Page 14 - July2019 FOP Magazine

Chicago Lodge 7 Lobbyist
Down-to-the-wire debates had us scrambling to protect our interests
The Legislature worked beyond the schedule date of May 31 to finish by an additional two days, with the House going into session on June 1 and the Sen- ate going back on June 2.
The last two days were spent putting the finishing touches on the budget, budget implementation and the State Finances Act.
In the final days of session, they passed the Weed Bill, the Cannabis Banking Bill and the Abortion Bill. Many of these issues were debated in committee for
an extensive period of time, as well as on the floor.
For instance, the Weed Bill (HB1438) was in committee from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. on May 29, and then was debated on May 31 for another three-and-a-half hours on the floor. These exhaus- tive debates caused the Legislature to go into overtime mode,
after failing to meet the May 31 midnight deadline.
Of interest is the Casino Bill (SB690). Amendment No. 3 be- came the bill and states that “the Board (Gaming) may issue one owner’s license authorizing the conduct of casino gambling in the City of Chicago.” There needs to be a feasibility study done,
which is causing City representatives much concern.
The bill allows for 4,000 gaming positions, some of which may be placed at the two airports. The bill does not allow for
the City to hold the license, which impacts the amount it gets and yes, the proceeds from the Chicago casino go into the pub- lic safety pensions [police and fire], as stated in the committee prior to the vote. Our proposal for that same directive ⁠— to have proceeds from sports betting (SB2061) go into our pension fund ⁠— was not adopted.
During the course of this session, we outright opposed a total of 71 bills that would negatively impact the way we do our jobs or how the criminal justice system treats the police and offend- ers. Of those 71 bills, 70 did not pass.
Unfortunately, HB1613, the bill that continues data collec- tion and was to sunset on July 1, did pass, but not without the changes we argued for: Data that has been collected for traffic stops since 2004, and pedestrian stops since 2016, will now be required to be analyzed by a task force overseen by the Illinois Criminal Justice Authority, instead of the Department of Trans- portation, which never really analyzed the data but only provid- ed it as raw data.
This task force, which will include members of law enforce- ment from both the Chicago and state FOP, will file a report in 2022 that hopefully will show that the data no longer needs to be collected. The defeat of this bill would have had no imme- diate impact on the agreement the City made with the ACLU
MARK DONAHUE
14 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JUNE 2019