The Illinois General Assembly’s spring legislative session ended in last-minute drama as Democrats barely eked out enough votes to pass a package of tax hikes that mostly affect gambling operations and corporations.
But lawmakers in the final days also sent a number of other bills to Gov. J.B. Pritzker that will directly affect the state’s residents and communities. And, during the course of the four-month session they approved some less significant measures, among them a bill designating Calvatia Gigantea, colloquially known as the Giant Puffball, as the state mushroom.
Here’s are some of the bills heading to the governor’s desk:
Mobile state IDs
Residents would be able to keep digitial versions of their driver’s licenses and other state IDs in their cellphones under legislation pushed by Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias.
“Whether it’s offering more services online, reducing wait times at DMVs or introducing products like digital driver’s licenses, we want to leverage new secure technology to better serve our customers,” Giannoulias said in an interview shortly before the Senate passed the measure in a 58-0 vote last week. It also passed in the House without any opposition.
Eligibility for a mobile identification card would be the same as for the physical credential and would most likely be accessible through an app, Giannoulias said. According to the bill, it would cost consumers no more than $6 to purchase the app needed to display the digital license or ID on their phone.
While the mobile ID would be acceptable in most situations, the legislation requires a person to show law enforcement the physical copy of their driver’s license or regular ID upon request.
Opposition was voiced by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which raised privacy and security concerns. ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka said the bill fails to provide protection from deeper phone searches by law enforcement.
“We would have liked some additional specific statutory language that would create a consequence if law enforcement used the mobile ID as a pretext to access someone’s phone, in violation of the usual protections around unlawful search and seizure,” Yohnka said.
Yohnka said other concerns include potential discrimination by businesses over customer use of one form of ID over the other and the potential safety concerns over collection and storage of the mobile ID information.
Giannoulias stressed that having a mobile ID will remain a choice for residents and said that the option could actually bring additional privacy because people could choose to provide those checking the ID only the information necessary to their transaction.
“Digital IDs offer privacy control options that allow people to verify their age when legally purchasing alcohol, cannabis or renting a car, and it also allows us to do this while hiding other personal information like their address if they wish,” Giannoulias said.
If Pritzker signs the bill, Giannoulias’ office will need to work out more details about how his office will implement and enforce mobile IDs. The secretary said he doesn’t have a timeline for when they will become available to the public.
“We know that people in Illinois want this,” Giannoulias said.
Local journalism protections
Lawmakers attempted to give local journalism a boost with a measure that would not allow a local news organization to be sold without 120 days notice to employees and their representatives, the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the county government in which the outlet is located and any “in-state nonprofit organization in the business of buying local news organizations.”
“What’s happening is big conglomerates are buying up small local news media and what’s happening is they’re shipping … their own news in, they’re not covering local news,” Rep. Dave Vella, a Rockford Democrat and the bill’s main House sponsor, said during floor debate. “And because local news is not being covered, people just don’t understand what’s going on in their communities. So, what this will do is make sure that any big corporation that tries to buy a local news media, at least we give notice to everybody.”
Opposing the bill, Republican Rep. Amy Elik said that as a certified public accountant for 29 years who has dealt with the sales of companies, 120 days “is a really long time” for interested parties to contemplate the impact of the transaction, and could jeopardize its negotiations.
“At 120 days before the date of a sale, it’s not even soup yet. Lawyers are still going back and forth setting terms. The value might not even be known yet. I caution this body to accept this (provision) of this bill because I think the unintended consequence here is that 120 days notice is given, employees are going to start dropping off one by one, leaving (and potentially destroying) the value of that local newspaper and now that newspaper will not be able to be sold to anybody.”
The bill also calls for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission to provide journalism scholarships to students who will work at a local news outlet in Illinois for at least two years.
Local news organizations are also likely to see tax credits, which were included as part of the larger budget package, over the next five years. A credit of $15,000 would be available for each journalist on a company’s payroll and $25,000 for journalists hired for newly created roles.
Any news organization with one full-time reporter would qualify, with the credits for a single news outlet capped at $150,000 per year, and at $250,000 for larger corporations.
The number of journalists in Illinois has decreased 85% since 2005, according to a 2023 Northwestern University report, one of the biggest decreases in the nation.
Erasing medical debt
Lawmakers approved a key Pritzker initiative aimed at erasing as much as $1 billion in medical debt for more than 300,000 Illinois families. It would follow a similar effort launched in Cook County that was on track to wipe out medical bills for around 73,000 residents as of last year.
“Many walk away with unexpected pain” after receiving medical care, Pritzker said at an event promoting the initiative in April. “Not only the emotional, physical toll of the crisis they’ve been through, but a serious financial toll, too.”
The state legislation would partner with the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt to spend $10 million on buying up and erasing the debt.
Medical debt disproportionately affects people of color, Department of Healthcare and Family Services Director Lizzie Whitehorn said at the April event. It can also lead people to reconsider future medical care, she said.
However, a study released earlier this year in partnership with the same debt relief nonprofit — formerly known as RIP Medical Debt — found that wiping medical debt did not improve recipients’ financial distress or mental health.
Pritzker said he was aware of the study but noted it was conducted from 2018 to 2020, and said the organization has changed significantly since then.
Artificial intelligence
Bills spearheaded by Democratic Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz would protect artists and others in creative fields from unauthorized digital replicas, in line with the national conversation about artificial intelligence in pop culture.
One measure heading to the governor would largely ban unauthorized digital replicas produced through AI. It passed in both chambers without opposition following a debate during which lawmakers made references to actress Scarlett Johansson and hip hop stars Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
“Does this mean Kendrick Lamar could be sued for putting a digitally created version imitating Drake on his song as the two go back and forth talking trash?” Republican Rep. Dan Ugaste of Geneva asked during floor debate, an apparent reference to Drake’s controversial use of AI in the recent feud between the two artists.
Gong-Gershowitz of Glenview said she’d need more facts on the hypothetical situation to determine if it violated the law, but that the bill includes exceptions for “parody, satire and criticism.”
The bill is intended to protect artists from misuse “while still allowing sufficient exemptions to ensure that appropriate creative use is not stifled,” she said.
It’s also meant in part to prevent situations such as OpenAI’s recent use of an AI voice that many — including the actress herself — thought sounded very similar to Johansson, Gong-Gershowitz said. (OpenAI has said the voice was based off a different actress and put its rollout on “pause.”)
The Glenview legislator noted Johansson issued a letter after the incident calling for legislation to protect individuals from AI replicas.
That’s “exactly what we’re doing today, and I’m really proud that Illinois is leading on this front,” Gong-Gershowitz said.
Help for those with limited English
State agencies would be required to make sure Illinois residents who speak limited English are able to more smoothly access state government services in their native languages under another bill heading to Pritzker’s desk.
The Language Equity and Access Act would create a language access policy to be carried out by the governor’s Office of New Americans and other agencies such as the Illinois Department of Human Services.
The legislation was inspired, in part, by the difficulties many Asian-Americans have experienced while trying to access state services such as applying for unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Grace Pai, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago.
Pai said that government agencies receiving federal funding are required to help limited English speakers with translation in various languages, but that requirement “is not strongly enforced” and not all state agencies are federally funded. So the legislation is a way of making sure there’s a standard requirement for all state agencies to provide translation or interpretation for the public, if necessary, Pai said.
“There are dozens and dozens of languages spoken in Illinois and people who may feel comfortable going to the grocery store and speaking English or navigating day to day life in English, that doesn’t mean that they can navigate complicated forms or application processes in English, or navigate state services, which can be complicated,” Pai said.
The bill would require the head of the Office of New Americans to work with state agencies to come up with language access plans, and the measure would also use U.S. census data to determine how many Illinois residents speak limited English but regularly use state services.
According to the legislation, a state agency’s language access plan would be determined by factors that include the number of limited English speakers who use state services, the frequency in which speakers use these services, the importance of these services and the agency’s available resources.
The bill also requires translation services of vital documents be made available for groups of limited English speakers.
The measure would go into effect with the governor’s signature, after which the Office of New Americans would have until July 1, 2025 to prepare and submit its first report.
Abortion protections
The federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act is being challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court, where justices will review whether it is being applied incorrectly when it comes to abortion. The law bars hospitals from transferring or turning away poor patients before they are stabilized, but it is interpreted by some as a protection for doctors who perform abortions on women experiencing a medical emergency.
In an effort to increase Illinois’ already robust protections of abortion rights, lawmakers approved a measure that would in effect provide a state equivalent of the federal law in the event that the high court rules it can’t be applied to abortion procedures, according to Democratic Rep. Dagmara Avelar of Bolingbrook, the bill’s main House sponsor.
The bill sparked some tense debate on the House floor. Rep. William Hauter, a Republican from Morton who is also an anesthesiologist, said he’s never heard of a case where an abortion was necessary to stabilize a patient.
“What we have here is confusion from clarity. This is what happens when lawyers try to practice medicine,” Hauter said. “We are changing decades of guidance and long, clear interpretation of EMTALA that always emphasized reasonable medical judgment, focusing the medical efforts on stabilizing the mother and her unborn. This bill adds conditions, confusion.”
Rep. Diane Blair-Sherlock, a Democrat from Villa Park, who noted that she is a lawyer, sought to refute Hauter’s argument.
“Just because it hasn’t happened in your presence or in your practice does not mean that it does not happen,” she said. “I practiced law for 30 years. I have not seen everything because that’s just not how life works.”
The bill passed along party lines in the House and Senate and now heads to the governor, who has made abortion rights one of his focal points in supporting President Joe Biden’s bid for reelection.
