SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Senate passed 68 expenses today while the House had actually advanced 284 since Friday early morning with hundreds more to precede their adjournment for the week.
It was the very first in a two-week stretch of legal due dates for expenses to move from one chamber to the other. While there are numerous procedural methods to restore an expense’s language after the due dates’ passage, the due dates mark a yearly turning point in the session’s last stretch.
Among the numerous expenses that passed today were a step prohibiting vaping inside your home and the development of a commission to think about a brand-new state flag.
Vaping restriction
A step prohibiting e-cigarette usage in public locations passed the Senate on a 48-5 vote.
It does so by including e-cigarettes and vapes to the Smoke Free Illinois Act of 2007, which restricted cigarette smoking in public and within 15 feet of entryways.
Senate Bill 1561 was sponsored by Rep. Julie Morrison, D-Lake Forest, who in 2019 was the lead sponsor on a law that increased the age to lawfully buy tobacco to 21.
Morrison said while the state has actually made development versus what she called a “tobacco epidemic,” however a current “surge” in vaping “has threatened that progress and lured more people toward a deadly addiction.”
Sen. Steve McClure, R-Springfield, supported the expense and called it a “bipartisan health issue.”
“I’m sick of walking around in bars and having somebody blow something right in my face,” McClure said. “You don’t even know what’s in the vaping device.”
Cat declawing restriction
One procedure that passed recently in the House, House Bill 1533, would make it unlawful to declaw a cat if the treatment is not clinically essential.
The procedure would likewise prohibit any other surgery that would “alter a cat’s toes, claws, or paws to prevent or impair the normal function of the cat’s toes, claws, or paws.”
Rep. Barbara Hernandez, D-Aurora, said as a cat owner she understands the sting of its claws. But she backed the procedure in addition to the Illinois Humane Society.
“The science is clear: cat declawing can cause serious enduring discomfort and loss of quality of life for cats,” Hernandez said in a declaration. “While this used to be common practice, science has shown us that this is a procedure that should only be done if medically vital, and it’s time our laws reflect reality.”
An individual carrying out such a treatment would go through a $500 fine from the Department of Agriculture for a very first infraction, $1,000 for a 2nd and $2,500 subsequent offenses.
New state flag?
The Senate on Thursday likewise advanced an expense to produce a commission that would think about styles for a brand-new state flag. The procedure sponsored by Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, handed down a 39-16 vote with Republicans’ primary issue being that legislators might be utilizing their time on more crucial problems.
“History is living, breathing and ever evolving,” Turner said. “We need to ensure government is evolving with the times so that people are engaged and a part of what is going on across the state.”
She said the procedure stimulated numerous calls from constituents that were delighted about the possibility of a redesign.
Senate Bill 1818 – a number that accompanies the year in which Illinois ended up being a state – would produce the Illinois Flag Commission to establish flag styles and make suggestions to the General Assembly for alternate styles and whether the state must keep its present flag.
The commission would be needed report its findings to the General Assembly by Dec. 3, 2024.
The present flag style portrays an Eagle set down on a rock and holding a banner with the words of the state slogan: “State Sovereignty, National Union.” In 1969, the word Illinois was contributed to the bottom of it.
The procedure heads to the House for factor to consider.
Felons as estate administrators
People with previous felony convictions would still be enabled to serve as administrator of somebody else’s estate under an expense that went through the Illinois House on Thursday.
Rep. Lakesia Collins, D-Chicago, said she sponsored House Bill 1268 in part due to the fact that when her sibling passed away, her daddy, who had a felony record, was not enabled to work as her administrator regardless of her sibling’s desires.
“It restores the dignity and honor to families throughout Illinois to carry out the last wishes and affairs of loved ones,” she said. “Family should be free to choose who takes on this sacred duty.”
The expense would permit founded guilty felons to work as administrators if the departed individual specifically names that individual in their will and acknowledges they understand the individual is a founded guilty felon. The administrator might still be disqualified if they have actually been founded guilty of monetary criminal activities or have actually been held civilly accountable for offenses versus elderly or handicapped people, or if they are not lawfully certified to serve as an administrator.
Several Republicans, nevertheless, argued that those securities were not enough. Rep. Jeff Keicher, R-Sycamore, said elderly individuals are regular targets for control and monetary abuse, typically at the hands of their own kids.
“My fear is that those unscrupulous children who are potentially convicted of financial crimes are now able to give their mother a guilt trip and be allowed to be an executor at the unfortunate result of leaving other siblings out,” he said.
Collins, nevertheless, said the expense would secure versus that sort of abuse. The expense passed 81-26 and now transfers to the Senate.
Rent control on mobile home parks
One expense that did not pass Thursday would have enabled towns to enforce lease control on mobile home lots.
Freshman Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, D-Justice, sponsored House Bill 3104 which would have taken made houses and made home neighborhoods from the state’s basic restriction on regional lease control procedures.
He said many individuals who reside in manufactured houses own the structure however lease the lot on which it sits.
“News stories left and right (are) showing that many of these homeowners are now paying $800, $900, $1,000 a month,” he said. “In my own district, homeowners who were paying $300 to$400 a month just a few a few years ago are now paying $879. Many of these are seniors on fixed incomes, and this is driving them out of their homes and they’re losing their homes as a result.”
More basic lease control procedures have actually been proposed recently, primarily by Chicago-location legislators worried about the increasing cost of real estate there. But they have all fulfilled intense opposition from groups representing homeowner and realty designers.
Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, said he feared that taking an exemption for the mobile home market would end up being a “slippery slope” to more comprehensive lease control statewide.
“And if it starts now in this limited area of isolation, it will continue to build and grow in the state of Illinois,” he said. “And we have seen and learned from other states and we’ve debated again and again in this chamber about how rent control is an ineffective public policy.”
The expense got just 53 “yes” votes, 7 less than the minimum number required for passage. But prior to that vote was formally tape-recorded, Rashid asked that factor to consider of the expense be delayed. That method it can stay on the calendar and Rashid can continue attempting to collect more assistance.
