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Reporting that got results

Monday, May 16, 2022 - Posted by Rich Miller

* CBS 2

Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday signed legislation that will give drivers greater protection from unscrupulous towing companies.

The legislation was an amendment to Illinois House Bill 3124. It calls for a “tow rotation list,” in which essentially, police agencies will call an approved list of tow companies whenever there’s an accident.

If a random tow driver pulls up on the scene and wasn’t requested by the owner of the car or officer, they will not be authorized to tow the vehicle.

The legislation requires any towing service working within the jurisdiction of a given police agency to submit an application for inclusion on that police agency’s tow rotation list.

Tow drivers will also need to go through background checks, insurance, and licensing.

This was a direct result of the CBS 2 investigators’ reporting on the issue.

For years, the CBS 2 Investigators have exposed how private tow companies would deliberately hold vehicles. We uncovered in six months how one tow company racked up $150,000 with just 54 invoices.

* ProPublica

[Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza] has banned local governments from using a state program to collect debt from students who have been ticketed for truancy, eliminating a burden for families struggling to pay steep fines.

A number of school districts around the state, meanwhile, have begun to scale back and reevaluate when to involve law enforcement in student discipline, among them a suburban Chicago high school where Black students have been disproportionately ticketed. That school, Bloom Trail High School in Steger, said Thursday that it will stop asking police to ticket students and move to other methods of discipline.

The moves come after an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica, “The Price Kids Pay,” found that school officials and police were working together to ticket students for misbehavior at school, resulting in fines that could cost hundreds of dollars per ticket. When students or their families failed to pay, local governments sometimes turned to the state for help collecting the money.

The state told municipalities that beginning June 11 they no longer may submit truancy ticket debt for collections, according to an email from the Illinois comptroller’s office to municipalities that participate in the state’s Local Debt Recovery Program. Through that program, the state helps local governments collect on unpaid penalties for ordinance violations, unpaid water and sewer bills and other municipal debts by withholding money from people’s tax refunds, their lottery winnings or even their paychecks if they are state employees.

       

9 Comments
  1. - PublicServant - Monday, May 16, 22 @ 11:35 am:

    The Overnight parking ban in Chicago is also a big scam with the city in cahoots with the towing firms. How about issuing tickets during the first day of the parking ban instead of a tow?


  2. - MisterJayEm - Monday, May 16, 22 @ 12:34 pm:

    “Tow drivers will also need to go through background checks, insurance, and licensing.”

    It’s stunning that all of this wasn’t required previously.

    – MrJM


  3. - Commonsense in Illinois - Monday, May 16, 22 @ 12:36 pm:

    Does the Local Debt Recovery Program (enacting bill) authorize the Comptroller to choose which local debts the office will and will not collect? If not, under what authority is the Comptroller acting?


  4. - Hill climber - Monday, May 16, 22 @ 1:05 pm:

    - MisterJayEm - Monday, May 16, 22 @ 12:34 pm:

    “Tow drivers will also need to go through background checks, insurance, and licensing.”

    It’s stunning that all of this wasn’t required previously.

    It kinda is already. The bill is pretty much Isp tow policy, which is where I suspect most of the bill was copy and pasted from.


  5. - Nearly Normal - Monday, May 16, 22 @ 2:19 pm:

    Good on both counts.


  6. - Cheryl44 - Monday, May 16, 22 @ 2:49 pm:

    Now I have “Lincoln Park Pirates” playing in my head.


  7. - prairepolice - Monday, May 16, 22 @ 2:53 pm:

    This must be a Cook County thing…. In Champaign County tows are done by the dispatch system going on a rotational list that is vetted by the Cities with minimum requirements…


  8. - cermak_rd - Monday, May 16, 22 @ 3:10 pm:

    I would think since Comptroller is a constitutional office of its own, it would still have the power to set its own rules. And I’m not sure the leg has the right to significantly alter another constitutional officer’s powers.


  9. - Commonsense in Illinois - Tuesday, May 17, 22 @ 1:26 pm:

    @cermak_rd

    And you would be wrong. The powers and duties of any constitutional officer not established by the Constitution are set forth in the statute. Only the General Assembly may pass legislative proposals which with agreement with the Governor become statutes. If a constitutional officer requests some specific legislation, it goes to the General Assembly…same as budget requests. So while the Comptroller indeed has authority to establish rulemaking, he/she may only do so in compliance with the statute (hence my question).


Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.


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