By JERRY NOWICKI
& DILPREET RAJU
Capitol News Illinois
news@capitolnewsillinois.com
Weeks after two high-profile resignations at the Illinois Prisoner Review Board, Gov. JB Pritzker on Monday, Apri; 15, appointed the first-ever executive director to help lead the beleaguered agency. To fill the newly-created position, the governor tapped Jim Montgomery, who most recently served as director of administrative services with the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department in Massachusetts. His prior experience includes several stints as an assistant to Illinois lawmakers in the 1990s, and eight years as mayor of Taylorville from 1997 until 2005.
Montgomery will be responsible for overseeing administrative board operations, including bolstering domestic violence prevention training and “other important equity-based trainings for board members,” according to the governor’s office. In a news release, the governor said the creation of the director position “reduces the workload placed on the PRB chair and allows for the chair to focus more closely on leading casework.”
The Board has ultimate say on Montgomery’s salary, but the governor’s office said funds are available in the current-year budget and Montgomery will earn $160,000 annually, more than the board chair’s roughly $108,000 statutory salary. The Board currently has no chair, as the office’s previous holder, Donald Shelton, resigned on March 25 along with board member LeAnn Miller.
In February, Miller led a hearing to determine whether an inmate, Crosetti Brand, should be released from Stateville Correctional Center amid allegations that he’d violated an order of protection against his ex-girlfriend, Laterria Smith, by threatening her. The Board found insufficient evidence, and he was released on March 12. One day later, Brand attacked Smith, stabbing her and killing her eleven-year-old son Jayden Perkins when he tried to intervene.
Read more: Prisoner Review Board chair, member resign in wake of boy’s fatal stabbing by released inmate
Pritzker appointed Miller to the Prisoner Review Board in September 2021 , and her term wasn’t due to expire until January 2027 . The governor said earlier this month the resignation “was probably a proper decision on her part” and said the panel she led “didn’t take into consideration enough of the domestic violence history of this particular prisoner.”
Shelton had served on the board since 2012 and was appointed as a Republican. Pritzker said Shelton “served admirably” but didn’t provide a reason for his resignation. Shelton told WTTW-TV in Chicago he resigned out of personal responsibility, but he also defended Miller and pushed back against the governor’s statements about the decision. The PRB has a proposed head count of 59 employees in the upcoming fiscal year, up from 51 in the current year. Its proposed budget is $5.4 million. Montgomery’s appointment awaits Senate confirmation.
Chicago’s City Council’s budget committee advanced Mayor Brandon Johnson’s request for $70 million from city reserves to care for new migrant arrivals in a 20-8 vote on Monday. The motion could go to a full city council vote as soon as this week, and it has the potential to close a gap in migrant aid funding and fulfill the city’s commitment to an agreement with the state and Cook County.
The proposal comes two months after Cook County officials and the governor’s office committed about $250 million toward aid for recently arrived migrants. The leaders at the time said another $70 million was still needed. Last week, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, announced the state would receive about $19.3 million in migrant response funding from a new $300 million federal spending plan .
Council members who voted for and against the city’s motion called the nearly $20 million in federal aid “wholly inadequate.” Alderman Daniel La Spata, of Chicago’s First Ward, pointed to how federal officials were quick to start programs for Ukrainian and Afghan asylum seekers but not to the same degree for those arriving to the U.S. from Latin American countries. “We’ve seen still harsh contrast to how we treated the 30,000 plus Ukrainians who arrived similarly with asylum seeker status, who were able to incorporate themselves into Chicago and Illinois,” La Spata said.
Read more: Pritzker commits another $182 million to migrant response, details to come next week
Earlier in the day, Pritzker and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle continued to push their plans to eliminate almost $1 billion of medical debt owned by Illinoisians with $10 million from the governor’s proposed budget. Preckwinkle previously utilized federal funds from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act to fund the Cook County Medical Debt Relief Initiative in 2022, on which the state plan is modeled. The governor highlighted the problem of medical debt as “a uniquely American issue.”
“In Illinois, 14 percent of our population has medical debt in default,” Pritzker said. “So far, Cook County has abolished more than $348 million in medical debt for over 200,000 Cook County residents.” The $348 million of debt relief came on an investment of about $3.75 million dollars in ARPA money due to a partnership with the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt, formerly known as RIP Medical Debt, county records show.
Undue Medical Debt buys up medical debt and frees patients from the burden of years-old medical bills they cannot afford to pay. Since it buys debt from entities such as collection agencies for cents on the dollar, it can turn $1 donated into about $100 in debt relief.
Those selected to have their medical debt wiped are determined by the nonprofit’s analysis of hospital debt records.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
By COLE LONGCOR
Capitol News Illinois
Clongcor@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD – Advocates for stricter gun laws rallied at the state Capitol Tuesday, April 16, for a measure aimed at protecting domestic violence victims and two other criminal justice reforms. The bills are backed by organizations such as Moms Demand Action and One Aim Illinois among others.
“These policies support those communities most impacted by the gun violence crisis,” Yolanda Androzzo, One Aim Illinois program director, said at a rally Tuesday. “It’s an opportunity to ensure protection and justice for survivors of gun violence.”
A proposal dubbed Karina’s Bill, contained in House Bill 4469 and Senate Bill 2633 , is a response to the 2023 shooting death of Karina Gonzalez and her daughter in Chicago. Gonzalez’s husband, Jose Alvarez, had an order of protection against him when he was alleged to have committed the murder last year.
READ MORE: Advocates push for guns to be taken from domestic abusers when order of protection served
The measure would clarify the process for victims who seek specific orders of protection under the state’s firearm remedy, one of 18 specific remedies that can accompany an order of protection. Individuals can petition the court for such a remedy, and the bill would amend the process for what happens when it is granted.
Karina’s Bill would require law enforcement to confiscate firearms when an emergency order of protection is granted with a firearm remedy. It would also require a judge to issue a search warrant in cases where the remedy is granted, provided the judge finds there is probable cause that the individual possesses a firearm and is a threat to the victim. The proposal would also prohibit gun owners from transferring the firearms to another individual instead of surrendering them to law enforcement along with their Firearm Owner’s Identification, or FOID, card.
The bill also adds an “intimate partner”, such as present and past spouses, dating or engaged relationships, to the list of those who can petition for a firearm restraining order. Previously, only family members and law enforcement officers could petition for such a remedy.
Both versions of the bill are still in committee. “Gun violence is occurring way too often in our communities, in our schools, in our malls, everywhere,” bill sponsor Sen. Celina Villanueva, D-Chicago, said at Tuesday’s rally. “The reason why I’m championing Karina’s law is because I want to make sure that Karina and Daniela’s names never be forgotten. That what they went through never be forgotten.”
House Bill 4753 , known as the Homicide Victims’ Families’ Rights Act, would allow people to petition law enforcement to review murder cases that have been unsolved for at least three years. Officers who worked on the case previously would not be allowed to participate in the review. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, passed out of a committee on a 13-2 vote on April 4 and is awaiting action in the House. “These bills, these actions, these pieces of policies have come directly from you,” Buckner told rallygoers Tuesday. “And unfortunately, they’ve come from the pain that many of you have endured.”
Buckner is also the sponsor of House Bill 4754 , which would amend the Uniform Crime Reporting Act. The bill would require law enforcement agencies to digitally publish statistics of homicides and non-fatal shootings including if the cases are cleared or closed, if an arrest was made, and if the case was submitted to their local state’s attorney’s office. “Without accurate homicide statistics, we can’t create evidence-based solutions to our county’s gun violence problem,” Alicia Schemel, a volunteer with Moms Demand Action, said.
The bill cleared committee on a 10-5 vote earlier this month and is awaiting action in the House.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
By ANDREW ADAMS
Capitol News Illinois
aadams@capitolnewsillinois.com
BOLINGBROOK – A manufacturer in the southwest suburbs of Chicago received $2.6 million from electric utility Commonwealth Edison this week as part of a state program for generating its own electricity using solar panels and storing it in one of the largest batteries in the country. Even as solar projects have boomed in Illinois in recent years, the head of the state agency responsible for approving renewable projects said changes to state law may be necessary to phase out fossil fuels by 2050.
G&W Electric Co., which installed a “microgrid” at its Bolingbrook facility, captures energy from the sun using eight football fields’ worth of solar panels and stores the electricity generated in a vanadium redox battery built inside 20 shipping containers.
Company representatives hailed the state-of-the-art battery storage as a step toward resilience to storms and regular disruptions to the electric grid. The solar panels deliver electricity to the factory and keep the batteries charged, with the batteries designed to power the facility during an outage. The company’s chairman and owner, John Mueller, said that project has saved $1.8 million in lost production time due to “micro-interruptions” in the factory’s electricity supply since it came online late last year.
The project received a record-high rebate from ComEd as part of the Distributed Generation Rebate program, which was created in 2017 by the Future Energy Jobs Act and expanded in 2021 with the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. ComEd has given out $130 million in rebates since the program was created.
Gov. JB Pritzker, speaking at G&W Electric on Monday, said that projects like this are a way that companies can “join the fight against climate change” and that the project was “setting a standard for solar investing.” This and other state programs have contributed to an explosion in the number of solar projects in the past two-and-a-half years. Pritzker said on Monday that since the passage of CEJA, the state has doubled the percentage of its electricity production that comes from renewables. “I’m very pleased about the direction that we’re going,” Pritzker said. “I obviously would like it to accelerate more.”
The federal Energy Information Administration, which calculates renewable generation independently using a different methodology from the state, reported that in December 2023, the state produced about 15.2 percent of its energy from renewables, behind the national average of 20.9 percent. The state’s current goal is to have 40 percent of its retail electricity sales come from renewable energy by 2030. The Illinois Power Agency is responsible for managing electricity procurement for the state and manages Illinois’ renewable portfolio by approving renewable energy projects’ contracts.
Brian Granahan, the acting director of the Illinois Power Agency, said the current pace for solar developments is doing its part to help the state meet its renewable energy goals, but other renewables are falling short. State law sets a goal of solar making up 55 percent of the state’s renewable energy portfolio, with the other 45 percent coming from wind and hydroelectric projects. “We’ve made so much progress since CEJA passed,” Granahan told Capitol News Illinois.
Despite ambitious goals for purchasing energy from wind projects, Granahan said few projects have been approved, calling the situation “very challenging.” Across the four “procurement events” the IPA has held since CEJA went into effect, the agency has approved three wind projects compared to the 34 solar projects. An analysis prepared by outside consultants for IPA in May 2023 revealed that two of those events resulted in no new contracts for wind developments at all.
This is partly due to developers being forced to navigate a complex system to select sites for wind developments, something the state took control of early last year. Wind development is also facing a downturn in interest nationally, according to Granahan. To address this, the legislature may need to revise the state’s energy policy yet again to allow for more flexibility within its goals, according to Granahan. “If there isn’t the same interest on behalf of companies developing wind projects, then does it make sense to have these goals by technology hard coded in statute?” Granahan said.
While no specific legislation is pending that would change the requirements for the state’s renewable portfolio, a spokesperson for the governor’s office said Pritzker “strongly supports solutions that help Illinois achieve its clean energy goals” and that he would review any legislation passed by the General Assembly.
The IPA also faces another issue that affects both wind and solar developers: its budget for buying renewable energy. Last spring, the agency published an analysis of the budget it uses to purchase renewable energy credits on behalf of utilities. The analysis projected several scenarios based on variable energy prices. While the agency is working on an updated version of that report, it highlighted what Granahan called “massive uncertainty” that comes with long-term planning involving energy prices. That uncertainty can result in developers being hesitant to propose new projects because they are uncertain that money will be available to purchase renewable energy in the future. “We’re saying to ourselves, ‘Okay, we should be good doing all this activity through 2025, 2026,’” Granahan said. “And then we’ll know more based on what happens in those procurements.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of print and broadcast outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
The flywheel in G&W Electric’s microgrid, shown in its white enclosure, rotates fast enough that it can power the company’s manufacturing facility for 62 seconds, long enough to switch to battery power in the case of a power outage. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
The 2-megawatt vanadium redox battery is pictured at G&W Electric, one of the largest in the country. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
By COLE LONGCOR
Capitol News Illinois
Clongcor@capitolnewsillinois.com
Lead pipes in public water systems and drinking fixtures have been banned in new construction since 1986, when Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act, but they are still in use across the U.S. and in Illinois. The presence of lead pipes has persisted due in part to a lack of a centralized federal or state removal strategy, as well as inadequate funding and insufficient inventories of where lead pipes are located.
In Illinois, which has the most lead pipes per capita of any state, according to a 2023 study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, water suppliers are in the process of inventorying their lead pipes to get a clearer picture of timelines for removal over the next several decades. The health impacts of lead exposure are widely known. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no safe level of lead exposure for children. While not technically enforceable, the U.S. EPA’s goal for maximum contaminant level of lead is zero.
Still, replacement efforts are slow, with environmental advocates, lawmakers, and others citing lack of funding as a key barrier to progress. “One of the most urgent issues that we all could be facing in Illinois right now is removing lead from our lead pipes throughout the state, both residential, commercial and public pipeways,” Sen. Mike Simmons, D-Chicago, said at a news conference last month. “I think it’s been pretty well documented that there’s a significant cost that will come with really doing justice to the task.”
This fiscal year, Illinois received over $100 million in funding through the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for lead service line replacement, and funding is expected to more than double in fiscal year 2025. In 2021, the National Resources Defense Council estimated there to be 679,292 lead service lines in Illinois. In 2023, the U.S. EPA put the estimate at over one million lines in Illinois.
The NRDC puts the estimate for replacing every lead service line in Illinois at $2.2 billion at the low end up to $7.2 billion based on the EPA’s estimate. The Illinois Environmental Council estimates it would cost between $10 billion and $12 billion. Even as some funding has become available through that law and the federal Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, the allocations are not nearly enough to replace every service line in the state, regardless of who is estimating the cost.
While replacement is ongoing, a full inventory is crucial to develop a plan and budget for the complete removal of lead service lines in the state. The IEPA is in the process of building a more conclusive inventory of lead service lines, requiring the state’s community water supplies to submit full inventories of their pipes by April 15. Even with accurate quantities, establishing adequate funding and feasible timelines is a struggle.
While the state and federal governments have created regulations and funding programs, the responsibility of lead service line replacement falls on the community water supplies, such as municipalities or local water districts.
The state has been funding community water supplies’ replacement projects for years, although not at the multi-billion-dollar level needed to replace all lines. The IEPA provided funding through principal forgiveness loans from 2017 to 2023 under the wastewater category of the State Revolving Fund. IEPA awarded over $120 million in principal forgiveness funds during those six years and each applicant was eligible for a maximum award of $4 million annually.
Under the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, states are required to allocate 49 percent of state lead service line replacement funds as grants or principal forgiveness loans and 51 percent as traditional low-interest loans. IEPA spokesperson Kim Biggs said that in fiscal year 2024, there is a cap of about $2.8 million per principal forgiveness loan recipient.
“But we’re trying to figure out how we can get more and more from the federal government,” Iyana Simba, Illinois Environmental Council city programs director, said. “We need this funding to make sure that the cost of lead service line replacement isn’t passed down to individual homeowners, and that it’s also being done so in a more equitable manner.” Aside from increasing funding, Simba said that developing community outreach, technical assistance and community planning could hasten replacement efforts.
The Illinois Lead Service Line Replacement and Notification Act took effect on January 1, 2022. The law requires community water supplies to create an inventory and replacement plan for their lead service lines. The report must be submitted to the IEPA by April 15. Yearly updates on replacement will be due every April 15 through 2027.
Read More: Lead service line replacement bill passes Senate, heads back to House
“So even while Illinois has about 600,000 lead pipes throughout the state that are accounted for,” Simba said. “I’m really hoping that through this inventory process we’ll get a better picture because there’s almost that same amount of service lines that are made of unknown material.”
The IEPA created the Lead Service Line Inventory Grant program to provide funding to community water supplies to identify and inventory lead service lines. The first round of funding was announced in January 2023, since then two more rounds have been awarded, and the IEPA is currently accepting applications for the fourth round. The grant provided 260 community water supplies between $20,000 and $50,000 each in 2023.
The current FY24 project list from the IEPA includes 47 projects, totaling over $100 million. Illinois received around $107 million in FY24 and will receive $230 million in FY25 from federal funding. Gov. JB Pritzker’s proposed FY25 budget would allocate $20 million to lead service line replacement planning grants. The capital infrastructure budget proposal also includes around $340 million in re-appropriated funding along with almost $260 million in new appropriation for Lead Service Line Replacement loans.
While the inventory reports must be submitted to the IEPA by April 15, it is not clear when line replacements will be completed, and state law lays out a decades-long process.
The U.S. EPA has proposed changes to federal rules which would set the goal of replacing all lead pipes within 10 years, with certain exceptions allowed. The proposal follows decades of amending policies to tighten regulations on maximum contaminant levels. The most recent changes, however, have not been adopted, and the U.S. EPA has historically chosen not to strictly enforce its existing standards.
Advocacy groups, including the Illinois Environmental Council, support the shortening of timelines for replacement. “So while we’re happy to see that other smaller communities are going to be put on this 10-year timeline. That’s even more stringent than some of the things outlined in the state bill,” Simba said. “We do need to see a shorter timeline for Chicago.”
Illinois’ Lead Service Line Replacement and Notification Act also establishes timelines for replacement based on the number of lead service lines within a community starting in 2027. Community water supplies with fewer than 1,200 lines have the shortest deadline of 2042, while supplies like Chicago, with more than 99,999 lines have until 2077. Community water supplies can request extensions up to 20 percent of their timeframe, so Chicago could potentially have an additional 10 years, extending the deadline to 2087.
In February, state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, D-Chicago Heights, filed House Bill 4752, which would increase the maximum timeline extension the IEPA is allowed to grant community water supplies from 20 to 30 percent. If passed, the extension increase would mean Chicago could have up to 2092 to replace all their lead service lines. DeLuca said municipalities do not have enough funding and a timeline extension is needed to make up for the lack of resources.
Advocates, meanwhile, have pointed to health care and economic incentives for replacing lead pipes. An October report from the NRDC, dubbed “Getting the Lead Out,” found removing lead pipes can reduce the risk of medical conditions in children, such as hearing impairments, short-term cognitive damage, and behavioral problems. It would also help adults by reducing immunological and red blood cell damage.
The study found between $58 and $89 billion will be spent in Illinois over a 35-year period related to health effects of lead pipes, and removing them would save about $37 billion annually in health care costs nationwide. Simmons said lawmakers need to work to secure more funding and stricter timelines. “I mean, there’s not a lot of room to waffle on this,” Simmons said. “Already, our communities have waited decades to have access to safe drinking water and that includes zero lead pipes.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of print and broadcast outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
By ANDREW ADAMS
Capitol News Illinois
aadams@capitolnewsillinois.com
BOLINGBROOK – A manufacturer in the southwest suburbs of Chicago received $2.6 million from electric utility Commonwealth Edison this week as part of a state program for generating its own electricity using solar panels and storing it in one of the largest batteries in the country.
But even as solar projects have boomed in Illinois in recent years, the head of the state agency responsible for approving renewable projects said changes to state law may be necessary to phase out fossil fuels by 2050.
G&W Electric Co., which installed a “microgrid” at its Bolingbrook facility, captures energy from the sun using eight football fields’ worth of solar panels and stores the electricity generated in a vanadium redox battery built inside 20 shipping containers.
Company representatives hailed the state-of-the-art battery storage as a step toward resilience to storms and regular disruptions to the electric grid. The solar panels deliver electricity to the factory and keep the batteries charged, with the batteries designed to power the facility during an outage. The company’s chairman and owner, John Mueller, said that project has saved $1.8 million in lost production time due to “microinterruptions” in the factory’s electricity supply since it came online late last year.
The project received a record-high rebate from ComEd as part of the Distributed Generation Rebate program, which was created in 2017 by the Future Energy Jobs Act and expanded in 2021 with the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. ComEd has given out $130 million in rebates since the program was created.
The 2-megawatt vanadium redox battery is pictured at G&W Electric, one of the largest in the country. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
Gov. JB Pritzker, speaking at G&W Electric on Monday, said that projects like this are a way that companies can “join the fight against climate change” and that the project was “setting a standard for solar investing.”
This and other state programs have contributed to an explosion in the number of solar projects in the past 2 ½ years. Pritzker said on Monday that since the passage of CEJA, the state has doubled the percentage of its electricity production that comes from renewables.
“I’m very pleased about the direction that we’re going,” Pritzker said. “I obviously would like it to accelerate more.”
The federal Energy Information Administration, which calculates renewable generation independently using a different methodology from the state, reported that in December 2023, the state produced about 15.2 percent of its energy from renewables, behind the national average of 20.9 percent.
The state’s current goal is to have 40 percent of its retail electricity sales come from renewable energy by 2030.
The Illinois Power Agency is responsible for managing electricity procurement for the state and manages Illinois’ renewable portfolio by approving renewable energy projects’ contracts.
Brian Granahan, the acting director of the Illinois Power Agency, said the current pace for solar developments is doing its part to help the state meet its renewable energy goals, but other renewables are falling short. State law sets a goal of solar making up 55 percent of the state’s renewable energy portfolio, with the other 45 percent coming from wind and hydroelectric projects.
“We’ve made so much progress since CEJA passed,” Granahan told Capitol News Illinois.
But despite ambitious goals for purchasing energy from wind projects, Granahan said few projects have been approved, calling the situation “very challenging.”
Across the four “procurement events” the IPA has held since CEJA went into effect, the agency has approved three wind projects compared to the 34 solar projects. An analysis prepared by outside consultants for IPA in May 2023 revealed that two of those events resulted in no new contracts for wind developments at all.
The flywheel in G&W Electric’s microgrid, shown in its white enclosure, rotates fast enough that it can power the company’s manufacturing facility for 62 seconds, long enough to switch to battery power in the case of a power outage. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
This is partly due to developers being forced to navigate a complex system to select sites for wind developments – something the state took control of early last year. Wind development is also facing a downturn in interest nationally, according to Granahan.
To address this, the legislature may need to revise the state’s energy policy yet again to allow for more flexibility within its goals, according to Granahan.
“If there isn’t the same interest on behalf of companies developing wind projects, then does it make sense to have these goals by technology hard coded in statute?” Granahan said.
While no specific legislation is pending that would change the requirements for the state’s renewable portfolio, a spokesperson for the governor’s office said Pritzker “strongly supports solutions that help Illinois achieve its clean energy goals” and that he would review any legislation passed by the General Assembly.
The IPA also faces another issue that affects both wind and solar developers: its budget for buying renewable energy.
Last spring, the agency published an analysis of the budget it uses to purchase renewable energy credits on behalf of utilities. The analysis projected several scenarios based on variable energy prices.
While the agency is working on an updated version of that report, it highlighted what Granahan called “massive uncertainty” that comes with long-term planning involving energy prices. That uncertainty can result in developers being hesitant to propose new projects because they are uncertain that money will be available to purchase renewable energy in the future.
“We’re saying to ourselves, ‘Okay, we should be good doing all this activity through 2025, 2026,’” Granahan said. “And then we’ll know more based on what happens in those procurements.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of print and broadcast outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
By DILPREET RAJU
Capitol News Illinois
draju@capitolnewsillinois.com
Housing advocates are renewing a push to fund a $20 million state affordable housing tax credit in the upcoming state budget.
Supporters of the “Build Illinois Homes Tax Credit Act,” modeled after a federal tax credit program, claimed it would result in over 1,000 affordable housing units being built over its first six years. The push for the measure, contained in House Bill 4909 and Senate Bill 3233, comes one year after a similar to appropriate $35 million in tax credits failed to advance.
Its supporters said the money would replace federal pandemic-era funding that went to the Illinois Housing Development Authority over the last three years but has since run out.
Allison Clements, the executive director of the Illinois Housing Council, a housing association representing almost 300 businesses and nonprofits, said is designed to provide “immediate attention” to the state’s “housing crisis.”
Read more: Advocates push for tax credit aimed at increasing affordable housing
That sentiment was echoed by HB 4909’s chief sponsor Rep. Dagmara Avelar, D-Bolingbrook, who said her constituents tell her they are worried about being priced out of their homes or apartments. The program would help build up to 1,150 affordable homes and apartments within six years, Avelar said.
Illinois has a shortage of close to 300,000 affordable rental homes, according to a report published last month by Housing Action Illinois, an affordable housing advocacy group.
Clements said the tax credit “is not going to meet the entire needs of the state” but is needed to maintain what the IHDA has been receiving.
“Affordable housing is not a Democrat issue, it’s not a Republican issue, it’s an issue about our constituents,” Avelar said. “Investors will only receive the state tax credit after construction is complete and qualified tenants move in with affordable rents.”
Corporate ownership has affected rents, which is why affordable units are needed more than ever, she added.
“We have also seen a very troubling – and skyrocketing – rate of corporate landlords who are buying homes, apartments and who are pretty much increasing (the cost of) rental units to the point where people are being priced out,” Avelar said.
Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago, who is the chief sponsor of SB 3233, said the tax credit is just one way of adding more affordable housing in the state.
“We have huge needs (for affordable housing), you’ve seen this talked about all the time. We talked about a ballot initiative in Chicago, well, this is another way we can actually deal with housing,” he said.
This year’s push also has backing from the Illinois Manufacturers Association and the Laborers’ International Union of North America Midwest Region, two influential groups within the Statehouse.
Harm reduction advocates and multiple House members called for more state funding towards evidence-based solutions “beyond naloxone and safe supplies.”
Among those solutions are overdose prevention sites – a designated brick-and-mortar location where people with substance use disorders can receive clean supplies and use drugs safely in the presence of public health workers who ensure people who potentially overdose do not die.
Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, described rising overdose numbers as an “international problem” impacting all kinds of communities. Ford is the chief sponsor of House Bill 2, which provides the framework for an overdose prevention site in Chicago and has languished in the Rules Committee for almost one year.
Aisha Betancourt-Esquivel became an advocate for harm reduction in 2019 after her daughter, BreAna Betancourt-Esquivel, died of combined drug toxicity at 25 years old.
“We all have loved ones that are worthy of all possible avenues to recovery,” Betancourt-Esquivel said.
“I stand here to ask for your strong consideration and support of an overdose prevention site because an overdose prevention site could have helped my daughter,” she added. “Yes, it’s a wild idea but guess what? The drugs will still be here, we just want to keep these people alive.”
Rep. Lindsey LaPointe, D-Chicago, said she represents “hundreds of people who want to stop using drugs, but they live in fear and stigma.”
“With the exception of naloxone and safe supplies, evidence-based harm reduction interventions have been left out of our behavioral health and public health funding streams in Illinois,” said LaPointe, who is a former social worker and current chair of the House Mental Health and Addiction Committee.
Rep. Camille Lilly, D-Chicago, said she used her naloxone training two separate times to assist men who overdosed in her district. Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, said he had a “dear friend” die from an overdose before he became a legislator.
“I share your passion for this issue, I share the frustration I’m sure you all experience at times,” Guzzardi said. “Why can’t we just get it done? I’m sure people in this room are feeling that way today.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.