Access Living friends and allies,
We’d like to briefly share about state-level advocacy wins! The Illinois state legislature wrapped up its spring session very late last night, passing a $56 billion budget. The Access Living advocacy team was also up late, pushing until the last minute.
Right now, our quick list of bills passed/funds won includes:
- $1.5 million in new funding for home modifications (Home Mods) statewide, which we advocated for with our state membership organization, the Illinois Network of Centers for Independent Living (INCIL)
- Flat funding for Illinois Centers for Independent Living, also in alignment with INCIL. This year’s budget faced enormous fiscal pressure, and many other human services groups faced flat funding as well.
- HB 1810, the Equitable Access to Education, Employment, and Training for Incarcerated Individuals with Disabilities Act (aka the TABE Waiver bill), creates a waiver for persons with intellectual/developmental disabilities in the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) from taking the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE). This will open fair access to IDOC wages, as well as IDOC education and employment opportunities that earn good time credit.
- HB 4758, which amends the Job Opportunities for Qualified Applicants Act (aka the “driver’s license bill”), is a bill that bans listing a driver’s license on job applications, where driving is not an essential part of the job duties.
- HB 1783, the Language Equality Acquisition for the Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Deaf-Blind Children Act (aka the LEAD-K bill), is a bill for which we supported Deaf leaders seeking to advance language access for very young children, in order to prevent language deprivation at the developmental stages when it matters most.
We have a great deal of work to do ahead of the October veto session of our state legislature. This spring, we kept important discussion moving on a number of bills, including the HELPP Act (peer-to-peer end-of-life care in IDOC), Kiki’s Law (the right to wear masks), a waiver amendment serving people with very high support needs, enshrining Section 504 protections at the state level, and much more. These efforts will continue this summer. Our advocacy team will be taking a breather in June, and then regroup for summer prep for our fall work.
As always at this point of the Access Living advocacy calendar, thanks are due to many people. It takes all of us to support Access Living’s state legislative work. Our amazing advocacy staff work incredibly hard during session to advance our goals. However, our whole organization also deserves thanks, from the Access Living services staff who identify issues, to our civil rights attorneys, to our finance/admin and management staff, to our contractors, to our communications team, and much more. We are also fortunate to work with a rich variety of community allies towards goals that help us all. Most of all, we are thankful for our grassroots leaders who keep us accountable every day.
This month, we will share more detailed debriefings on our spring legislative session. For now, we send our thanks to all of YOU for your ongoing support!