The Senate Commerce Committee endorsed the measure 6-0 Wednesday, with five members not voting. The House approved 102-0 April 9.

Titled the “Retail Cash Payments Act,” the proposal would bar businesses from refusing cash on in-store purchases of less than $500. Further, businesses wouldn’t be able to post signs announcing cash isn’t accepted, although they would still be allowed to refuse bills worth more than $20. Violations would be petty offenses subject to fines – starting at $50 but no more than $5,000 per year – but the plan also creates 30-day windows to cure violations before incurring a fine.

There are exceptions, such as membership-only stores, self-service checkouts, sales between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., instances of “a sales system failure that temporarily prevents the processing of cash payments or a temporary insufficiency in cash on hand needed to provide change,” and merchants that both take prepaid cards and have an on-site mechanism for converting cash into an acceptable card.

The CapitolFax blog blurbed the bill Thursday with a quote from state Rep. Chris Belt, D-Swansea: “Cash is still a reality for millions of families, seniors and small-business owners. No one should feel excluded from participating in routine transactions simply because they choose to pay with cash.”

There’s another exception, but reading between the lines is required: governments. Because the statutory language clearly applies to businesses, government units obviously are excluded. But taking Belt’s quote at face value, that cash remains reality for millions and excluding people from routine transactions is wrong, it becomes fair to wonder why city hall would warrant different rules from corner stores.

Consumers have a choice. If I want a pack of gum but don’t have cash, I’ll shop at the market that takes my card. If neither takes plastic, my consequence is no gum. Conversely, constituents are limited. I can only buy a village vehicle sticker from one source, and the consequence of avoiding it is significantly more expensive than having no gum in my pocket.

Although most of the government websites I perused indicated a strong preference for electronic payments or mailed checks, there doesn’t appear to be a crisis of public bodies refusing cash. That’s likely because federal law stipulates American currency is “legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes and dues” and a decent lawyer could argue a government can’t demand a payment and then set unreasonable collection terms.

Debates about the prudence of this legislative edict aside, the bill simply serves as a reminder of the value of considering proposals’ effects, intended or otherwise, and asking questions about who is subject to which rule and why.

Read the bill, yes, but sometimes answers lie beyond the language.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.

One key component of becoming an informed and involved taxpayer and voter is taking the time to become familiar with reading judicial decisions. Primary source documents help in forming useful questions and evaluating the perspectives of public figures who gain from having their version of facts become accepted truth.

Today’s suggested reading is a 3-0 U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals opinion published Monday, affirming a jury’s decision to find former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan guilty on 10 counts in a wide-ranging bribery and corruption trial that yielded a $2.5 million fine and 70-month prison sentence.

The opinion itself is at tinyurl.com/MadiganAppealDenied. Hannah Meisel’s Capitol News Illinois summary is at tinyurl.com/MadiganAppealCNI.

While this opinion provides typical insight into the specifics of government prosecutors’ arguments and the standard of proof, its further value is in distilling more than a decade of Illinois history, neatly explaining cause, action and effect.

Judge Michael Scudder wrote the 29-page opinion, opening with a concise summary: “Sufficient evidence supports each conviction, and we see no prejudicial error in the district court’s jury instructions.”

But stick around for the details. Scudder, who worked as an accountant before enrolling in Northwestern University’s law school, has a no-nonsense writing style. Save for requisite references to federal court rules, statutory citations and attributions to preceding court cases, a lot of the text isn’t much different from how a seasoned court reporter might present information.

He explained how U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey “correctly identified the elements of the offense” when instructing the jury and then defined the appellate court’s power to review sufficiency of trial evidence: it could only consider if any rational person assessing the facts “could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.” In the circuit, he added, that burden is “nearly insurmountable.”

That context clarifies why Madigan’s chances were slim, and Scudder deftly explains the case history and why Madigan’s appellate arguments failed, routinely addressing what a reasonable jury could believe based on everything shown at trial.

His final paragraph stands on its own as a sufficient summary of the events that felled a towering figure of Illinois government:

“Michael Madigan spent nearly a decade leveraging his power as one of the highest-ranking public officials in Illinois in exchange for over $3 million of financial benefits for his close political allies. The linkage was clear and far from fleeting. He repeatedly facilitated changes to state law impacting countless energy consumers in northern Illinois, all because ComEd funneled money to the right people. Madigan insists that this was run-of-the-mill politics. But a jury of 12 Illinois residents saw the evidence differently. So do we.”

Amen.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.

Feb. 14: State Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, introduced House Bill 5539 to clarify original statutory language regarding official state identification integrated with mobile devices, specifically a clause stating presentation of phone ID doesn’t constitute consent for looking at anything else.

“Your information is presented digitally to the identity reader, so you’ll never need to show or hand over your iPhone or Apple Watch to any business,” according to the state’s Mobile ID website. In an email, Spain told me the proposal resulted from “several issues” Joint Committee on Administrative Rules members discussed during their meetings.

“As a result, Secretary [of State Alexi] Giannoulias agreed to advance this trailer bill to update the enabling statute to clarify terms, prohibit an outside party from taking physical possession of a mobile ID device and prevent any permanent storage of data from a mobile device,” Spain wrote. “This is a great example of the bipartisan rulemaking process at JCAR.”

That bill has been in the rules committee ever since. However, Senate Bill 3449 contains essentially the same language and passed the Senate 46-11 on April 16. Spain is the chief House sponsor of this bill, which now includes an amendment ensuring any information obtained from a mobile ID “may not be maintained or stored for longer than what is strictly necessary for the purpose for which the information was provided.”

Feb. 25: Andrew Diaz and Allison Hovaniec, who attend Pontiac High School, worked with the Illinois Environmental Council and state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, to draft HB 4652, a plan to mandate vape disposal programs.

The bill picked up two additional sponsors in March, then moved from the Executive to the Cannabis & Intoxicating Products Subcommittee, but on March 27 returned to Rules. In an email, Diaz said House members want to change some of the languages and told the students it wouldn’t pass by the deadline, but they don’t yet have a handle on what amendments are forthcoming.

March 12: SB 3374 would amend the Illinois Vehicle Code by allowing certain government units to lower the default speed limit from 30 to 25 or 20 mph without first conducting a speed study. It’s got a third reading deadline of May 8.

March 28: Although the House Executive Committee voted 12-0 to advance HB 5319, a Public Community College Act amendment to empower those institutions to confer certain bachelor’s degrees, and despite bipartisan backing from dozens of sponsors, the bill is back in the Rules Committee as of April 17.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.

“There is no place for political violence of any form in the United States.”

“Political violence has no place in our country.”

It’d be easy to devote the rest of the space to public statements Illinois politicians and parties issued in response to the terrible weekend news out of Washington, D.C.

But the reality is that political violence has quite a secure place in our society, as does violence in general. So secure, I just repurposed the opening of a June 19 column about Minnesota, a piece that referenced July 2024 when Republicans canceled a senior health fair at DeKalb High School following a threatening voicemail.

We’ll keep nesting these dolls around an obviously relevant excerpt: “Brown’s Chicken in Palatine. Lane Bryant in Tinley Park. Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora. Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. That’s just one category, and experienced news consumers can make their own lists, which might include a roll call of public buildings subject to bomb threats, as a roster of schools and libraries so affected would scarcely fit in the rest of this column or page.

“The history of actual political assassinations affecting Illinois officials is more black and white – as in before color film – like Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak being shot in Miami while leaving a speech aside President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. That was 40 years after a gunman killed Mayor Carter Harrison in his home.

“This is no defense of threats or action. Anti-violence might be my deepest-held personal position. But that comes from understanding how much we actually have normalized the scourge.”

The Sunday newspaper in my driveway was clearly tweaked close to deadline, as the Washington story was a single paragraph in the lower-right corner above a teaser for an NFL draft feature. The banner headline? “1 cop killed, 1 hurt in shooting.”

In June, state Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, attempted context:

“We won’t hear about the suicide by firearm, or the accidental shootings. We have become numb to it all. So we have to end the political violence, without question, and also we cannot lose focus on the way gun violence is rewriting what’s ‘normal’ in America.”

Morgan’s statement, however well-intended, was in conflict with itself. We are numb to it all because it’s all normal. Individual events can temporarily shock, but while outlandish violence isn’t as common as fueling your car or bringing in the mail, the reality is that despite society condemning and even punishing individual perpetrators, the violence itself is broadly tolerated and in certain, tiny corners even celebrated.

Changing a few nouns gets your public statements ready for the next unthinkable tragedy.

Copy. Paste. Numb is normal.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.

With apologies for being able to get fully into the details on any single topic, it seems safe to generalize that the developments with the greatest potential influence are the megaprojects’ economic development incentives (linked largely, but not explicitly, to a push for a new pro football stadium), and two statewide ballot initiatives, one regarding political maps and another that could change our income tax structure.

Discussion around all three topics must operate under the caveat that these are still just proposals. The megaproject bill and redistricting amendment still have to go to the Senate, while the “millionaire tax” referendum didn’t even reach the House floor. That reality doesn’t mean ignoring the ways the measures might change Illinois if enacted as written, but it does afford an opportunity to note the people’s business isn’t always done in the predawn hours of Memorial Day weekend or crammed into a January lame duck session.

As for the tax referendum, little seems to have changed from early April, despite House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, backing the framework. There isn’t enough caucus consensus behind the current details, and Gov. JB Pritzker, who bankrolls a significant portion of Democratic campaign material, hasn’t expressed the desire to remount this horse after a rocky ride in 2020.

The redistricting referendum represents a more pressing concern, since the Senate could well concur before the deadline required to present the question to voters in November. However, it also falls under the umbrella of a larger discussion that’s been true for nearly a century now: our deeply flawed Congressional representation system can only be substantially repaired through federal action.

First, it is long past time to uncap the House of Representatives so district sizes account for a population explosion and major demographic shifts since the current limit took effect in 1929. At the time, when Illinois had 27 House seats, each district covered about 210,000 residents. By 2020, with Illinois down to 17, the average was 760,000.

Second, the only way to end gerrymandering in any state is for Congress to enact a new nationwide standard for political mapmaking. When such proposals surface, the party in power doesn’t take up the cause, in no small part because they realize the mapping process is a key component in how they came to be the party in power. Any politician making any other point is obfuscating.

And for the Bears … there still are too few details to see anything resembling good policy. Again, same as it ever was.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.

Tuesday’s “It’s Just A Bill” post on CapitolFax.com included a nugget on House Bill 5317, which the House passed 104-0 on April 9. The sponsor, state Rep. Dagmara Avelar, D-Romeoville, said the plan allows the state Environmental Protection Agency to reimburse cities and towns that remediate abandoned underground tanks once used to hold fuel or chemicals.

I first learned about leaking underground storage tanks nearly 25 years ago. The context was long-shuttered gas stations on the U.S. 30/67 corridor in Iowa, a business that became much less profitable following the development of Interstate 80 through the Quad Cities. There’s no surprise Illinois has a similar problem. But the journey here is one of uncovering information and what it sometimes takes to stay on top of issues.

The CapitolFax digest said IEPA could fund up to five cleanups a year. That got me wondering about cost. There was no link to Avelar’s press release. Her website also doesn’t have a recent announcement, but her Facebook page mentioned the bill in an April 10 recap post, so off to the General Assembly website (ilga.gov) for further research, which happily includes a fiscal note.

That allows revisiting a March 21 column about Senate Bill 2094, which would eliminate a rule allowing a majority vote to disregard a lawmaker’s request for a fiscal note. That bill seems destined to die in the Assignments Committee, but it at least served to spotlight how Illinois is one of the worst states at presenting useful information about proposals’ potential effects on state spending.

So it was indeed surprising to see a note on HB 5317. IEPA estimates the remediations have an average cost of $150,000 per site and said its Underground Storage Tank Fund holds more than $80 million as of April 7. Ignoring inflation, five projects per year means it would take 106 years to burn through the entire fund.

At epa.illinois.gov, there’s a list of LUST sites to search, sort and download. At 31,340 entries, that could mean this is a $4.7 billion problem (again, ignoring inflation). My ZIP code alone has 120, many within a mile of home.

All of which to say the issue is much larger than HB 5317. Still, it’s a useful attempt to promote cleanup efforts by allowing municipalities or counties to participate in an ongoing program to the same extent as actual tank property owners or operators. Governments obviously have different incentives from private businesses, but up-front costs often impede remediation that is otherwise popular and beneficial.

Furthermore, the topic generally reminds us of the size and scope of state government and the resources available to help understand how public money is working.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.

The House passed the proposal 102-3 Thursday, according to Capitol News Illinois, a ringing endorsement of Gov. JB Pritzker’s goal to ban student use of cellphones in the classroom.

“The research is clear,” said House Sponsor Michelle Mussman, D-Schaumburg. “This constant source of distraction is lowering their academic progress, increasing anxiety, depression and cyberbullying, and inhibiting face-to-face communication at a critical time when youth are developing their social skills.”

Fair. How are kids supposed to know what’s happening on their Chromebooks if they’re looking at their iPhones?

In macro, the plan makes sense. As hard as it can be for anyone, school-age or otherwise, to pocket the phone or turn off notifications, surely we can understand the benefits of fewer distractions. And although smartphones have been around for a while, the vast majority of General Assembly members finished high school before society fully on-ramped to the information superhighway, so they do have to rely on today’s educational professionals to contextualize concerns.

All that said, it seems safe to predict that even if the Senate endorses the House’s amendments and sends the bill along for Pritzker’s signature, there will be some sort of pushback to change the guidelines after schools start adopting the required policies by August 2027.

I make that prediction as the father of four kids, ages 12 through almost 22. Not because of a personal problem with the ban, but because I know my fellow parents.

The current version of SB 2427 has “carveouts for students with medical needs, who are caregivers for family members, and who need their phone for English translation services,” according to CNI. “School officials can also permit device use if it’s for educational purposes.”

Again, those are logical exceptions. But given the notes we get (especially from the middle school), a clear part of the problem all along has been parents, specifically those who can’t wait to communicate information that almost certainly can wait until the end of the school day.

Once the middle schooler leaves each morning, that’s it. Anything forgotten likely stays at home; if it’s a true emergency, there’s always time to have the office call. The freshman checks in during lunch period, but otherwise seems off-grid. We’re not entirely sure when the senior is actually in class, though, because it seems almost impossible to send that much into the group chat during one passing period.

Certain administrators will be happy to rely on “No phones, state law.” Certain parents will demand an exception. And in some cases, they’ll be right, sending lawmakers back to work.

That outcome isn’t bad, just inevitable. Progress is rarely linear.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.

The headline alone is powerful: “60 dead people found on Illinois jury panel, triggering constitutional challenge.” But the details are even better.

There’s trouble brewing in Whiteside County, where a recent panel of 200 potential jurors included at least 60 dead people, one of whom expired the year Michael Jordan’s Bulls won the NBA Finals. The first time.

As Char detailed, the discovery, which started earlier this year as Whiteside’s jury practices over 30-plus years came under deserved scrutiny, suggests “a statewide problem that systematically excludes younger citizens from jury duty in violation of the Sixth Amendment.”

It’s definitely worth reading the entire story (tinyurl.com/WhitesideJury), but essential to understand the role of the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, which uses several sources to compile jury lists: voter registration, unemployment insurance, Secretary of State driver and identification records and Person with a Disability cards.

The prevailing issue is that not all of those sources are automatically pruned. A driver’s license comes with an expiration date. When those licenses expire, for whatever reason, it’s relatively easy to remove those names from the list.

Voter registration doesn’t expire. The upside is that if you’re like my parents, who haven’t moved since 1978, there’s no barrier to participating in democracy. Voters like me, with four “permanent” addresses in Illinois since 2007, have to update their registration with each change. The downside is when registered voters don’t pull a ballot – or if they move or die – there’s a chance their names are still on an old list.

The jury composition process involves merging, comparing and eliminating certain data fields. So even if I hadn’t re-registered to vote after moving from Ottawa to Gurnee in 2009, I might’ve eventually been removed from the La Salle County rolls after obtaining a new license with a Lake County address.

Framing this situation as an election security issue might be useful for politics, but doing so without offering statistics about votes attributed to the deceased is disingenuous. It is much more seriously a constitutional concern about trial rights – don’t get me started on the broader jury duty debate – as well as another entry in the list of bloated government inefficiencies.

Few love the idea of a central government database, state or federal, tying everyone’s everything into a single record. Yet it boggles the mind that despite every modern technological advancement and increasing requirements to prove who we are, these types of clerical challenges remain, posing viable threats to our supposed founding ideals.

Lawmakers – who most certainly cannot feign surprise – might consider acting in response.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.