Residents in Illinois’ 52nd Senate District heard the sad news Dec. 9 of the death of state Sen. Scott Bennett, 45, from natural causes.
Bennett, a Democrat who lived in Champaign, had represented most of Vermilion County since 2015 when he was appointed to fill the remaining term of Michael Frerichs, who had been elected state treasurer. Bennett went on to win full terms during elections in 2016 and 2020.
Bennett’s relatively young age added to the shock of the news, but many of his constituents will miss Bennett because of his dedication to them and to issues they thought were important.
Regardless of political affiliation, Bennett listened and, when possible, tried to find a solution to problems his constituents found most important.
That bipartisan effort to help people living in his district reflects a long tradition of lawmakers in east central Illinois such as the late state Sen. Harry “Babe” Woodyard and former state Rep. Bill Black, and continued by Bennett and state Rep. Mike Marron. They recognized that the duty of a public servant is to serve the people, not partisan interests or yielding to lobbyists and their deep pockets.
Marron, R-Fithian, after hearing of Bennett’s passing, said, “… Scott embodied professionalism and bipartisanship in his role of senator and I will be forever grateful for all the accomplishments we were able to bring to the great people of Champaign and Vermilion counties. …”
Sadly, too many lawmakers at all levels put most of their effort into gaining and keeping power rather than into serving the real needs of those they are elected to serve.
Bennett’s efforts in the Illinois Legislature earned the respect of his fellow lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle.
State flags flew at half-staff Monday in Bennett’s honor.
In his order regarding the flags, Gov. JB Pritzker said, “Today, the state of Illinois mourns the loss of a dedicated public servant and devoted father. Sen. Scott Bennett was a good man who always operated with the best interest of his constituents in mind. … The entire state is a better place thanks to his service.”
We hope those with the responsibility of choosing Bennett’s successor find someone who also plans to work for the people and not politics, who wants to see every constituent succeed and not just the ones who agree with him or her. The legacy established by Bennett and others won’t be easy to live up to, but it’s exactly what the people of the 52nd Senate District — and all of Illinois — deserve.
MARSHALL — Republican lawmakers are interrogating investment companies for their shift to climate-friendly portfolios that recommend state employees and retirees cut ties with companies funded by fossil fuels. That’s because it’s now illegal in Texas.
Lawmakers serving on the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs said during a public hearing Thursday in Marshall that these companies are not following Senate Bill 13, which was passed in 2021 and prohibits the state from contracting with or investing in companies that divest from oil, natural gas and coal companies.
The investment companies in the hot seat included BlackRock, State Street Global Advisors and Institutional Shareholder Services Inc.
Leaders of the investment companies were asked to address their role in initiatives like Climate Action 100+, which strives to ensure the largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take action on climate change. They were also asked to address their participation in federal rulemaking on environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards and whether their policies may impact the state’s public pensions.
The company Vanguard had previously been required to attend the hearing, but The Financial Times reported earlier this week that the company’s recent departure from the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative changed that.
Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, who serves as the chair of the committee, said lawmakers are concerned that investment companies are recommending their clients reduce financial support for oil and gas companies.
“It’s about families. It’s about national security,” Hughes said. “We’ve learned … that foreign governments are involved in these decisions, and also other major state agencies are influencing investment decisions using Texas resources. It’s not right, and we’re here to shine a light on that.”
The law, filed by state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, during the last legislative session along with four other Republican state senators, defines divestment as refusing to do business with a fossil fuel company because that company does not commit to environmental standards higher than expected by federal and state law. If companies pull out of oil and gas investments, the state can shut them out of state contracts.
Texas state funds identified in the bill include the $46 billion Texas Permanent School Fund, the largest such K-12 fund in the U.S; the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, which manages nearly $165 billion in investments; and the Employees Retirement System of Texas and Texas Municipal Retirement System, which each manage $31 billion.
Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, said at the hearing it might be time to find other investors — a move other states have made. Earlier this month, Florida yanked about $2 billion from BlackRock Inc., making it the largest move of its kind by an individual state, a bite back at investors that cut ties with or “boycott” energy and fossil fuel companies.
Hughes said that he, along with other lawmakers, spoke to representatives from Teacher Retirement System of Texas earlier this year and they notified them about Institutional Shareholder Services’ recommendations against investing in the development of Texas fossil fuel-based energy projects.
Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said investment banks’ decisions to be part of Climate Action 100 was a bad step as a corporate entity and that environmental benchmarks on their websites are leaning “activist” and not “agnostic.”
Bettencourt asked the investment companies if being part of environment initiatives created any bias when making decisions or recommendations to clients.
“We have one bias and that’s to get the best risk-adjusted returns for our clients,” Dalia Blass, senior managing director and head of external affairs of BlackRock’s global executive committee said at the hearing.
Blass told the committee that BlackRock is a significant investor in the energy sector, including in Texas companies like ExxonMobil, Valero and Phillips 66.
“We also have made significant private investments in Texas energy companies, ranging from a natural gas utility, to an energy storage company, to carbon capture,” Blass said. “As of the end of the last quarter, on behalf of our clients, we had $107 billion invested in public Texas energy companies alone.”
Environmental activists have called the Thursday hearing “political theater of fossil fuel interests.”
Casey Harrell, senior finance strategist with the watchdog group The Sunrise Project, said in a statement that investment companies “must stand up to Republicans’ harmful culture war.”
“These are the biggest asset managers in the world and their actions have implications for the global economy,” Harrell said. “They cannot bow to the fringe of one political party in the U.S. when the world needs meaningful and sensible climate action now.”
The Sunrise Project is pushing big finance companies to be more climate-responsible. Environmental activists have long called for Wall Street and university endowments to stop investing in fossil fuels, and several U.S. universities have complied.
“Texas Republicans would be wise to remember that the marketplace is increasingly moving in the direction of holding companies accountable on climate risk,” Jessye Waxman, senior campaign representative in the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign, said in a statement.
While it’s unclear whether more legislation is on the way to block companies from shunning the oil and gas industry, Hughes said he will continue to keep investors accountable and expose them when they are not following the law.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
SPRINGFIELD – Illinois lawmakers last week passed significant legislation dealing with electric vehicle manufacturing incentives and the availability of hygiene products for prisoners in the state’s correctional system.
But some weightier issues, including a possible assault weapons ban, will wait until a lame duck session scheduled for early January.
Last week, lawmakers wrapped up a five-day fall veto session that focused mainly on changes to the SAFE-T Act criminal justice reform package first adopted in 2021 and a $1.8 billion infusion of cash into the state’s Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund.
But several other bills passed as well, including an expansion of tax credits and other incentives aimed at promoting electric vehicle manufacturing in Illinois.
Last year, lawmakers passed the Reimagining Electric Vehicles in Illinois Act, or REV Illinois, that provided tax incentives for electric vehicle manufacturers, or companies that manufacture certain component parts for electric vehicles, to locate or expand in Illinois.
Under that program, companies receiving the breaks could receive a state income tax credit of 75-100 percent of payroll taxes withheld from each new employee and 25-50 percent for retained employees. The law also provided a 10 percent credit for training expenses.
The stated goal of that program was to make Illinois a hub for electric vehicle manufacturing. But other states have been getting into the game as well, including Indiana and Michigan, which some people have argued offer better incentives than Illinois.
The first and only contract under the REV Act thus far was signed between the state and T/CCI Manufacturing in Decatur in September to create an estimated $2.2 million in value for the company to retool its facility that manufactures compressors.
House Bill 5189, which cleared the General Assembly Thursday, Dec. 1, expands the incentives to be available to the makers of more component parts, and raises the maximum tax credit to 75 percent of the incremental income tax attributable to retained employees. That amount can also go to 100 percent, depending on where the jobs are located.
That language was part of an “omnibus” tax bill that also includes a five-year extension of tax deductions for contributions to ABLE accounts, a savings program for people with disabilities; an expansion of the Live Theater Production tax credit to make more productions eligible for the credit; and a provision stating that any student loan forgiveness that may be approved by the federal government will not count as taxable income for Illinois taxes.
Inmate hygiene
Lawmakers also passed a bill ensuring that inmates in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections will have free access to underwear and menstrual hygiene products.
House Bill 4218, by Rep. Barbara Hernandez, D-Aurora, follows other bills lawmakers have passed recently that seek to end what advocates have called “period poverty.” In 2021, lawmakers passed a series of bills to expand the availability of such products, including requirements that they be made available in college and university restrooms and homeless shelters.
Another bill called on the Department of Human Services to apply for a federal waiver so the products would be eligible for purchase through the SNAP and WIC food assistance programs in Illinois.
Lame duck session
Some of the weightier issues that lawmakers hope to deal with before the next General Assembly is sworn into office are being deferred to a lame duck session that is scheduled for five days between Jan. 4 and 10.
That’s because the Illinois Constitution requires that any bill passed after May 31 of a calendar year must receive at least a three-fifths majority to have an immediate effective date. Otherwise, they do not take effect until June 1 of the following year.
But bills that pass after Jan. 1 – even during lame duck sessions that occur before newly-elected lawmakers are sworn in – need only a simple majority to have an immediate effective date.
Among the issues expected to be debated is a proposed ban on the sale or possession of assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Those are the same types of weapons and ammunition systems that have been used in multiple mass shootings in the United States. But calls for banning them in Illinois intensified after a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade last summer in Highland Park that left seven people dead and dozens more injured.
On Thursday, Dec. 1, the final day of the veto session, Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, filed HB 5855, the “Protect Illinois Communities Act,” which would make it illegal to manufacture, deliver, sell or purchase an assault weapon, assault weapon attachment, .50-caliber rifle or .50-caliber cartridge.
It would also make it illegal for anyone to possess such a weapon or ammunition 300 days after the effective date of the act, unless it is registered with the Illinois State Police.
The bill would also remove the ability of people under age 21 to own firearms and ammunition, with an exception for those serving in the U.S. military or National Guard.
And it would amend the state’s Firearms Restraining Order Act by allowing state’s attorneys and assistant state’s attorneys to act as a “friend of the court” in restraining order petitions while extending the maximum length of those restraining orders to one year instead of six months.
Morgan, whose district includes Highland Park, served as leader of the Firearm Safety and Reform Working Group that House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch appointed earlier this year.
“Gun violence is destroying families and communities from East St. Louis to Highland Park to Chicago, and this moment demands urgency,” Morgan said in a statement. “It is time that we had the political courage to admit that guns are a problem and that we can do something about it.”
Chief cosponsors of the bill include Reps. Maura Hirschauer, D-Batavia; La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago; and Barbara Hernandez, all of whom have backed similar legislation in the past.
More than a decade ago, Niagara County lawmakers spent $180,000 of taxpayer money to purchase a 60-acre parcel on Junction Road that was described at the time an “ideal” location for a new public works complex that had an estimated price tag of $40 million.
About a year after striking the deal to purchase the property, lawmakers decided to scrap the public works project, and move departmental operations to a different location in Lockport.
Today, officials with the county’s Center for Economic Development are charting a new course for the land, which has remained vacant since the county agreed to buy it in 2007.
They’re now looking to turn the property into a “shovel-ready” business park, which they say the county needs to keep pace in a region where neighboring counties are preparing their own plots of public land to offer to private companies in the ongoing race to attract and retain companies and jobs.
“There will be developers that build on that site. The county is just getting it prepared to be developed by the private sector,” said Mike Casale, commissioner of the county’s economic development department.
The preparation process starts with a plan. The county hired the local architectural and engineering firm Wendel at a cost of $156,865 to prepare a master site development plan for the parcel. The plan is expected to be completed early next year and will give county officials more detailed estimates of the potential costs of developing the business park and an idea of what sort of potential tenants might be attracted to it.
To get the site ready for development, county officials anticipate a need to connect it to nearby electric, gas and water services and link it to a wastewater treatment system. While details are still being worked out, officials said there will likely be some need to build roads and other infrastructure on the property as well.
Based on rough estimates, county officials expect the project will cost about $8 million. They’re confident most, if not all, of the cost will be covered by state and federal grants.
With so much commercial space in, for example, struggling Niagara Falls, why would the county spend millions to create a business park on Junction Road in Cambria?
Casale and Andrea Klyczek, the county’s deputy economic development commissioner, said the answer involves a number of factors, with “site control” among the most important.
While both Casale and Klyczek acknowledged that there’s a lot of existing commercial space, they said much of it is owned by private interests.
Because the county already owned the Junction Road parcel, and because the site is already near the existing Lockport Industrial Park, officials said it had the highest potential for redevelopment.
“We have a lack of development ready sites in Niagara County,” Klyczek said. “This is a county owned site. It just made sense because of it where it was located.”
Casale said the Junction Road property is one of nine in Niagara County identified as a “priority” site in a recent study of commercial sites in Western New York that was commissioned by the local business advocacy group Invest Buffalo Niagara and completed by Newmark, a global real estate advisory and services firm.
As such, Casale said his department believes it is important to get the site as ready as possible for a potential commercial tenant or tenants. Too often, he said, the county receives interest from companies or site selectors but cannot meet their needs due to lack of “shovel-ready” sites.
“We don’t have the ability to site them because there isn’t the space they are requesting,” Casale said.
“It’s not only Niagara County,” he added. “It’s the eight-county region that lacks developable ready sites. As an eight-county region, and Niagara County is in that group, we’ve missed out on some nice opportunities that would resulted in investment, jobs and opportunities in our community.”
In September, members of the county legislature adopted a resolution formally endorsing the Junction Road project. Casale said the move was necessary to ensure it is listed among Invest Buffalo Niagara’s priority projects in 2023.
Casale views the site being added to the list as an important step in positioning the county to receiving state and federal dollars needed to move the project forward.
The goal, he said, is to grow the local economy by turning county land that is now empty into property that is being used by businesses that employ county residents.
‘It gives us the opportunity to present a site to a company whose mission is to build and to invest in our county and to create jobs,” Casale said.
Klyczek agreed.
“Right now, that vacant land is not paying any taxes because its county-owned,” she said. “It’s not generating anything for the benefit of taxpayers.”
TOWN OF CAMBRIA — More than a decade ago, Niagara County lawmakers spent $180,000 in taxpayer money to purchase a 60-acre plot of land on Junction Road that was described at the time an “ideal” location for a new public works complex that had an estimated price tag of $40 million.
About a year after striking the deal to purchase the property, lawmakers decided to scrap the public works project, choosing instead to move departmental operations to a different location in Lockport.
Today, officials with the county’s Center for Economic Development are charting a new course for the land which has remained vacant since the county agreed to buy it in 2007.
They’re now looking to turn the property into a “shovel-ready” business park, which they say the county needs to keep pace in a region where neighboring counties are preparing their own plots of public land to offer to private companies in the ongoing race to attract and retain companies and create jobs.
“There will be developers that build on that site. The county is just getting it prepared to be developed by the private sector,” said Mike Casale, commissioner of the county’s economic development department.
The preparation process starts with a plan. The county hired the local architectural and engineering firm Wendel at a cost of $156,865 to prepare a master site development plan for the parcel. The plan is expected to be completed early next year and will give county officials more detailed estimates on the potential costs involved in developing the business park and an idea of what sort of potential tenants might be attracted to the site.
To get the site ready for development, county officials anticipate a need to connect it to nearby electric, gas and water services and link it to the sewage system. While details are still being worked out, officials said there will likely be some need to build roads and other infrastructure on the property as well.
Based on rough estimates, county officials expect the project will cost around $8 million. They’re confident most, if not all, of the cost will be covered by state and federal grants.
With so much commercial space in, for example, struggling Niagara Falls, why would the county spend millions of dollars to create a business park out on Junction Road in Cambria?
Casale and Andrea Klyczek, the county’s deputy economic development commissioner, said the answer involves a number of factors, with “site control” among the most important.
While both Casale and Klyczek acknowledged that there’s a lot of commercial space in the Falls, they said much of it is owned by private interests.
Because the county already owned Junction Road and because the site is already near an existing commercial park in the Town of Lockport, officials said it rose to the top of the list as having the highest potential for redevelopment.
“We have a lack of development ready sites in Niagara County,” Klyczek said. “This is a county owned site. It just made sense because of it where it was located.”
Casale said the Junction Road property is one of nine in Niagara County identified as a “priority” site as part of a recent study of commercial sites in Western New York that was commissioned by the local business advocacy group Invest Buffalo Niagara and completed by Newmark, a global real estate advisory and services firm.
As such, Casale said his department believes it is important to get the site as ready as possible for a potential commercial tenant or tenants. Too often, he said, the county receives interest from companies or site selectors but cannot meet their needs due to lack of “shovel-ready” sites.
“We don’t have the ability to site them because there isn’t the space they are requesting,” Casale said.
“It’s not only Niagara County,” he added. “It’s the eight-county region that lacks developable ready sites. As an eight-county region, and Niagara County is in that group, we’ve missed out on some nice opportunities that would resulted in investment, jobs and opportunities in our community.”
In September, members of the county legislature adopted a resolution, formally endorsing the Junction Road project. Casale said the move was necessary to ensure it is listed among Invest Buffalo Niagara’s priority projects in 2023.
Casale views being added to the list is an important step in positioning the county to receiving state and federal dollars needed to move the project forward.
The goal, he said, is to grow the local economy by turning county land that is now empty into property that is being used by businesses that employ county residents.
‘It gives us the opportunity to present a site to a company whose mission is to build and to invest in our county and to create jobs,” Casale said.
Klyczek agreed.
“Right now, that vacant land is not paying any taxes because its county owned,” she said. “It’s not generating anything for the benefit of taxpayers.”
Illinois recently added to its reputation as a state where public officials can be persuaded to vote certain ways through “gifts” when AT&T agreed to pay a $23 million fine for allegedly using bribes to win favorable legislation.
The company’s ex-president faces charges, and the federal investigation also includes the role former Speaker of the Illinois House Michael Madigan and his associate Michael McClain might have had in dealing with AT&T.
Madigan already awaits trial on charges that he received bribes from utility Commonwealth Edison is an effort to secure beneficial legislation for that company.
Madigan’s record does not stand alone. Subtracting the two most recent Illinois governors — Republican Bruce Rauner and incumbent Democrat J.B. Pritzker — Illinois residents watched as four of the previous eight governors headed to prison on corruption charges. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Illinois ranked second on a per capita basis 1976-2019 for public corruption.
That’s hardly a mark of which anyone in the state should be proud.
Lots of people talk about passing stronger ethics and disclosure laws in an effort to reduce the number of public corruption cases in Illinois, but the people who would be directly covered by those tougher standards — state lawmakers — are the same people who must pass new laws. So despite the rather lengthy list of corruption cases, change has been slow.
The most recent effort to improve the public’s perception of Illinois officials provides an example.
The Legislature passed a reform package last year, and Gov. Pritzker signed it into law. It requires lobbyists to register and to make more disclosures than in the past to improve transparency in government. It also requires lobbyists to go through ethics training and sexual harassment training, and requires registration of all consultants used by lobbyists.
However, instead of banning lawmakers from ever working as lobbyists, the new law imposes a six-month waiting period before an official can become a lobbyist. And that provision kicks in in 2023 for new legislators elected in November’s voting.
Why not just ban lawmakers from ever working as a lobbyist or consultant? That would prevent former lawmakers and officials from cashing in on the contacts they had when they were supposed to be serving the public.
The new law certainly stands as a better standard than what Illinois had before, which allowed officials to leave their seats in the Legislature and become a lobbyist the next day. But it still falls short of what’s needed to restore the public’s faith in their state elected officials. The people of Illinois deserve better.
Wyoming lawmakers are considering several ways to ease the burden of soaring property taxes on residents.
The Joint Revenue Committee moved forward with five proposals during its meeting last week in Casper. These include a measure that would change the qualifications for a property tax refund program and another to give the Legislature greater flexibility to provide exemptions to residential properties.
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
(The Center Square) – A bill to address California’s housing crisis by making it easier to build affordable homes in underutilized commercial zones cleared a key hurdle on Monday.
The legislation, AB 2011, creates the Affordable Housing and High Roads Jobs Act, aiming to increase housing supply across the state while also creating new construction jobs. Lawmakers in the state Assembly approved it Monday.
Under the legislation, a 100% affordable housing and mixed-income housing project could be streamlined if it meets certain location and design standards, including that the project is in an area zoned for office, retail and parking lots.
Additionally, developers building in these zones must meet certain labor standards, including that they must offer a “prevailing wage” on all projects and contract with workers who are in a state-approved apprenticeship program in projects involving 50 or more units. If no apprentice workers are available, the project can still move forward.
Supporters of the bill said advancing the legislation would address the state’s need for affordable housing while also ensuring job opportunities for construction workers.
“This bill makes it easier to build housing at scale in climate friendly locations using labor standards that would be the strongest labor standards in the country if we pass this bill,” sponsoring Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, told lawmakers on Monday.
As the bill wound its way through the Assembly, it faced opposition from trade groups representing construction workers across the state. The State Building and Construction Trades Council has voiced continuous opposition against the bill, arguing that it should require a skilled and trained workforce as defined by labor law, which would, in turn, require a “certain percentage of each construction craft and trade to be unionized unless the project is subject to a Project Labor Agreement.”
The SBCTC said that without these provisions in place, “the bill provides a path to developer profits with little protections for workers and meaningful input from community members.”
“We remain opposed to any effort that would create a statewide right to develop mostly market-rate and luxury housing without, at a very minimum, basic community protections, including the requirement to use a skilled and trained workforce and pay area prevailing wages,” the SBCTC wrote.
The bill received broad support from most lawmakers on Monday, several of whom noted that the state has several underutilized properties. At the same time, tens of thousands of homeless individuals remain on the streets.
“We can’t say we want the homeless removed from in front of businesses, from our public parks; we don’t want to build on surplus properties; we don’t want to build in commercial areas, and we certainly don’t want to build in our single family home zones,” Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Orange County, said Monday.
Other lawmakers said they would support the measure to keep the conversation going but hope modifications are made to maintain local control. Assemblymember Lori Wilson, D-Solano, a former mayor and local leader for 12 years, voiced concern about the bill “automatically taking away city’s local control, ministerial review, forever without any remediation.”
“This is putting the entire state lumped together assuming that everybody…every city is doing it wrong,” Wilson said. “And so I want to make sure we’re more nuanced and that we don’t punish cities for doing it right.”
Now that the bill has passed the Assembly, it will move to the Senate. As it works through committees, Wicks said she is committed to working with stakeholders to “make a better bill” and discuss adjustments to make the legislation stronger.