Two weeks remain for Illinois' spring legislative session

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[May 08, 2023]  By Andrew Hensel | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – The Illinois Legislature returns Monday for the final two weeks of session.

A total of 46 House bills and 10 Senate bills have cleared both chambers this year. The House was off Friday. The Illinois Senate advanced 14 measures before canceling the scheduled weekend session. Of the 14 measures passed, seven of them have cleared both chambers and now wait to be sent to Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

The majority of the measures presented on Friday received little pushback as the Senate passed bills that would set a 25 mph speed limit around bikers, one that deals with scholarship repayments and another that deals with opioid abuse.

State Sen. Dave Koehler, D-Peoria, discussed Senate Bill 1555, which creates the Statewide Recycling Needs Assessment Advisory Council to provide advice and recommendations to the Environmental Protection Agency.

"This is still a bill in progress, and we have got another amendment that we will attach in the House," Koehler said. "I think this is a good first step if we are really serious about doing a statewide recycling effort."

One of the questions in regard to the measure was about who would be footing the bill for these recycling changes.

Koehler said the funding will come from the Solid Waste Management Fund.

One of the measures that received some discussion was House Bill 2278, which would ensure that any environmental response project includes a plan or work that is performed or conducted to clean up, remediate, eliminate, investigate, minimize, mitigate, or prevent the release or threatened release of contaminants affecting real property in order to protect public health.

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State Sen. Adriane Johnson, D-Waukegan, said she supports the measure because the current law does not do enough.

"The Uniform Environmental Covenant Act is overly restrictive and prevents the agency from creating environmental covenant sites, where exposure to possible contaminants needs to be prevented," Johnson said.

Johnson's measure could have a negative impact on Illinois farmers, according to state Sen. Terri Bryant, R-Murphysboro.

"When we are talking about groundwater contamination and so forth, we really have some far-reaching issues here for farms," Bryant said. "I hate to ask you to do this, but I would ask that you pull this so we can have some time to talk through a lot of the issues that I think that we have here."

Other measures include House Bill 1067, which would require a superintendent of a department of public works to be a registered professional engineer, and House Bill 3162, which provides that any firefighter or police officer who becomes disabled as a result of exposure to and contraction of COVID-19 is considered injured in the line of duty and is entitled to receive a duty disability benefit.

The House and Senate are scheduled to adjourn May 19.

Andrew Hensel reports on issues in Chicago and Statewide. He has been with The Center Square News since April of 2021 and was previously with The Joliet Slammers.

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