For the first time in a more than a decade, the governor’s office and the Illinois General Assembly are controlled by two different parties, which will make for an exciting and entertaining legislative session. There is no shortage of contentious issues for the legislature to take up. Here are a few bills to watch.
Policing
Criminal justice is sure to be a hot topic this legislative session. Several bills have been introduced on police conduct when dealing with the public – especially minorities. High-profile incidents like the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the choking death of Eric Garner in New York have put a spotlight on police and minority issues that the legislature is likely to address.
Illinois doesn’t have any emblematic cases of police violence like Eric Garner’s, but it is still a costly problem. The City of Rockford recently paid out $1.1 million in a settlement with the family of an unarmed black man shot and killed by police at a daycare in front of children in 2009. An investigation by the Better Government Association (BGA) found that police misconduct cost the City of Chicago more than $500 million in damages and legal fees.
Some of the bills under consideration by the legislature speak directly to the concerns raised by cases like Garner’s. Senate Bill 65, dubbed the Reasonable Use of Force Act, is a ban on chokeholds by police officers or private contractors, unless deadly force is justified. House Bill 221 would require police departments to have a written policy for investigating officer-related deaths. It allows for internal investigations by departments but requires the results of investigations be made public if no charges are filed.
“Unlike bureaucratic functions, cops and courts involve life-and-death decisions,” Andy Shaw, president of the watchdog BGA wrote in a blog post on Ferguson. “So they have to be watched even more closely.”
Two bills in the House deal with police sensitivity, requiring officers to take courses on human and civil rights. Other bills in the House revoke police authority to use red light cameras, which have been the subject of investigations in Chicago, and change possession of up to 30 grams of marijuana to a petty crime, involving a $100 fine rather than jail time.
Labor
There are multiple bills to raise the minimum wage in Illinois, although they would go about it in different ways. The Senate has a bill much like the one approved by the Senate during the veto session last year which would have raised the wage incrementally, eventually ending at $11 per hour in July 2019. At $8.25 currently, Illinois has a higher minimum wage than any of its neighboring states.
Last year’s bill did not come up for a vote in the House. At that point, Chicago had already passed a raise in its minimum wage to $13 per hour by 2019, but the Senate bill would not have allowed for any further raises by local governments. The new version, Senate Bill 11, contains an exemption for Chicago, but the rest of the state would have to use the state minimum wage. It also includes a tax credit for employers. Gov. Bruce Rauner has publicly said that he would support a minimum wage increase, but only if it is coupled with pro-business reforms.
A minimum wage bill in the House takes a more direct – and less likely to pass – approach. House Bill 124 would simply raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour in October 2015. It doesn’t say anything about Chicago’s minimum wage, and it doesn’t have any pro-business extras to attract bipartisan support. The voters who elected Bruce Rauner also showed approval of a minimum wage increase, but only to $11, like in the Senate bill. Many in the national “living wage” movement might appreciate the House’s minimum wage bill, but it doesn’t seem likely to pass the legislature or get the governor’s signature.
An unrelated pension bill in the House would create a third tier of pensions that all new state employees hired after July 1 would be enrolled in. Under House Bill 134, benefits in the new pension system would be subject to increase or decrease based on the investment earnings of the state’s pension funds. The Illinois Constitution prohibits pension benefits from being “diminished or impaired,” and that language is at play in a major case before the Illinois Supreme Court in March. The question is whether this bill, if passed, would also be challenged in court. And would any such challenge come right away or years later when those new employees reach retirement age?
Contact Alan Kozeluh at intern@illinoistimes.com.
**Bookmark this page to see which bills Alan is following this session.**
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2015.
