In the first part of the Spring legislative session, State Representatives and Senators were busy introducing bills, and much of our attention was on the Bears and the primary.  Now there are an endless succession of hearings, and with each hearing comes witness slips, the one small way we can all register our opinion on bills without driving down to Springfield.  Please read on, then let me know what actions you’ve chosen to take!

Here are three key bills with hearings coming up this week:

H5521, the Illinois Biometric Surveillance Act.

Folks throughout Chicagoland have been outraged at the news over the weekend that a Loyola University student was killed in an apparent random shooting at the lakefront in the overnight hours last Thursday, and that the suspect is an illegal immigrant who arrived in the country in 2022 and was arrested for shoplifting, then released in 2023, but never appeared for his court date.  The suspect was identified by tracking his movements through video from multiple cameras, first with his face mask, then without it.  In that case, he was traced to an apartment building, and a resident of that building identified him.  In other cases, facial recognition software played a key role in identifying potential suspects.

This coming Wednesday and Thursday, the Biometric Surveillance Act will be up for consideration in Judiciary Committee hearings.  This bill would prohibit law enforcement agencies from using biometric data, such as facial recognition or even fingerprints, with limited exceptions such as forensic evidence at a crime scene.  It would significantly reduce the ability of law enforcement to solve crimes.  

You can create a witness slip at this link to take a stand on this bill.  Fill in your personal information, choose “self” or “n/a” for Representation (unless you are speaking on behalf of others), use the drop down box to Add Legislation (select the “original bill”) and your position (“opponent”), and click “Add Position.”  Then check “Record of Appearance Only,” agree to the Terms, confirm you’re not a robot, and Submit the Witness Slip.

You can also contact the 54th District’s Mary Beth Canty, who sits on this committee.  She represents the northern 2/3rds of Arlington Heights.  Her official email is info@repmbc.com.

House Bill 1252, the Motor Vehicle Insurance Fairness Act. 

Who doesn’t love fairness?  As it happens, actuaries have a term, actuarial fairness, in which a premium’s fairness is based on calculations for a specific risk group.  This bill would throw that entire concept out the window.   In an effort to reduce premiums for riskier drivers, it would raise premiums for everyone else.  If this bill passes, insurance companies could not charge higher premiums for younger drivers, or for younger male drivers, even though they are high risk drivers.  They could not differentiate premiums by zip code, even though there are wide differences in risk.  Any larger geographic differentiation would only be permitted if there was no more than a 25% difference in premium, and insurance companies wouldn’t be permitted to exclude any geographic area from their coverage.  Also, all insurance companies must prove that their pricing does not have a disparate impact on customers based on protected characteristics such as race, national origin, or sex, which as written would prohibit premium differences based even on actual driving history if it is different for men vs women or different racial groups.  And the state would supervise every rate set and prohibit rate increases it deems “excessive.”

Not only am I an actuary, I am a mother of three young adult sons.  Even over those short but crucial years as college students and just beyond, I have watched them mature.  It is preposterous to expect everyone else to subsidize lower premiums for riskier drivers.  It’s all the more absurd to apply these regulations to Illinois, where the largest insurer is State Farm, a mutual insurance company, which means it is owned by policy holders, who receive distributions rather than stockholders getting dividends.

Is it hard to get worked up over a bill that seems to affect only big businesses?  Maybe.  But it won’t just affect them, it’ll affect you, too.

This bill was introduced last spring, seemed to die a quiet death but has been revived and will come up for a hearing on Tuesday.  The webpage to file witness slips is here.

Illinois HB4414, requiring serial numbers on ammunition.

This bill would require that all handgun ammunition must have a serial number engraved in such a way that it is identifiable after the bullet’s impact, both on the bullet and the cartridge, and that the serial number must be tracked by the state police, at a cost of 5 cents per bullet in tax to fund the state’s administrative cost, and unknown, perhaps quite substantial, additional costs to manufacturers, which may cause some to cease to sell in the state.  It would also criminalize the possession of unserialized ammunition in a public place, meaning that law-abiding citizens would become criminals merely due to ammunition purchased before the law’s implementation.

The next hearing for this bill is this Tuesday.  If this is an issue which matters to you, witness slips may be completed at this link.

Finally – there are bills which I would urge you to support rather than oppose, but it is not possible to file a witness slip unless a bill is scheduled for a hearing, and many important bills sponsored by Republicans do not get hearings.  Remember, this is entirely the choice of the House Speaker under the existing rules.  So there’s no reform to the Safety Act, no guardrails for assisted suicide, none of the other important legislation which Republicans can’t even work together with moderate Democrats on.