Politics
From Gun Control to Public Transit Rescue, A Look at What Didn’t Pass the Illinois General Assembly This Spring
Video: The WTTW News Spotlight Politics team discusses the General Assembly’s spring session and more of the day’s top stories. (Produced by Andrea Guthmann)
Illinois legislators passed 469 measures this year.
The bulk of those items will likely become law, pending action from Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
“There were lots of things that didn’t make it to the finish line,” Pritzker said at a Springfield news conference last week, hours after the Illinois House adjourned for the summer. “As far as I’m concerned, everything that was a priority for me, if you look back at the things I talked about putting in my budget — my budget address — all of the priorities that I put in got passed.”
But in some cases, what lawmakers left on the table — whether due to ongoing negotiations, political sensitivities or unsatisfied concerns — is equally significant as what passed.
Here’s a list of notable measures that aren’t on their way to Pritzker’s desk.
Karina’s Bill & Gun Control
Advocates who say lives are on the line are hoping Karina’s Bill — named in honor of a Chicago mother shot and killed after getting an order of protection from her abuser — will have a chance come fall.
A judge who grants an order of protection can revoke an abusers’ Firearm Owners Identification card, meaning the individual can no longer legally have a gun.
But that doesn’t mean that person actually gives up their firearms.
Karina’s Bill would require the judicial system and sheriffs and police to take steps to temporarily take guns away from people under relevant restraining orders.
Read More: Advocates Urge Illinois Lawmakers to Pass ‘Karina’s Bill’ to Take Away Guns From Accused Abusers
Some members of law enforcement are on board, though others have raised both concerns about the safety of officers tasked with stripping people of their guns and questions about how and where those firearms should be stored.
Pritzker in April also indicated reservations.
Gun control and domestic violence organizations are upset the measure stalled, with the Gun Violence Prevention PAC (G-PAC) saying it will take that into consideration when it makes endorsements for the upcoming election.
“The General Assembly concluded its spring session without acting on any gun safety measures. This is unacceptable,” G-PAC president Kathleen Sances said. “I join with over 200 organizations of the Illinois Gun Violence Prevention Coalition in expressing our disappointment that lawmakers did not pass Karina’s Bill to remove firearms from known abusers once an order of protection has been filed. Our laws should work to protect survivors and their safety – not the rights of their abusers.”
Other unsuccessful gun control measures would have banned firearms from all polling places and put in place stricter gun storage requirements.
Prisoner Release Hearings
The March killing of Jayden Perkins, an 11-year-old Chicago boy who was trying to save his pregnant mother from alleged attacker Crosetti Brand, has turned the spotlight on Illinois’ Prisoner Review Board, the state body charged with deciding when a prisoner can be released on parole.
Following pushback from Pritzker, a legislative bid to make the board more transparent and to mandate additional training for board members stalled.
Brand, a felon, was initially released from prison in February but got sent back for threatening Jayden’s mom — who had an order of protection against Brand and sought legal protection from him — but the board determined that parole violation wasn’t enough to keep him behind bars.
Authorities said Brand murdered Perkins the very next day.
A Prisoner Review Board reform package (House Bill 681) cleared the state Senate last month with no opposition, and it garnered 70 sponsors in the House — that’s more than the 60 votes needed to pass a bill and just one away from reaching a veto-proof majority.
Sponsors never got the chance; the House adjourned before the bill was called for a vote.
A spokeswoman for House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch said there wasn’t time on the final day of session, when the House debated the budget until nearly 5 a.m.
The lead sponsor, state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, said the lack of action “after the horrifying murder of Jayden Perkins is more than disappointing — it’s a disgrace.”
“Given that we know that Laterria Smith’s struggle to be taken seriously in her quest for protection by our criminal legal system is actually unbearably common, we as leaders and lawmakers had an obligation to take action,” Cassidy said in a statement. “Instead, we abandoned victims, once again.”
Following the General Assembly’s adjournment, Pritzker told reporters that changes like domestic violence training for Prisoner Review Board members were already happening, and that he wasn’t opposed to the entire bill, but some aspects of it were “unacceptable.”
“It’s about what’s actually possible, what’s doable,” Pritzker said. “And also funding. There was no funding for any of the things that they suggested that we should do.”
Changes made by the measure include mandated domestic violence training for board members, giving victims a 30-day notice and opportunity comment before a prisoner or parolee’s release, mandatory reports on whether parolees meet the conditions of their release and checks run by law enforcement to heighten searches for whether a parolee has done something to breach release terms.
It also called for a task force to greater examine the system.
Cassidy said Pritzker’s concerns could have been resolved through that task force.
“We should be convening that task force this summer and doing the detailed work that two weeks at the end of session can’t accomplish,” Cassidy said. “Instead, we have to wait until we reconvene in the fall to try again to make meaningful and lasting change that will actually make us safer. I urge our leaders to prove to victims and survivors that those were not just empty platitudes.”
Public Transit Rescue
Chicago-area mass transportation agencies are driving toward a $730 million future fiscal cliff and are looking to Springfield for revitalization and a financial assist.
The issue gained traction when a pair of Democratic legislators introduced measures (House Bill 5829 / Senate Bill 3926) to combine the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace into a combined Metropolitan Mobility Authority.
Missing from the bill? A source of money to beef up the combined transit system.
Trains and buses are edging closer to the fiscal cliff, with COVID-19 funding set to drop off come 2026.
For now, legislators and the governor are riding it out.
That the merger bill stalled wasn’t an end-of-session surprise. Pritzker had put a damper on it May 17 during a question-and-answer session for the City Club of Chicago.
“It’s not going to go anywhere right now,” the governor said of the plan.
Pritzker said he’s looking to the public transit agencies to come up with their own plan, including overhauls of fare systems, schedules, routes and more.
Pension Funding & Retooling Benefits for New Employees
As the governor said, Pritzker’s priorities passed.
But there’s an exception when it comes to pensions.
Illinois’ pension systems are clawing back from historic underfunding, and a law passed in 1995 laid out a path to get them nearly up to par over the next 50 years, such that retirement funds for state workers, elected officials, judges, teachers and university employees would reach a 90% funding ratio by 2045.
During his February budget address, the governor touted a blueprint that made credit ratings analysts grin.
By stretching out the payments for a few more years, Pritzker moved the goal to 100% funding by 2048.
Meanwhile, unions and others are looking to the state for a different pension fix, which they allege is needed to address flaws with a 2010 state law intended to reduce the pension systems’ underfunding from the other end — by reducing benefits.
State, university and public school teachers hired in 2011 and after receive lesser, or Tier 2, pension benefits compared with what the state promised to those hired before that date.
Critics say Illinois was too skimpy, possibly in breach of a federal requirement that retirement plans that replace Social Security — like Illinois’ pension plan — have to at least match what retirees would receive from Social Security.
Legislators adjourned in late May without material action on either the funding schedule revamp or enlarging Tier 2 benefits.
But neither idea is dead.
Sources with knowledge of private meetings between the governor and legislative leaders said they agreed to get serious about Pritzker’s pension ramp stretch before the General Assembly adjourns for good — meaning it could come up in a post-election veto session this fall, or in January before the next General Assembly convenes.
Illinois’ constitution has an iron-clad protection against diminishment of pensions earned by public employees.
CPS Closure Moratorium & Selective Enrollment Protections
When Mayor Brandon Johnson traveled to the statehouse in early May, the Senate’s executive committee took action that was seen as a snub.
The committee advanced legislation opposed by Johnson, as it would hamstring his hand-picked school board from adjusting Chicago Public Schools budgets in a way that would disproportionately defund selective enrollment schools.
The measure (House Bill 303), which would also forbid CPS from closing any schools — including charter schools — until a fully elected school board is in place in 2027, had previously passed the House, with Welch on board as a co-sponsor.
But by May’s end, Senate President Don Harmon reversed the snub.
He did Johnson a favor by not calling the bill for a vote in the chamber.
Harmon told the Chicago Tribune that Johnson promised he would not close or severely restrict funding for selective enrollment schools, and Harmon said he took the mayor at his word.
It’s a win for Johnson and his Chicago Teachers Union allies, but the move leaves skeptics uneasy that selective enrollment schools will backtrack as Johnson’s school board seeks to send more money toward neighborhood schools.
Elimination of the Subminimum Wage
Following a yearslong phase-in, Illinois is on track to reach a $15 statewide minimum wage in January.
For this year, the minimum wage is $14 per hour.
But there are caveats and exceptions.
Employers can pay tipped workers 40% less — or $8.40 per hour — if the employees, such as restaurant servers, receive enough tips to get them to the $14 minimum. The Chicago City Council this year voted to eliminate the subminimum wage, and a measure (House Bill 5345) that made it out of a House labor committee would require restaurants to pay wait staff the full minimum wage. Any tips would be gravy on top of a regular paycheck.
But advocates with the One Fair Wage campaign acknowledged during the legislative session’s final days that it wasn’t going to happen this spring, and said they’ll continue working for future passage.
Meanwhile, Illinois also permits employers to take advantage of an exemption in federal law that allows certified businesses to pay employees with disabilities a “commensurate wage” aligned with their skill level, which can be significantly less than the minimum wage.
Advocates say the 14(c) certificates allow rehabilitation centers and charitable organizations to provide therapeutic activities and skills training to individuals ill equipped for traditional jobs, but critics say the exception is dated and disrespectful to people with disabilities.
After spirited debate, members of the Illinois House on May 23 passed a measure (House Bill 793) that would phase out the 14(c) certificates so that come 2030 people who have disabilities and are taking part in work programs would have to be paid the full minimum wage.
The Senate, however, did not take up the measure.
Hemp Regulation
(House Bill 4293, Senate Bill 3790, House Bill 5306)
Synthetic weed and hemp-derived products sometimes referred to as delta-8 bear a lot of similarities to marijuana with some major exceptions: They’re supposed to be much lower in THC and therefore pack less of a psychoactive punch, and they’re largely unregulated. By contrast, Illinois mandates strict oversight of marijuana, or cannabis.
The lack of regulation has led to safety concerns, with questions about the chemical makeup and potency of hemp products sold at specialty vape shops and gas stations alike. The cannabis industry also complains there’s an unlevel playing field.
Hemp and cannabis business owners want Illinois to get involved, but the two industries can’t agree on how far regulation should go.
For at least the second year, legislators went home without taking final action to resolve the stalemate.
“We are disappointed the House failed to pass needed reforms to our state’s cannabis laws and will continue to allow synthetic hemp products that are sickening children and adults to be sold with no oversight,” Tiffany Chappell Ingram, director of the Cannabis Business Association of Illinois, said in a statement. “Despite overwhelming bipartisan support for these measures in the Senate, there is clearly more work to do to educate legislators about these important matters.”
Pritzker, who had made legalizing marijuana and using the awarding of cannabis licenses as a form of redress to people of color and others harmed by the war on drugs, is taking a hands-off approach when it comes to competition from hemp.
Cannabis Changes
Sought-after changes by members of Illinois’ legal recreational marijuana industry stalled.
A measure that advanced in the Senate, but that didn’t receive a vote in the House, would have allotted craft cannabis growers more space and permitted cannabis customers to pick up their orders curbside or in a dispensary drive-through.
A version of the proposal would also have allowed medical marijuana consumers to buy cannabis from any dispensary, not just those that specifically are licensed to serve patients.
A coalition of cannabis groups, including those that support businesses that received state social equity licenses, accuse one of the multi-state giants of the industry of blocking the bill.
“The Illinois House leadership ignored the efforts of many of their colleagues, as well as our work, and the entire Illinois cannabis community, by not calling the bill for a vote at all,” the coalition (which includes Chicago NORML, the Illinois Minority Cannabis Business Organization, Illinois Women in Cannabis and other groups) said in a statement released Tuesday, adding the impact of the inaction will “harm medical patients and mean that Social Equity businesses like dispensaries, Craft Growers, and Transporters will be denied critically needed relief.”
Critics said the omnibus left out items on the wish list, like allowing cannabis delivery to customers’ doors.
Contact Amanda Vinicky: @AmandaVinicky | [email protected]
