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* Pretty decent summation by Politico…
Legislation we’re watching:
Elected school board in Chicago — SCOOP: Watch for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to propose her own take on the issue. This comes after Cook County Democrats endorsed Sen. Rob Martwick’s SB 2497, a bill in the General Assembly that would replace the city’s 7-member mayor-appointed school board with a 20-member elected body. The House has a similar version in HB 2908.
The budget and state’s finances: We won’t likely know until closer to the end of the session, May 31, how numbers will play out or to what extent programs will be cut, as Gov. J.B. Pritzker has indicated. Much will depend on how federal relief dollars will be spent.
Renewable energy: There are three bills focused on how to create a renewable energy marketplace and industry and whether it can be economically (and financially) feasible for nuclear power to be part of it. Watch for the bills to be pulled together into one piece of legislation.
Cannabis lottery: More than a year since cannabis has been legal in Illinois, lawmakers are trying to fix the process that would allow more Black and Latino business owners to be part of the industry. Rep. La Shawn Ford and others are working with the Pritzker administration to come up with legislation that will open up at least two lottery rounds for more dispensaries in Illinois.
Ethics: Rep. Kelly Burke is shepherding bills that will address ethics. The Ethics and Elections Committee is holding subject matter hearings on legislation with the goal of crafting an ethics omnibus bill. The next hearing is Tuesday.
Redistricting: Even though lawmakers don’t have final census data, they plan to use the most recent figures from 2019 to pull together maps that they could ideally just tweak in September when the final numbers come out. Republicans and some independent organizations have called for members of the public to draw the map, but critics of that idea, mainly Democrats who don’t want to lose control of the process, say that could also be fraught with problems.
* Bishop Michael McGovern, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, writing in the Belleville News-Democrat…
Currently, the law of the State of Illinois requires that when a minor girl seeks to have an abortion a parent or guardian must be notified 48 hours before the procedure.
This is a common-sense law that enjoys wide support among residents who fall on both sides of the abortion debate, and for obvious reasons: most reasonable people agree that parents have a right to know if irreversible surgery is going to be performed on their minor daughters.
But now, the Illinois General Assembly is considering two bills, House Bill 1797 and Senate Bill 2190, that, if enacted as law, would repeal our Parental Notification of Abortion Act, allowing an abortion provider to perform an abortion on a minor without her parents’ knowledge.
Enacting such a law would undermine families by separating children from the care, guidance and emotional support of parents. The repeal of the current law would also increase danger for minor girls.
Reputable studies of human sex trafficking patterns indicate that states that have no parental involvement laws for abortion make it possible for an adult male to take a teenage victim of abuse or trafficking to an abortion clinic in the hopes of erasing the evidence of his abuse.
The research he referred to was from Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council.
* There was no subcommittee vote on the bill…
Illinois lawmakers are looking at ways to change their state’s biometric privacy law after complaints from businesses and hundreds of lawsuits.
Members of the Senate Judiciary’s subcommittee on privacy met Monday to hear arguments on Senate Bill 300.
Sponsored by Sen. Jason Barickman, R-Bloomington, the bill would give an entity 30 days to correct a potential infraction of the Biometric Information Privacy Act before a person could file a lawsuit against them unless there was a breach of the information. It would also give legal protection to companies that store biometric information in the form of algorithms. If accessed by a hacker, those groups of numbers would be meaningless, said Clark Kaericher, vice president of government affairs at the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.
“You can take a fingerprint scan and store it as a sequence of meaningless numbers,” he said. “We should encourage companies to do that.”
* This bill made it out of committee (along with hundreds of others) and is now on Second Reading…
State Rep. LaShawn Ford (D-Chicago) has proposed the creation of safe consumption rooms — also referred to as supervised injection facilities. Proponents of similar programs around the world argue they allow people who suffer from addiction to take substances in a safe environment and reduce the likelihood of fatal overdoses.
“We know that not meeting people where they’re at to provide the support that they need to end the struggle of a substance use disorder only harms the community with loose needles [and] only harms families with preventable drug overdoses,” Ford said.
Currently, such facilities are illegal in the United States and only exist in Canada, Australia, and 10 countries in Europe. Like other legalized injection programs around the world, Ford’s proposal would not stipulate that facilities provide illegal drugs, but rather allow patients to bring in their own supply of drugs that they buy off the street.
* This bill is also out of committee and on the House floor…
A proposal to expand the state’s legal definition of infertility is gaining momentum in the statehouse.
Current state law defines infertility as “the inability to conceive after one year of unprotected sexual intercourse, the inability to conceive after one year of attempts to produce conception, the inability to conceive after an individual is diagnosed with a condition affecting fertility, or the inability to sustain a successful pregnancy.”
“Obviously, by that definition, we are leaving out a huge portion of people who want to be parents,” Rep. Margaret Croke (D-Chicago) said on Capitol Connection. “That includes single women, LGBTQ couples, and also women who have issues too.”
“What I’m trying to do with this mandate is make sure that it doesn’t discriminate against people who do want to become parents,” she said.
* Related…
* Illinois businesses looking for limited COVID-19 liability as bills stall in committee
posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 3:02 pm
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“You can take a fingerprint scan and store it as a sequence of meaningless numbers,” he said. “We should encourage companies to do that.”
Explain to me why we should we be encouraging companies to collect our biometric data without our consent, and reducing the penalties when they do.
Comment by TheInvisibleMan Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 3:23 pm
===collect our biometric data without our consent===
I have a video doorbell. I would like it to tell me who is at the door, so I know if it is a stranger or my family. It can do that in 49 states. It cannot do that in Illinois.
At a minimum, the law should be scoped more narrowly to cover actual biometrics like retina scans, fingerprints, and DNA. A selfie plus some math should not be treated as biometrics. Image processing is a super useful innovation behind all sorts of innovations from self-driving cars to Zoom virtual backgrounds. Heck, I can search my Google Photos for every picture of a cat, but my doorbell announcing that grandma is at the door is currently breaking the law.
===by that definition, we are leaving out a huge portion of people who want to be parents===
As someone who struggled with infertility to have my child, this is less of an issue with the definition and more of an issue with the laws that use that term. You are not infertile because you are single. You are not infertile because your partner has the same XX or XY chromosomes as you. You are infertile when your biology should allow you to naturally produce a child with your partner but those efforts have been unsuccessful.
That is not to say that laws could not be inclusive to single women and LGBTQ couples to support their efforts to be parents. However, that can be done by including them directly in the laws that provide that support, not by calling them infertile.
Comment by thechampaignlife Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 3:51 pm
There’s no reason Chicago needs an elected school board with 3X the number of Los Angeles’ school board.
Comment by lake county democrat Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 4:00 pm
All the evidence suggest that Illinois’ forced abortion notice law hurts the very people it’s supposed to help. The vast majority of kids considering an abortion report it to a parent or guardian anyway. The minority who don’t are afraid of abuse or being kicked out of the home. The current law forces them to navigate an intimidating court procedure called judicial bypass. Those without the resources to handle that process face the daunting choice of informing hostile family members of their plans and risking the fallout, or carrying the pregnancy to term regardless of whether they’re mentally, emotionally, physically, or financially prepared for the consequences. Of course, the latter is exactly what proponents of the law want.
Comment by Quibbler Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 4:34 pm
“It would also give legal protection to companies that store biometric information in the form of algorithms. If accessed by a hacker, those groups of numbers would be meaningless”
It’s called encryption, and encryption can still be cracked. It’s more difficult but not impossible. There is no perfect security system. If a company chooses to store biometric information, encrypted or not, that is then compromised in a breech, they absolutely should be responsible. This is a bad bill.
Comment by Steve Polite Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 4:39 pm
I’m for an elected schoolboard but 20 people is absolutely ridiculous. 5-10 at the most imo.
Comment by oh my Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 5:21 pm
The elected school board with 20 members will just become another tool of the CTU, the inmates will be running the asylum as it were. God hopes we get it down to something manageable. Oh my is right, 5-10 seems much more reasonable.
The parental notification act is ridiculous. I’m catholic, but at this point you have to recognize that every catholic objection to abortion is rooted in the fact that the church just wants the whole thing banned. Calling the Family Research Council “reputable” is so unbelievable it sounds like a bad joke.
Comment by Young but not dumb Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 5:26 pm
The problem with Bishop Michael McGovern, his fellow bishops / cardinals, and the Family Research Council is they think Josef Fritzl is as fictional as Margaret White.
Comment by Anyone Remember Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 7:14 pm
==“You can take a fingerprint scan and store it as a sequence of meaningless numbers,” he said. “We should encourage companies to do that.”==
And you can take those meaningless numbers and restore it back to the fingerprint scan again. Do you think we were born yesterday?
Comment by Fly like an eagle Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 8:28 pm
== Reputable studies of human sex trafficking patterns indicate that states that have no parental involvement laws for abortion make it possible for an adult male to take a teenage victim of abuse or trafficking to an abortion clinic in the hopes of erasing the evidence of his abuse.==
50% of trafficking victims are trafficked by their own family and usually the mother.
https://faceitabuse.org/2020/01/09/familial-sex-trafficking-victims-hiding-in-plain-sight/==
Comment by Sling Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 8:48 pm
Article says 3 Renewable Energy | Nuc Bills out there. Anybody know the Bill Numbers.
Thoughts on viability?
Comment by Joe Tuesday, Apr 13, 21 @ 11:49 pm
Judicial bypass could take as much as 2 weeks to get an attorney, file the petition, get a hearing in front of a judge, and then get the judge’s ruling, (hoping you do not get a anti-abortion judge), then reschedule the abortion procedure. If you have to appeal the judge’s decision, forget it. You are likely too late to get the abortion by then.
Comment by wallace markfield Wednesday, Apr 14, 21 @ 7:51 am
Judicial bypass is not a solution, it is a delaying tactic. Judicial bypass could take as much as 2 weeks to get an attorney, file the petition, get a hearing in front of a judge, and then get the judge’s ruling, (hoping you do not get a anti-abortion judge), then reschedule the abortion procedure. If you have to appeal the judge’s decision, forget it. You are likely too late to get the abortion by then.
Comment by wallace markfield Wednesday, Apr 14, 21 @ 7:52 am