It’s just a bill
Tuesday, Feb 19, 2019 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Rep. Monica Bristow’s (D-Alton) HB3560…
Provides that, after a home-schooling registration form is submitted, the State Board of Education must request a Child Protective Service Unit of the Department of Children and Family Services to investigate the home in which the home schooling will occur to ensure there is no suspected child abuse or neglect in the home…
You just knew what would happen next.
* Illinois Review…
As soon as word of HB 3560 hit social media, homeschoolers networked and began efforts to call and email the state rep. Within hours Saturday morning, the Illinois Family Institute posted on their Facebook page that Rep. Bristow agreed to withdraw the proposal.
Bills cannot be withdrawn, but she did move to table it today.
* Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi…
Achieve predictable, fair and transparent assessments by requiring property owners to submit basic rent and real estate operating income information at the start of the assessment process.
This would require a legislative change: the passing of H.B. 2217, a bill sponsored by House Assistant Majority Leader Will Davis and Senate Revenue Chair Toi Hutchinson, with co-sponsors from leaders in both houses of the General Assembly. H.B. 2217 would give the Cook County Assessor’s Office—and other Illinois counties that choose to opt in—the ability to require owners of income-earning properties to disclose basic rent, real estate income, and expense information. Those who do not comply would be subject to a fine.
Many smaller properties are exempted, including commercial properties with a market value under $400,000; and residential properties with six or fewer units, or with a market value under $1 million.
Currently, income and expense information is required at the point of appeal. The Board of Review takes in this data and uses it to determine a property’s value, one appeal at a time.
The Assessor’s Office is in the business of mass appraisal. If we were equipped to require this data up front, at the start of the assessment process, we would be able to determine market-level rents for every part of the County.
* And…
An Illinois advocacy group is pushing legislation it says would bring $50 million in new money to state mental health services over the next four years.
According to the Illinois Coalition for Better Mental Health Care, more than 2.5 million Illinoisans have a mental health condition.
But the state ranks only 38th in the nation for mental health investment, while 82 of its 102 counties are designated as mental health professional shortage areas by the federal government.
Two lawmakers, Rep. Deb Conroy (D-Villa Park) and Sen. Heather Steans (D-Chicago), are sponsoring legislation – House Bill 2486 and Senate Bill 1673 – that would ramp up state mental health funding and change the funding structure to incentivize good results over flat service fees. […]
Without specific funding plans, the bills more or less just lay groundwork for the new funding and changed payment methods.
- Steve - Tuesday, Feb 19, 19 @ 12:22 pm:
It’s odd that Monica Bristow would pick on homeschooling. It’s the government run schools that are having pensions problems. CPS is having to deal with a sexual assault problem. Homeschooling : where nobody gets raped.
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Feb 19, 19 @ 12:25 pm:
Absent specific, credible complaints within their purview about a home school, DCFS has enough on their plates right now.
Was that some kind of fetcher bill? What was it fetching? Was it meant to just test reaction?
- qualified someone nobody sent - Tuesday, Feb 19, 19 @ 12:31 pm:
Researching market rents was a primary function of the CCAO’s office prior to Berrios takeover. Cutting 150 front line employees in 8 years while NOT doing the basic information gathering requirements prior to valuing property was a dereliction of duty by Berrios and Preckwinkle. easy to get the tax bills out on time when the CCAO isn’t doing a primary function of proper valuation. This bill puts the onus on property owners INSTEAD of the CCAO to gather information. How about restoring some of the cut positions and filling out the bare bones staff left to do the job? Inspector Generals office found gross understaffing in the residential valuations and residential field departments yet NO POSTINGS? No one promoted in these two departments to replace 8 years of retirees either! Staffing, not a further burden for property tax payers, is the real issue here; HIRE SOME PEOPLE!
- Anon - Tuesday, Feb 19, 19 @ 12:32 pm:
“Patriotic Millionaires” is a joke, right? That sounds like a DSA-created parody of a “progressive” 1%-er group.
- ike - Tuesday, Feb 19, 19 @ 12:40 pm:
Steve - what?
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Feb 19, 19 @ 12:41 pm:
–Homeschooling : where nobody gets raped.–
Twenty seconds on a google search would have disabused you of such a ridiculous blanket statement. Here’s a shocker. Not all sexually abusive parents/guardians send their kids to school.
Did you think you were being funny?
- A guy - Tuesday, Feb 19, 19 @ 1:07 pm:
With the current make-up of the GA in both chambers and the executive branch, I’m not sure of whether “It’s just a bill” has the same meaning as it used to.
- Mama - Tuesday, Feb 19, 19 @ 5:09 pm:
Remember the big abuse case in CA where the parents where supposedly home schooling their kids, but in reality, their children were being terribly abused. That is the reason for this law.
Why would the parents object to the State investigating their home or possible child abuse - if no child abuse or neglect is happening in the home?
- Dr. Humphrey - Wednesday, Feb 20, 19 @ 5:24 pm:
As a psychologist who has conducted thousands of court-ordered evaluations in child abuse and neglect cases over the past 24 years, my concern is that such an investigation opens up home schooling parents to intrusive and unfair scrutiny in the absence of any good faith belief that abuse or neglect have occurred. Every family has a fly in their soup, and for homeschooling families, this fly might be magnified and exaggerated without any initial report or claim of abuse or neglect.I would not necessarily be opposed to legislation that required certain criteria to be met, but these criteria should not be assessed by a child protection agency.