Here’s a roundup of 10 key votes from the Illinois legislative session.
10 Bills that Could Impact Your Business
Illinois’ never-ending budget saga received most
of the attention as the Legislature adjourned its regularly scheduled spring
session on Tuesday, May 31, but NFIB/Illinois has also been monitoring hundreds
of other bills over the past few months. In particular, we kept track of 10
“key vote” bills—those most impactful to our members. Take a look at where this
session’s key votes, all of which we oppose, stand now.
SB 2147 (Status: Senate Floor)
This bill creates the Healthy Workplace Act,
which would require employers to provide paid sick days to employees: 7 days in
a 12-month period for certain circumstances. Since the majority of small
businesses already provide paid time off, flexibility—not a government
mandate—is what’s key for these businesses. Mandated paid sick leave will only
endanger other employee benefits, as well as pay and hours worked.
SB 2865 (Status: Senate Floor)
This bill would severely restrict online lenders
and their commercial loan products for small business owners. This aggressive
regulation could cause these lenders to decline to do business in Illinois,
which would be particularly harmful to small business owners, who sometimes
need access to capital that banks will not provide.
SB 2933 (Status: Failed in Senate)
This bill would have allowed local governments
to give businesses’ confidential tax information to a for-profit third-party
company, including firms hired by municipalities on a contingency-fee basis to
challenge tax allocation decisions made by Illinois Department of Revenue.
SB 2964 (Status: Passed both chambers; sent to
Gov. Rauner)
This bill requires the prevailing wage paid to
government contractors be set by collective bargaining agreements (CBAs),
meaning that the prevailing wage would be codified as union scale. Under the
bill, the CBAs must cover at least 30 percent of the workers in that locality
to be used to set the prevailing wage.
SJRCA 1 (Status: Senate Floor)
This bill would amend the Illinois constitution
to eliminate the state flat tax and replace it with a progressive tax.
HB 689 (Status: House Rules Committee)
This bill would set progressive income tax
rates, should a constitutional amendment be approved by voters on the fall
ballot.
HB 1290 (Status: House Rules Committee)
This bill would allow an employee to file a
pre-judgement lien against an employer for alleged wage theft; the employee
only has to mail a notice to the employer five days before it’s filed. No due
process or opportunity to dispute the claim is given to the employer before the
lien is filed, so he or she can only fight it after the fact as a lien. The
lien would apply to both real and personal property for the full amount of any
wages, penalties, and interest allegedly owed.
HB 3297 (Status: House Rules Committee)
This bill would create the Employee Paid Health
Care Time Act, requiring employers with one or more employees to provide paid
healthcare time. For employers with 50 or more employees, the paid time would
be accrued at a rate of one hour for every 22 hours worked; for an employer
with fewer than 50 employees, one hour of paid time would be accrued for every
40 hours worked.
HB 6162 (Status: Passed both chambers; sent to
Gov. Rauner)
This bill would create the Employee Sick Leave
Act, which mandates that employers allow employees to use their paid sick leave
benefits for absences due to an illness, injury, or medical appointment of the
employee’s child, spouse, sibling, parent, mother/father-in-law, grandchild/parent,
or stepparent.
HJRCA 59 (Status: House Rules Committee)
This bill would amend the Illinois constitution
to eliminate the state’s flat tax and replace it with a progressive tax.
