By Capitol News Illinois
The State’s minimum wage will increase by $1 hourly, recreational marijuana will go on sale to those over 21 years of age, and some State taxes and licensing fees will increase this year.
The changes are among hundreds resulting from laws passed during a busy legislative session which adjourned in early June 2019:
• Minimum Wage: The minimum wage will increase by $1 to $9.25 hourly, the first such increase since 2010. The wage will increase to $10 hourly in July before increasing $1 each January until it hits $15 by 2025.
• Marijuana Legalization: With the legalization of adult-use marijuana in the State, Illinois residents will be allowed to possess 30 grams of cannabis flower, 500 milligrams of a marijuana-infused product, and five grams of cannabis concentrate. Non-residents can possess half those amounts.
Consumption of marijuana still will be banned in public places, however, unless a licensed marijuana facility or certain lounges obtain local government clearance for allowing use at their facilities.
Marijuana legalization will provide for the expungement of low-level cannabis convictions and criminal records in the state, the first of which were filed in Chicago in December 2019.
• New Taxes, Fees for Capital Plan: Some new taxes and fees which will help provide funds for a multi-year $45 Billion capital infrastructure plan will take effect starting in January.
Registration fees for passenger vehicles will increase to $151 from $101, while electric vehicle registration fees will increase to $251 annually from $34 every other year.
The licensing fee for a trailer weighing less than 3,000 pounds will increase to $118 from $18, with every weight class above that seeing a $100 increase.
A new tax on parking garages will take effect, with a six percent rate applied to hourly and daily garages and a nine percent rate applied to monthly.
The State will begin taxing the value of traded-in vehicles starting after $10,000 of value, down from $20,000.
• Early Childhood Programs: Democratic governor JB Pritzker’s office announced Monday, Dec. 23, 2019, that the State will receive $40.2 Million in federal grants over the next three years to improve early childhood programs.
The competitive grants are administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and they require a 30% cost-sharing commitment from non-federal funds. The grants are used to build early childhood program infrastructure and expand high-quality preschool programs in targeted communities, the governor’s office said in a news release.
“From our aggressive efforts to secure federal funding to our historic investments in early childhood programs and facilities, Illinois will become the best state in the nation for families raising young children,” Pritzker said in the release.
Pritzker announced that the State is increasing child care provider reimbursement rates by five percent statewide and by 20% for providers in what the Illinois Department of Human Services calls “Group 2” counties, which are primarily rural counties.
The budget that lawmakers passed during the 2019 session included a $50 million increase in the State’s Early Childhood Education Block grant. In addition, the capital improvements program known as “Rebuild Illinois” provides $100 Million for construction of early childhood facilities across the State.
• LGBTQ health care: Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has joined with 18 other state attorneys general in opposing proposed new federal rules that they say could strip many LGBT individuals of many health care rights.
The proposed rule deals with non-discrimination policies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It would delete current language in HHS regulations, adopted in the final weeks of the Barack Obama administration, that prohibits discrimination in the agency’s programs “based on non-merit factors such as age, disability, sex, race, color, national origin, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation.”
That rule was based, in part, on the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The proposed new rule would replace that language with a generic ban on discrimination “to the extent doing so is prohibited by federal statute.”
The proposed change was published in the Federal Register November 19. In that notice, the agency cited concerns that the Obama-era rule violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which prohibits the federal government “from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion.” That law, however, allows exceptions when there is a “compelling state interest” in doing so and the burden is the “least restrictive means of furthering that interest.”
In a letter to HHS dated December 19, the deadline for public comment on the rule, the 19 attorneys general challenged that assertion.
“Our federal tax dollars should not be funneled towards organizations that openly discriminate against certain groups,” Raoul said in a separate statement. “I am committed to ensuring that all Americans are protected against discrimination and have an equal opportunity to apply for and take advantage of programs funded through federal grants.”
• Recreational Marijuana: With less than two weeks before adult-use recreational marijuana becomes legal in Illinois, the state Department of Agriculture announced Monday, Dec. 23, 2019, that all 21 cultivation centers that have been licensed to grow medical marijuana are now licensed also to grow for adult use.
The final three companies to be approved were Bedford Grow LLC, in Bedford Park; IL Grow Medicine LLC in Elk Grove Village; and JG IL LLC in Edgewood.
Under the marijuana legalization law passed during the 2019 legislative session, cultivation centers already licensed to grow medical marijuana were allowed to apply for early approval of licenses to grow for adult use.
Other applicants will have an opportunity to apply for licenses in an upcoming phase of the implementation process, with priority going to “social equity applicants” – generally, applicants from communities “disproportionately impacted” by the war on drugs, or individuals with previous arrests or convictions for minor marijuana violations.
In addition to the three companies whose approvals were announced previously, the Department said in a news release that the other 18 cultivation centers include:
• Ataraxia – Albion
• Compass Ventures, Inc. – Litchfield
• Cresco Labs, LLC – Joliet
• Cresco Labs, LLC – Kankakee
• Cresco Labs, LLC – Lincoln
• Curative Health Cultivation, LLC – Aurora
• GTI Oglesby, LLC – Oglesby
• GTI Rock Island, LLC – Rock Island
• IESO, LLC – Carbondale
• InGown Farms – Freeport
• Nature’s Grace and Wellness, LLC – Vermont
• PharmaCann, LLC – Dwight
• PharmaCann, LLC – Hillcrest
• Progressive Treatment Solutions – East St. Louis
• Revolution Cannabis, LLC (DBA Ascend Illinois) – Barry
• Revolution Cannabis, LLC – Delavan
• Shelby County Community Service s- Shelbyville
• Wellness Group Pharms, LLC – Anna
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit news service operatedby the Illinois Press Foundation that provides coverage of state government to newspapers throughout Illinois. The mission of Capitol News Illinois is to provide credible and unbiased coverage of state government to the more than 400 daily and weekly newspapers that are members of the Illinois Press Association.