Tuesday saying they were unable to reach an agreement on one of the charges.

The judge revealed Thursday that the verdict the jury was struggling with earlier in the week was the murder charge. They had already reached agreement on the assault charge.

Nelson was ordered into custody after the hearing. He’s been on paid administrative leave since the shooting in 2019. The judge set sentencing for July 16. Nelson faces up to life in prison on the murder charge and up to 25 years for first-degree assault. His lawyer said she plans to file a motion for a new trial.

The case was the second to go to trial since Washington voters in 2018 removed a standard that required prosecutors to prove an officer acted with malice — a standard no other state had. Now they must show the level of force was unreasonable or unnecessary.

Potential trial date set for Idaho suspect

It could be another year or more before a man accused in the 2022 stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students goes to trial.

A judge and attorneys discussed Thursday starting Bryan Kohberger’s trial sometime in June 2025, nearly three years after the killings shocked the small university town.

Idaho Judge John Judge said he wants to set aside two weeks for jury selection, two months for the trial and two weeks at the end for sentencing and other matters if Kohberger is convicted.

“I think already we’re about 13 months from the arraignment, and I think at this point … we’re getting to a point of diminishing returns,” Judge said after he sent a proposed schedule to attorneys last Friday.

Lawyers for both sides generally agreed with the schedule.

A motion to move the trial from Moscow, Idaho was tabled until August. Kohberger’s attorneys fear publicity would prevent a fair trial in Latah County.

Oklahoma man executed for 1984 murder

McALESTER, Okla. — Oklahoma executed a man Thursday who was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing his 7-year-old former stepdaughter in 1984.

Richard Rojem, 66, received a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was declared dead at 10:16 a.m., prison officials said. Rojem, who had been in prison since 1985, was the longest-serving inmate on Oklahoma’s death row.

When asked if he had any last words, Rojem, who was strapped to a gurney and had an IV in his tattooed left arm, said: “I don’t. I’ve said my goodbyes.”

He looked briefly toward several witnesses who were inside a room next to the death chamber before the first drug, the sedative midazolam, began to flow. He was declared unconscious about 5 minutes later, at 10:08 a.m., and stopped breathing at about 10:10 a.m.

Rojem had denied responsibility for killing his former stepdaughter, Layla Cummings. The child’s mutilated and partially clothed body was discovered in a field in rural Washita County near the town of Burns Flat on July 7, 1984. She had been stabbed to death.