Focus 580; Open Line with TOD SATTERTHWAITE

This morning in this part of focus 580 we were talking with another candidate. We have asked a number of candidates who are running areas that overlap with our coverage area to come and be on the program to give voters an opportunity to talk with them as reporters and interviewers we talk to these people all the time we have pretty regular access but this idea here is that voters if there's a particular issue that concerns you this is your opportunity to call and talk directly with the candidate. And our guest is Todd Satterthwaite. He's a Democratic candidate for the Illinois House in the 100 and 3rd District. His opponent by the way is the incumbent here in that district Rick Winkle Republican he will be on the show this week also at 10 o'clock on Thursday. So you'll have the opportunity to hear from both of them and talk with both of them. So we'd like to talk with Todd Satterthwaite. Call us the number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 W I L L or 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear us. I'm not sure that that would be a long distance

call with any place within the hundred third but anyway I'll give it. That's eight hundred to two to W while so you can call in and talk with us. And also I guess we should mention in terms of background Tod Satterthwaite is the mayor of Urbana. He was first elected in April of 1993 and then was re-elected in 1997. He's also been involved in business in Urbana for a number of years and going back to the early 90s he served in the Peace Corps from April of 1998 to May of 1900 he grew up here in the area went to the University of Illinois and graduated from university high school and we're glad to have him here. Thanks for being here. Yeah it's a pleasure David. There are a number of things that I know that that I can ask you about and again I will hope that there are some people who are listening will want to ask questions too. Let's talk about education and state support of education it seems that now there are many candidates who are talking about the need for the state to supply a greater percentage of the funds

that that fund in here we talk about elementary secondary education not right higher education. And one of the things that you've said that you think that the state ought to get up to the 51 percent mark it should at least be that much more over half. Which And it's significantly less at this point. How How though do you do that how do you make that happen. Well I think you make it happen by making education a top priority and one way that I think we ought to do it is to put the lion's share of any new revenue that the state gets into education. And there was a bill that failed in Springfield this last session that was called fund education first. What made it a lot to do just that. And you think well half of the new revenue going to education is that really enough. And you know it's significant in that the state's revenues have been growing at about 8 to 10 percent over the last few years and so this is really a significant source of revenue. And I

think you identified the problem very well and I think was back in the 70s the state did fund education at nearly 50 percent. And then the other 50 percent was through local property taxes. But over the decades the state has really not embraced its role as a primary funder of public education. And that percentage has dropped down to below 40 percent. And so I would like to see the state make education a top priority and fund more of the share of the cost of public education. Now well I guess for a number of years now people in the legislature. People in huge education have been talking about changing the way the public schools are funded. There are some people who believe that what we ought to do is move away from the property tax as the principal method and do something else and I guess that means that we what we would be doing would be a kind of a swap and say we're going to take the burden off property

tax and say put it on income tax and it has been discussed. Some people in the sort of policy community as state have said they thought that it was a good idea and there is even some people in the General Assembly who would have supported such a notion but it was it was not successful I think mostly because Republicans in the collar counties didn't want to have anything to do with it and maybe that other people would be reluctant to support that because it might look like. The end result would be people paying more taxes. Yeah what do you mean what do you think about this. Well I think it's a good concept. Again I think the state right now is in pretty good financial shape so I don't think we need to raise more money. But the way we raise it could certainly be improved. And I've talked to a lot of people you know I've been gone through the district for the last six months and talking to a lot of folks both here in Champaign Urbana in rural areas of the district and there are a lot of people that are very unhappy about

the reliance on a property tax for funding not just the local schools but some of the other local government as well. And just because people have property doesn't mean they're making money. You get there a lot of retired couples that have a home there on a fixed income. But yet they see their property taxes going up. And it's in my mind a much fairer way to fund governmental services through an income tax. But again I would support that as a swap but not as some kind of a revenue generator and I know some of the the bills in the past have not only done the swap but have increased revenue as well. So I would certainly be in favor of I think it so much of the income tax is a much fairer way to pay for governmental services than the local property tax. When this it's something particularly I think that is of interest to rural folks and farmers and in a district like this or once you get down

state you're going to find a lot of people probably of both parties that would support that notion. Is there ever going to be enough support in the General Assembly given the fact that people people upstate seem not to care much for this idea to actually have a change like that happen. Well I don't know. I I understand that you know some of the Republicans in the collar counties don't think that it's a very viable idea. I think they see the income tax if there's more reliance on the income tax they see more of a Chicago area and Collier County dollars going down state. And so they see it as a down state subsidy from their area and certainly if we switch the method of funding we have to make the formula of funding something that's fair so that everyone perceives. The whole educational funding system as being fair not only for their own school district but for school districts throughout the state. But it's tough if you know any legislator

that votes to send money from their district to another district is going to have a hard time when they face re-election and I think that's part of the on the road block there. So but I think as you know and to illustrate what some of the inequities are right now in some of the collar counties will spend you know 12 to $15000 per student. And those schools school districts and the the floor level the set by the state now is something like 40 400. So they're spending like three times the amount. And some of those school districts and they feel that you know their property tax goes for their local schools and and they want to maintain that high quality. And that if it's all funded by income tax that they're going to take their income tax dollars and the state's going to shift it to downstate school districts that are in a lot of trouble right now. Well I think that a few years ago the there certainly was recognition that there was a big gap between the most prosperous districts and the others so

they were on the bottom and there was some effort to narrow that gap at least a little bit by raising the the bottom level and saying that at least this much should be spent. But. Even after that was done there is still a big gap between the most between the ones on the bottom of the most prosperous districts. Can the state do more or should the state do more to equalize the the the amount of money that districts have to spend per pupil. Yeah I think so I think that the floor level has been established and I think we need to keep raising that so that we have it that we can count on having good education throughout the entire state of Illinois rather than having a terrific education and you know the best schools and the best teachers and best technology in some areas and then other school districts that are barely getting by with crumbling schools they don't have enough money to put computers and other Internet technology in the schools and so forth. So we

really need to have a system where every kid is going to have an opportunity to get a first class education. We're talking this morning in this hour folks 580 with Todd Satterthwaite He's a Democratic candidate for the Illinois House in the 100 Third District. He is running against the incumbent Rick Winkle. Mr. Winkle will be here on the program later this week on Thursday will do the same thing. This is your opportunity if there are questions about you know issues that concern you. You can call and talk with the candidates 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 0 9 4 5 5. Just going with education for a little bit. Nowadays one of the big words. It's on everybody's lips is accountability. I think that a lot of people they feel that it's important to support the schools but they also want to feel that the money is being well spent and that students are performing at the level we would like. The state now has a program of testing their testing students periodically of through their school career in

basic areas and things like math and science and so forth and those kinds of results are made public so that at least you can look at how students in Illinois how they're doing compared with where we you know where we think we would like them to be. And in some areas I think folks have been kind of disappointed that students in Illinois students on the whole are not doing better. Do you think about this this approach to innocence in a sense grading schools and students and coming up with some way of answering that question of well how well are we doing. Well I think we need to have some system of benchmarks so that we can find out if our schools are doing the job that we expect of them. You know I've talked to doctors that Lima Harris out at Parkland and she's you know the president there not only does she work with business people and trying to have curricula that will well be tailored to their needs. But she's found that a lot of kids when they come into parkland don't have the basic

skills that they need. And she started working with some of the high schools throughout the district to say this is the kind of skills and there's a kind of class work that these students need to have before they even get to Parklane. So that they don't have to be teaching the kids the basics when they get to Parkland before they can teach them some other kind of work skill. So we need to have some benchmarks and show how people are. So I show how the students are doing. I think when you take the next step and have those test scores determine how much state funding you're going to get there you get into a real problem then if a school is falling down and slightly in the scores and just when they need the help the most. Then you pull the help away from them I think you know that's been done in some states and I would certainly think that that's a dangerous trend around here but we do need to have the accountability. One of the trends that I've been mayor we're made aware of is the fact that there probably be a lot of teachers that are retiring in the next decade and that it is

increasingly difficult for school districts to get the best teachers and keep the best teachers. And so I would promote some programs where the state would give some subsidies or incentives to students that want to get into teaching as a profession so that we can make that a more attractive profession for young people to get into. And then. Create some programs that the school districts can use to retain teachers as well by getting them some additional training and and be able to teach them the the newest up to date classroom procedures and so forth. So I think we can do a better job of recruiting and retaining teachers and that's going to be something that's going to be a challenge for the entire state in the next several years. Well just going back for a second to the accountability issue if you say that you don't want to mix gun funding contingent on student performance but you do want to hold the the the feet of school ministers the fire somehow and say well we

do expect your students to perform at a student level or even say to the student. We expect you to perform at a certain level if they're not then what do you do about that to try to get them to the level that you'd like them to be. Well I think then the state can send people in to work with the school district and say you know find out what the reason is. You know is it because our students underperforming because there are other problems in the community maybe they're you know if it's been an area where there's high unemployment maybe the kids aren't getting the proper nutrition in the morning you know maybe there are other things that are going on. So I think you know there's no one cookie cutter solution. We should go in and find out what the problems are and give that particular school district the help that they need to be able to bring those students scores back up. Let's turn to a different topic. I think that there are a lot of people who feel that this this part of the state this district because of the presence of the University of Illinois is positioned to be a great center of high

tech industry. And we certainly have seen some of that already. With both in private business here and also the university moving to try to develop partnerships between the university and private business and we've got high tech incubators going up all over the place. Can the state do more to try to foster the growth of high tech businesses in this community. Well I think we've got a great start with the two high tech parks that are going on right now and you know as mayor of Urbana I've been very intimately involved with the one that's you know right next to here at the studios. And you know preparing the infrastructure and you know the enterprise zones and so forth that the business community needs. Exactly. You know what more the state needs to do I don't know there's you know one of the real challenges I think that we could. Address and make

ourselves more competitive with other university research parks not only throughout the region but throughout the country. That's who we're competing with I mean they're we're not the only one with high tech parks in fact we're kind of you know a little slower in developing our tech parks and a lot of other universities. And one problem that's been identified is that we're not keeping a lot of our engineering and computer science grads from the University of Illinois here in Illinois. And so I would like to explore the possibility of having a on income tax credit for companies that employ University of Illinois graduates. And that way we can keep our good brainpower here in the state of Illinois and provide an incentive for these high tech companies to locate here an incentive that they might not get anywhere else. And when you're at these companies you know from my experience they look at the entire package of you know how business is going to be done in the area what are the property taxes you know how can I

get the right kind of employees do you have the pool of talent that I need and I'm going to be able to get the utilities and all this kind of thing. And you know if you throw a tax credit into the mix where they could be hiring you by grads and using that for their talent pool I think could be very attractive to some of these high tech businesses. Say again here on focus 580 our guest in this part of the show is Todd Satterthwaite He said Democratic candidate for the Illinois House in the 100 and 3rd District and again if you have questions specific things that you'd like to ask. Pick up the telephone give us a call here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line good anywhere that you can hear us 800 to 2 to 9 4 5. I was looking over at your responses to a questionnaire that went out from there were sent out from the Chicago Tribune and various kinds of subjects from your website. And one of the things that I asked about was that

the the tobacco settlement money and you said that you think that the largest part of that money should go to whatever we can do to try to keep young people from smoking. And that has certainly not been the case with the way this money has been disbursed. The percentage of money that was going to prevention to health care and so forth is really quite small and a goodly chunk of it actually went to provide tax relief to Illinois. I take it that you would not have supported that. Well I don't think that that's the right way to go about it. You're right I would strongly support using the money in a way that we can address some of the problems particularly that smoking causes in an our society. And there's a bill sponsored by some a Democrat Representative Fritchey that I would support. And what it does is have put

money into smoking and tobacco control. It puts it into healthy communities healthy schools those types of things I think are a more appropriate use of the money rather then giving some minor form of temporary tax relief. I think if we. Really go to the root of the problem and try to keep young people from smoking in the first place then we're not going to have the huge health burden of treating them after they've been smokers for 30 or 40 or 50 years and we all pay for that through through the insurer the health insurance that we pay and through the cost that the state bears and some of the hospital bills. Would you support using any of that money for a non smoking related sorts of purposes. Well yeah I think other health care purposes. There's a proposal that would put some of this into health care at the schools and

talk about you know putting nurses back into some of the schools and there are a lot of schools that have had to cut back as they have faced funding crunches and they don't have qualified or trained nurses on the premises and so one of the proposals is to fund a program where you could have somebody that is on school premises and and helping young people out with their immediate health care needs. So I wouldn't be just tobacco related but other health care needs identified throughout the state as well. More exploring the area of health care a little bit more this something that you have also stressed interest your interest in particularly trying to expand the kind of health care that's available to people who are on that the two ends of the age spectrum. Young people old people what is it that you would like to see happen. Well first on the younger end of the spectrum the federal government gives the

states money for health insurance and the program in Illinois is called Kid Care. And there are certain income levels but families that are in those income levels can sign their kids up for health insurance for free. And but the fact is that there are a lot of families that qualify that don't know about the program and a couple of years ago we were unsuccessful in getting enough people on board and had to even turn back about 50 million dollars to the federal government because it went on used all we need to do a better job of doing outreach to the families that can qualify. And we don't have to look very far I mean there are other states that are getting this federal money and they're doing a good job of outreach. One of the ideas that Indiana has for their program. Is to assign families and kids up when they enroll in school in the fall. And so rather than having the applications that some state office for such a family has to go in and make a special trip that those applications are right

there where every family with kids has to register for school so that's one way where you can get a much greater percentage of the families that qualify involved in the program. If there is money still left over from that we can start to include some of the parents and these families in the health care coverage as well. What good does it do a kid if the parent is has a sickness or an illness that is going to be very costly and could financially cripple that family then the health and well-being of the kids is jeopardized as well. So there are ways that we can expand those programs and just use use up some of the money that the federal government is giving to us in a grant. On the other end one of the big issues in the presidential campaign has been. Can Should the federal government provide some coverage for prescription drugs for seniors. Something that you've also talked about trying to

do on the state level. How would them work. Well there's a bill that failed in the spring. That's called the Citizen the senior citizen drug discount program. And what it would do is enable the state to buy prescription drugs in bulk and then pass the savings on to seniors. The problem is that there are number of seniors that don't have any prescription drug coverage whatsoever. And I'm sure my opponent will tell you about the expansion of the circuit breaker program. Well that's for low income seniors and there are certain income levels if if you don't meet those income guidelines you don't get the benefits. And the statistics show that there are some 500000 seniors without coverage whatsoever. And for them if for $25 annual fee they could sign up for this program and get paid anywhere from 35 to 50 percent off the cost of their prescription drugs. And I've talked to seniors throughout the district and some of them are facing

monthly bills and prescription drugs of 2 3 $400 a month. And so $25 annual fee could literally save them hundreds of dollars. And when they're on fixed incomes it's something that's very significant to them. And. I was surprised when I first started talking to seniors about the high cost of prescription drugs earlier this summer I thought well some seniors are going to be affected but virtually every senior knows about the high cost of prescription drugs is taking some form of medication or has a spouse that's taking a form of medication or a friend. And it's something that every single senior recognizes is a problem. And so I think we need to do something about it. And now with the cost of the program be covered by the premiums that individuals would pay or it would does this also mean that the state's going to have to kick in additional money no the state should not have to kick and the additional money of the Monthly or the annual fee should cover the administrative costs and

all the savings in the cost of the prescription drugs comes through the strength of all purchasing it's the same kind of discount that pharmaceuticals give to a HMO is in large corporations. So it's the the same kind of concept. Now I suppose one concern that people might have would be that for example if you're in an HMO and you have some prescription drug coverage they have an approved formulary that is there's a list of drugs that they cover. And then if there are other drugs that you decide or your doctor decides that you have to take you may end up paying paying significantly more for that prescription is this going to be a thing where the state is going to have to get into deciding. It's not that we're going to cover any prescription any doctor could write but that it's only going to be a particular number of drugs and for example if you have high blood pressure we're going to say it will cover the these these four. But these other drugs and we can't get into that. No that's how the circuit breaker works in the circuit breaker covers prescription drugs

for I think six different illnesses. And this program would cover any prescription drug. So there wouldn't be a determination of does this particular drug qualify or is it for an illness that qualifies or what have you would be for any prescription drug for that senior. And how and I guess I just forgive me for just going on with this but I'm just wondering how such a program would exactly would work. The person has the prescription. They go to the pharmacist and who who basically. Where do they go to get their medication. They would go to the paperwork and so forth. They would go to their pharmacist the pharmacist would have to fill out the paperwork but there's you know there's a program that already takes place through the circuit breaker I mean there get the state of giving prescription drug relief for some prescriptions through the circuit breaker so it's very similar to the structure that's already set up for that. And so pharmacies participate the senior What bring in their card that

they get for paying their annual fee and then they would pay that discount when they show that card at the pharmacy. And then the pharmacist and the state would take care of the other bulk work. Our guest in this hour of focus 580 is Todd Satterthwaite he's running for the Illinois House in the 100 and 3rd District he is a Democrat. His opponent is the incumbent Republican Rick Winkle. He will be here on the program Thursday in the 10:00 o'clock hour to give you the same opportunity but this is your shot at asking questions there something that you'd want to call about something so important to you do that pick up the telephone and dial the number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. And I will give the just sort of out of habit here how give the toll free line that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. The one issue that certainly been discussed quite a bit here in the last couple of years in the state of Illinois is capital punishment. There currently is a moratorium on executions that was put into place by the governor.

His concern and others concern is that we want to make certain that people have an adequate defense and that if someone is convicted and sentenced to death that we should be as sure as we can be that this person is actually guilty and certainly we we want those people to have the resources to mount some defense setting aside the whole question of the death penalty I suppose some people would say well we should just get rid of it entirely. But if we're not going to do that then what do you think should be done. To the way that we try capital cases. Well I agree with some of the reforms that have been mentioned and making sure that anybody that is accused of a capital crime that they would have the proper representation I think part of these things goes back to the you know public defenders that you know maybe one year of experience or something like that are assigned these these capital cases.

So I think there ought to be some kind of standard for the type of representation that people who could be facing the death penalty should get. There needs to be some review. And I think that you know that that review needs to start now with the people that are on death row and make sure that they did get a fair trial that they did have proper representation that you know all of you know the whole trial was fair and that the representation was competent. And but I don't think that it's you know too much of a burden to be able to go back and and check on those cases and make sure that the person did get the right kind of trial. And when you think about this idea that if. If within various counties around the state and I guess this would apply not only to the defense but also to the prosecution. If one or the other side lacks the resources to have forensic work done have test done bring in expert witnesses that the

state will provide those resources do you think that that's an appropriate thing for the state to be doing. Yeah I think so. Some counties small counties may not have the resources to be able to do something like that. They're probably not going to be inordinate number of these cases so that it would be a huge financial burden on the state. And I think that you know the need for a fair and just trial exceeds the cost that it would. Be a nerd to the state. So I think that the state should set aside a little bit of money for those counties that can afford to provide the proper kind of representation and and to foot the expenses for a fair trial. Do you what about the death penalty itself. Do you have strong feelings one way or another about about the issue on that level whether or not we should have it or not have it. Well I favor the death penalty I know that there are certain crimes and certain people that have committed such heinous crimes that I don't believe

they should ever be let free in society again. And so in those cases I support the death penalty. On the other hand I do support the governor's moratorium on executions in the state of Illinois until we make sure that everyone that is on death row has had a fair and competent trial we have a caller here call happens to be in Chicago which will take but I again I just want to invite people who live in the 100 third district if you like to call and talk with our guest Todd Satterthwaite you can do that three three three W I L L or 9 4 5 5. And we also have the toll free line 800 1:58 W while there's a caller on our line number four in Chicago. Hello. Good morning you guys. Good. Good. I guess you can get it too. It didn't really you know one is about the crapshoot of cran necessarily has to be in order for a person to you know be put to death an innocent person's life is. To me is

as important as the F.T. the gruesomeness of a crime you know I think people sometimes react to a crime based upon that rather than taking the life of an innocent person. In my other question is about the tobacco where did tobacco settlement he said that the young people should. That's where the money should have gone instead of giving it back to the citizens who were affected directly you know by the tobacco companies. It was not the young kids who just want today but the key is who's spoken today because they have changed the way in which they do tobacco processing honestly. Well to answer the tobacco question. I think that you know the state has paid a price for the cost of smoking illnesses or illnesses caused by smoking. And I think that as a society if we want to reduce our overall costs we should have programs where we keep people young and old from smoking

and most of the research shows that that will have success in working with young people because that's when people pick up the habit and continue it into their adult years. So I would be in favor of having some of the money targeted for smoking prevention particularly for young people. As far as your other question about heinous I guess it's just a difference of opinion on what the word heinous means in any murder in my mind is is heinous and I guess some are more gruesome than others but I don't. You know certainly I think that that any murder meets meets that definition. Just I guess I want to make sure that we're clear up on what you what you said about using tobacco settlement money. You as I heard it you were saying education is important to try to keep young people from smoking but also that there were that we should be taking that money and also spending it on health

health programs generally but also to obviously to deal with the legacy of smoking so we would be talking about the health of people perhaps who had been smoking for a long time or admission to the idea that we'd like kids also not to smoke. Right right. And the plan that I supported was several areas smoking and tobacco control healthy communities for seniors healthy schools health infrastructure. You know so we're talking about a number of things and a lot of them go for you know runs the gamut anywhere from youth to seniors. So and everyone would see some benefit from these programs. Racial profiling is another issue that. The Tribune in their survey asked you about and people I think in many states are becoming more concerned about and the one of the basic questions people have is well does it happen or not and how can we find out and there are places where

they are what they require police to do is to keep track of the every every time they stop somebody and something about who that person is. So at least they can go back and say OK let's look at the number of stops and say you know how many people are African-American how many people are Asian-American How many blows me so that you can at least get some sense of whether or not that's going on with what you understand you'd think that we should have that we should be doing that in Illinois. We should be we should be keeping track of that kind of information. I think it's pretty easy to keep track of in fact in her banner we did something of this nature because you know we were asking the police officers we've seen you know the articles and other papers and magazines about profiling and just want to make darn sure that it's not happening here in Urbana. And so our police department crafted a very simple form it wasn't our regular report form but crafted a very simple form that they could fill out and traffic stops.

That did not otherwise generate. That information and you know was so we ran the the numbers for several months just to make sure that none of our officers for profiling and we know that this happens throughout the state. You know it may be more prevalent in some areas than others and it may be more prevalent with the particular officer. And that's the whole idea if you do find an officer that is profiling then you can address the problem directly. And you know I know a lot of law enforcement officials you know think that you know one more form to fill out is one too many but I think this is it's relatively simple and it's important enough so that we should address it. So you would favor a law that would say all for all law enforcement people in the state of Illinois. Every time a stop is made that information should be should be collected and recorded and that information should be available.

Well I don't know if we have the ability through a state law to do all that but certainly for the Illinois state police when they're doing a profiling or when they're doing traffic stops that we can mandate it of them and make sure that no profiling is going on. So and you think that the state wouldn't have that authority for over a municipal police department gosh I'm not sure I'd have to check on that. We have a little bit less than 10 minutes left with Todd Satterthwaite you have a question. Three three three wy a little toll free 800 1:58 doubly while one of the more controversial areas and one where I am sure you and Mr. Winkle would have strong disagreements have to do with guns and laws on guns how they should be regulated the issue of safety and and so forth. What sort of laws applying to guns and their owners do you think we should have. Well this is an issue that you know very dedicated to is increased gun safety. And I know that the entire nation

has been sensitized from you know headlines like Columbine to when we heard about the six year old up in Michigan bringing a gun to school and another six year old tragically killed. So I think there need to be some sensible gun storage laws that require gun owners in households where there are young people where they're minors to keep their guns stored safely be either with a trigger lock in a locked box a locked cabinet or some place that's inaccessible to those young people. And statistics have shown that in areas that do this that you get approximately 25 per cent drop and gun related accidents for young people. And you know I think that that it's essential that we have some commonsense gun storage laws so that we can keep these guns out of kids hands. You know one of the the statistics that I was going through some of the

material on this that was really striking to me is that there are 16000 kids every year that are disciplined for bringing a gun to school. And it's no wonder that we have all these school yard shootings when there are that many kids brand guns to school and it's not just you know out of our area. I was looking through the newspapers in the last two or three years there have been five instances right here in Champaign Urbana where kids have brought guns to Champaign Urbana schools. And we're just lucky that we haven't had a tragic accident with what some of those incidents. And that would be addressed by requiring people to keep their guns locked up. That would be right in households where there are children. Keep those guns inaccessible. Either some you know some gun owners break their gun down one that's stored at home so if they are hunters for instance so that it's in operable when it's at home. Others could have trigger locks others could have them locked in a cabinet or other some other place that's inaccessible to children.

I suppose that some gun owners in here I think the record of guns that we're really talking about these is handguns I don't know that we're really talking quite so much about about long guns rifles and shotguns although they may indeed be a problem. But that for people who have these kinds of guns have handguns many of them would say that they're the reason for having them is that is personal security. That is that they they feel the need to have that to protect their own safety and when you're when you're requiring them to keep a lock Iva keep them in a locked box keep a trigger lock on or maybe you would say that you should somehow keep the gun in the ammunition separate that that you're denying them the opportunity to exercise their right and use it for defense which is the reason that they that they got it in the first place. Well it doesn't take very much to be able to enable a weapon if you've got it stored in a place where you know it is it's relatively accessible to the adult that's responsible for it. I was talking to a gun owner the other

day and he was asking me about you know what I thought about gun safety and when I told him about you know sensible gun safety and houses where there are kids even though he's a gun owner and wanted his gun for exactly the purpose you're talking about his own protection he says that's a reasonable reasonable idea reasonable concept and so even gun owners know that they're responsible gun owners know that their weapons have to be stored safely in places where kids are around trying to get. We have a couple callers here at least one if not both. Champagne is here lie number one. Hello. To call there on line 1 in Champaign. Oh yes no yes we can go ahead. My question is whether or not the candidates support hate crimes legislation and if you do how we can rationally make a distinction between dragging dragging somebody behind a pickup truck because of their race as opposed to dragging someone behind a pickup truck because of their short fat rich poor male female or some other characteristic that wouldn't have to do

with someone. Protective question. Oh no. Well I suppose you know I hate crimes you know are something that that do happen most of the time when it's a hate crime it is because somebody is of a different color sexual orientation. What have you and I think it's generally pretty easy to tell whether it's a hate crime of hate or from some other reason. And so I do support hate crimes but I think this goes back again to some of the sensible gun control issues. When we had this community was a victim of a hate crime when Benjamin Smith last Fourth of July came through to state the shooting spree and he didn't kill anyone in here but it wasn't for lack of trying he shot a student over on Goodwin Avenue in Urbana merely because of his race. And if we have he got his gun not through a licensed dealer. In fact

he tried to get a gun through a licensed dealer and was turned down because of his background check he had evidently had some kind of violent history. But he went to a gun show and was able to get the weapon that was used in his shooting spree at a gun show. And so we need to tighten up those gun show loopholes so that irresponsible people people with criminal backgrounds or possible mental histories. That would make them dangerous. Can't get these dangerous weapons. And I think that's something that's absolutely essential. I think that for some people the question is they would say well if you if you commit assault if you murder somebody that's a crime. There is a penalty if you're found guilty you'll pay the penalty you'll you know go to jail. You might even be put to death. What does that accomplish. Adding an extra penalty. Because of the the ethnic background or the sexual orientation of the victim.

Well I think that part of it is education and there are some groups that just spout hate and. And there's a question of whether when they're spouting this hate They're also inciting people to cause these crimes. And I think if we have a definition of a hate crime then we get try to get to the cause the root cause which is some of these very prejudiced groups spewing hate and then almost inciting some of their members to go out and commit crimes and I think that's the difference. Well at that point I think we'll finish up for this time around we want to say thanks very much to our guest Todd said it's going from OK well thanks David it's been a pleasure being here.