Proposal to extend stiffer gun offense penalty joins school tax credit, end to nuke moratorium on agenda of Illinois legislature’s final week

After more than 770 homicides were recorded in Chicago in 2016, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration pressed Illinois lawmakers to pass a measure that would increase minimum prison sentences for repeat gun possession offenders.

The law that legislators ultimately approved took effect in 2018, and was a rare bit of policy common ground for Emanuel and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

But in the years since, the level of gun violence in Chicago has remained stubbornly high, and most of the thousands of shootings that have occurred in the city each year remain unsolved. Critics cite those factors as among their reasons for opposing the enhanced sentencing law, which expires at the end of December.

An effort to extend the measure for another year is one of the issues facing lawmakers as they return to Springfield this week for their final scheduled three days in session this year.

Many of the Democrats who control the General Assembly have resisted criminal penalty enhancements in recent years, but party members also try to walk a fine line between progressive criminal justice reforms and the need to show constituents they’re not soft on crime.

“There are tensions in terms of just what people believe from a policy standpoint. There are also just getting elected tensions,” said Kent Redfield, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield. “If you talk about crime, then you are exposing, emphasizing fault lines in terms of policy difference and reelection concerns within different parts of the Democratic caucus.”

The penalty enhancement measure is not the only issue that could divide Democrats. Lawmakers also face a measure to extend a private school tax credit for another five years, which supporters say could prevent thousands of children whose tuition is funded through the program from having to leave their schools.

Also on the agenda is a measure that would lift a nearly 40-year-old moratorium on new nuclear power plants across Illinois, which was passed in the spring but then vetoed by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Lawmakers could also vote on the boundaries of a proposed district map for Chicago’s first-ever elected school board.

The 2018 criminal justice law raised the minimum prison sentence for certain illegal gun possession crimes for repeat offenders from three years to either six or seven years. Judges would have to give an explanation if they departed from the guidelines.

The law also created a special probation program for people under 21 charged for the first time with illegally possessing a gun. Legislators this past spring made the program permanent and removed the age restriction.

The gun possession penalty enhancement was initially set to expire at the end of 2022, but legislators late last year extended it for another year without any opposition from Democrats or Republicans. Democrats during that session were focused on changes to the sweeping criminal justice bill that eliminated cash bail in Illinois.

State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat who serves as the vice chair for the House Judiciary Criminal Committee, said the penalty enhancement provisions got extended last year in part because of the “inability to get reasonable data during the pandemic” to assess the impact of the enhancements.

Cassidy said she would not vote for an extension this time around, and predicted it could have a problem getting through the House as written.

The law has resulted in longer sentences for the two offenses it covers, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, one study concluded. Sentences for those crimes were about two times as likely to be imposed at or above the minimum required under the law compared with sentences for similar crimes before the law was put into place, according to a 2022 study from the Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council.

Crime statistics provide no clear evidence that the law has had a positive effect on gun violence in Chicago. In 2018, the first year the law was in effect, a little more than 2,800 people were shot in the city, a drop of roughly 15% from the previous year. In 2019, that figure went down again, to just more than 2,600. But the number of shooting victims has been higher every year since, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year nearly 3,500 people were shot, and through October of this year there had been 2,500 shooting victims in the city, the statistics show.

The penalty enhancement had been expected by at least one top law enforcement official to put a serious dent in gun violence. In 2017, then-Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told lawmakers in Springfield that change would reduce gun violence in Chicago by 50% in three years.

Last week, the Police Department under Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new top cop, Larry Snelling, said that while it does not comment on pending legislation, “we strongly believe repeat gun offenders must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

Johnson’s administration issued a statement late Friday opposing the law, saying the increased penalties “enhance the cycle of incarceration and are proven to be ineffective, costly and counterproductive.”

Also last week, the chief sponsor of the new bill, Democratic state Sen. Patrick Joyce, said he believes a one-year extension would give the legislature more time to evaluate the law’s effectiveness since the pandemic — as cited by some crime experts — likely impacted crime over the last five years.

“The universe of people that this affects is very small, someone who’s done two felonies with a weapon,” said Joyce, of Reddick in Kankakee County. “I think that the law needs to be looked at further, and until then I think it should be a tool that our state’s attorneys and our judges should have at their disposal.”

Pritzker, whose generally backed progressive criminal justice reforms, said he still needed to review the proposal but agreed that COVID-19 may have had a role in the failure of the measure to positively affect crime.

“Whatever estimates were made about the impact on crime I don’t think took into account that we would go through a deadly pandemic, and that part of the increase in crime that’s taken place in the city of Chicago and elsewhere is due to that,” Pritzker said.

Chicago police officers confiscate thousands of guns and arrest thousands of people for illegal firearm possession each year. But arrests for shootings remain low. For instance, of about 12,100 nonfatal shootings committed with a handgun in Chicago since 2018, only 539, or about 4.5%, have led to an arrest, crime statistics show.

Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell said these statistics are another example of “a very long history of failure” of using penalty enhancements in an effort to reduce gun violence.

“And this problem is too serious to continue down that path,” he said.

Terrance Henderson, who manages street outreach for a Chicago-based anti-violence organization, said the law is ineffective and targets the wrong people.

“You’ve got guys that carry weapons just because they are in fear of their lives, just because it’s so crazy outside,” said Henderson, manager for outreach operations for Chicago CRED (Create Real Economic Destiny).

Joyce said he’s “more than happy to meet” with critics of the proposal but thinks the legislature “should absolutely look at all aspects of this law and take our time and look at it versus just let it expire.”

The controversial Invest in Kids private school tax credit program is also set to expire at year’s end and is up for an extension. It has solid backing from Republicans, who promote a school choice agenda, but has divided Democrats.

Democrats backing an extension say public schools in their districts are underperforming and children from low-income families in their areas should have opportunities to go to the best schools possible. Opponents say the program hasn’t benefited as many children from low-income families as it should.

Under a proposal introduced last month that would extend the program through 2028, the maximum annual credits awarded by the state would be reduced to $50 million from $75 million. Instead of the current 75% tax credit, the donors would get a 100% credit for the first $5,000 they contribute, then a maximum 65% tax credit for any additional amount if the children they sponsor live in underserved communities and a maximum 55% credit if the children don’t.

The annual limit for tax credits would be reduced to $500,000 from $1 million.

State Rep. Kelly Burke, a Democrat who is co-sponsoring the measure, said the proposal also includes a provision aimed at alleviating concerns that the program isn’t targeting the right recipients.

“It’s been very beneficial for some of the schools in my district who have been able to use the scholarships, mostly at the high school level,” said Burke, also the mayor of Evergreen Park. “They’ve been able to bring in kids who couldn’t afford the tuition before. I think they’ve been able to open up their programs and their schools to new kids.”

Last month, Pritzker told reporters in Champaign he’d sign a bill extending the program if the legislature approved one. But he’s since slowly walked back those comments, deferring to lawmakers on whether a proposal would move forward.

In Joliet last week, Pritzker said his administration is “not trying to prevent people from going to private school,” but also noted increased funding for public education during his tenure.

“Support for public education is really where my focus is,” he said.

Nuclear plants

No action was taken in the first week of the fall session on Pritzker’s veto of a measure that would have lifted the state’s decadeslong moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants.

During the spring legislative session, Pritzker had indicated support for allowing the construction of small modular nuclear reactors, which supporters contend would create well-paying jobs and aid in achieving the state’s goal of reaching 100% carbon-free energy generation by midcentury.

But Pritzker argued the proposal that reached his desk also left the door open for more large-scale nuclear plants like the six already in Illinois, which he opposes.

Supporters in the Senate have contended they have the votes to override the governor’s veto but also have been working on a compromise proposal that attempts to address some of Pritzker’s concerns.

Negotiations are ongoing, but Sen. Sue Rezin, the Morris Republican who sponsored the original measure, said she thinks “there’s a pathway forward.” Rezin said she hopes to send a new version of the bill to the House — and hopefully to the governor’s desk — before lawmakers adjourn for the year.

The proposal’s prospects appear murkier in the House, where Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch’s office has said Democratic leaders are waiting to see what happens in the Senate.

School board map

With Chicago voters set to elect school board members for the first time next November, lawmakers last week made their third attempt at drawing a map of the elected board’s 20 districts.

Also to be determined is how elections will be conducted next year, when voters will choose half of the board’s members. The mayor will appoint the other 10 and a board president.

Senate Democrats late Friday proposed having only half the districts vote next year. The appointees will be replaced with members and a president elected in 2026.

The original deadline of last July 1 for finalizing district maps was pushed to April 1 of next year, so the issue could move into the legislative session that begins in January. But there is some pressure to finalize the boundaries as soon as possible so potential candidates can make a decision on running and organize campaigns.

Lawmakers are expected to hold a public hearing on the last map proposal, though as of Friday, none had been scheduled.

Already some advocates have pushed back on the latest mapping effort, saying it doesn’t go far enough to maximize the representation of Black and Latino families, whose children make up the vast majority of the students in Chicago Public Schools.

jgorner@chicagotribune.com

dpetrella@chicagotribune.com