Inside:
- 104th General Assembly inauguration
- New House, same as the old House
- Constitutional amendment introduced to allow statewide and local government recalls
- Department of Revenue stepping up enforcement
104th General Assembly sworn in
On Wednesday I was honored to be sworn in for another term as the representative of the 71st district. As my guests for the inaugural ceremony, I was honored to have a group of students from Carl Sandburg College, Monmouth College and Spoon River College as my guests.
It is a great honor to represent the people of western Illinois in the House, and I am looking forward to getting to work in the Capitol. We are going to have to address some very important issues in the next two years. Thanks to years of overspending, we now face a multi-billion dollar budget deficit. At the same time, we need to ensure that we support state services for veterans, schools, farmers and small businesses, just to name a few.
The spring session which convened this week is scheduled to run until the adjournment date of May 31.
Click here to see the full schedule for the 2025 spring session.
New House, same as the old House
The newly-sworn in Illinois House of Representatives looks a lot like the outgoing House of Representatives.
Just like the previous two years, the new House of Representatives consists of 78 Democrats and 40 Republicans. In fact, every district which was represented by a Democrat over the past two years will be represented by a Democrat for the next two. And every district represented by a Republican in 2023-2024 will have a Republican representative for 2025-2026.
The Speaker of the House for the 104th General Assembly will be Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch, a Democrat from Hillside, just west of Chicago. He has served as Speaker since 2021. The House Republican Leader will once again be Rep. Tony McCombie of Savanna in northwestern Illinois.
Constitutional amendment introduced to allow state and local government recalls
The issue of ethics reform is not just limited to state government. In recent years we have seen multiple cases of corruption at the local level as well. Illinoisans should be empowered to hold state and local officials accountable throughout their term in office. Legislation has been introduced in Springfield to do exactly that.
A proposed Constitutional amendment would expand recall eligibility to include all statewide executive elected officials, state legislators and local government officials. A companion bill would create the Local Government Elected Official Recall Act which would allow local government recalls during general or consolidated elections. Currently only the Governor can be subject to a recall election.
If enacted, the new recall law would have a high threshold of signatures to make it harder for frivolous or politically-motivated recalls to occur, and would align the recall election with any upcoming regularly-scheduled election so as to minimize additional expenses on local governments. It would take a 60% vote to remove an official from office.
I am a co-sponsor of both bills. This will be a good step toward improving accountability at both the state and local level.
Neither bill advanced before the end of the outgoing 103rd General Assembly, but we can expect to see them re-introduced in the new 104th General Assembly.
Department of Revenue stepping up enforcement
The Illinois Department of Revenue released its annual report to the legislature and found a number of enforcement challenges which the agency pledges to work on in the coming year.
The Department reported more than 100,000 cases of non-filing non-compliance which added up to over $200 million in unpaid income taxes to the state. They also found significant patterns of people claiming to be living in non-income tax states like Florida, Texas or Wyoming while actually living in Illinois. The Department is working with law enforcement agencies to clarify the residency status issues and enforce Illinois income tax law on those who do live in Illinois.
The Department’s audit bureau also plans to step up enforcement of the sales tax on commercial-sized sales operations that sell goods for delivery into Illinois.
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