Working for Illinois Caucus

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Illinois House lawmakers have passed an insurance bill to regulate rate increases for home and auto insurance. It now goes to the Senate for a final vote.

The bill makes insurance companies disclose rate increases 60 days before they do it, and will allow the Illinois Department of Insurance to deny any rate increase if they find it exorbitant.

Insurance companies said this bill might increase rates and make the Illinois insurance market less competitive because insurance companies will leave due to more regulations.

Illinois is currently the only state that does not regulate homeowners insurance rates.

The legislation comes after a failed attempt to pass a similar bill, which was supported by Gov. JB Pritzker, in the veto session. The new bill combines the regulations for home and auto insurance, which is supported by the Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias.

Democratic state Rep. Sharon Chung, representing Bloomington-Normal, voted against the bill seeking to impose regulations on the Twin Cities’ largest employers. Chung said the bill was vague on what constituted an unfair rate increase and what information insurance companies needed to file to the Illinois Department of Insurance.

Chung said now that the bill is going to the Senate floor, there does not seem to be a lot of desire to compromise with insurance companies.

“The way I’ve sort of seen it is that, because they sort of put this bill out there, and at one point, really weren’t willing to sort of negotiate or compromise with industry or even talk to them,” Chung said.

Chung proposed a bill earlier in this session which would have given the state the authority to approve insurance rates, but would not allow for customer rebates. She wanted that to be a conservation starter between lawmakers and insurance companies.

Chung said the trust between insurance companies and the state’s Department of Insurance has been broken. Chung added this is why insurance companies want more clarity with definitions.

Chung did not say what those definitions should be.

Chung said she also has concerns about the talks surrounding this bill about affordability. She added the bill might not be able to stop rate increases.

“That’s kind of one of the reasons why I sort of have been fighting against this bill, because I just don’t think it’s going to do what people think that it’s going to do," Chung said.

Reasons for rate hikes

Chung said some of the rate increases are due to there being more tornadoes and severe weather in Illinois.

“I cannot see in any sort of world that prices will go down, to be perfectly honest with you, because just because of the storms, the amount of storms that we’ve had,” Chung said.

Chung said the Illinois legislature should look at other causes that are driving up rates like the “storm chasers” scam which could affect insurance rates.

Storm chasers are people who come directly after a storm saying they can repair people’s houses, but these repairs are not covered by insurance.

Sean Kevelighan, CEO of the Insurance Information Institute, said there are multiple drivers that increase insurance rates.

Kevelighan said inflation has been increasing the cost of materials and equipment.

“We had an extraordinary amount of inflation coming out of COVID for five years," Kevelighan said. "Those inflation rates are now normalizing into a level that you know is much more manageable, two to 3% for replacement costs.”

Kevelighan said as inflation slows down, it makes more money available for claims and provides discounts.

Kevelighan said the 60-day notice before raising premiums that are above 10% could make insurance companies increase rates more because they can not adapt as quickly to a changing market.

“It’s the longer that you apply approval timing, and you force such approval timings in such a way it can, it can have negative impacts,” Kevelighan said.

Kevelighan said Illinois should focus more on helping people reinforce their home and continue looking into other areas to decrease rates.

State Sen. Michael Hastings, a Democrat representing a suburb of Chicago, said the bill might not decrease rates but could slow the rate increases, thus making insurance more affordable.

“We have to do our best to make sure that the quality of life that they have, number one, is good and that it’s affordable. And by passing this law, at least [the bill] I passed over [to the House during the veto session] was solely to protect our homeowners,” Hastings said.

Hastings had previously supported a bill focused only on homeowners insurance which passed the Senate but never got a vote in the House.

Hastings said the Senate still has to review the bill before making a final vote.

“We have to look at the definitions, we have to look at the rebates, and we have to look at the filing authorities with the Department of Insurance,” Hastings said.

B-N insurers aren’t in favor

State Farm said they do not support the bill because it might make Illinois a less competitive market and the reason rates are going up currently is because of a rise in natural disasters.

“We are disappointed by the outcome of the Illinois House vote. This state has had the most competitive and stable insurance market in the country for more than 50 years. We believe this action will undermine auto and homeowners’ insurance rate predictability, market stability and reduce competition while ultimately leading to higher insurance prices for Illinois residents,” State Farm spokesperson Gina Morss-Fischer said in a statement.

Morss-Fischer said the bills currently in the legislature do not deal with why higher rates are needed. She noted State Farm had recently announced a rate cut for auto insurance.

Sarah Revell, assistant vice president of public affairs at American Property Casualty Insurance Association [APCIA], spoke on behalf of Country Financial.

“Illinois families are already facing an affordability crisis with property taxes, gas, grocery and utility bills all rising. Inflation is squeezing household budgets from every direction. At a moment when lawmakers should be laser-focused on affordability, the General Assembly is instead advancing radical legislation that would make both auto and homeowners’ insurance more expensive for nearly every Illinois household. These are added burdens Illinoisans simply cannot afford,” Revell said in a statement.

Revell said the bill could destabilize Illinois’ insurance market and ignores that auto insurance rates have been decreasing in Illinois.

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. – State Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville, will begin holding monthly Community Women’s Caucus meetings across Metro East communities. The Caucus was born from conversations at a Women’s Community Advisory Committee held in Stuart’s district last month, with attendees advocating for more spaces for women-led community advocacy and engagement.

“My district and I run a series of recurring events in our district and online—from Primetime with Katie, where I can keep my constituents informed, to mobile office hours so we can be accessible to constituents all throughout our district,” said Stuart. “Developing a committee of women committed to action and active conversation was a no-brainer.”

The 18-member Community Women’s Caucus will meet monthly to discuss legislation, community concerns, proposals and any other timely topics. Though Stuart hosts recurring Community Advisory Committee meetings, community members voiced a desire for recurring meetings specific to women to create both a safe space for discussion and the opportunity to meet regularly to track the progress of any caucus initiatives.

“I’m so excited to get this caucus started and to see all that we can accomplish together,” said Stuart. “Announcing this caucus during Women’s History Month is kismet. Women are crucial to so many movements and initiatives across the country and across Illinois, but rarely do they get the recognition they deserve. I’m honored to join the women in my district to be the change we want to see in our communities.”

Caucus meetings will be by invite only. Please reach out to [email protected] for more information on the caucus and for upcoming meeting details.

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. – State Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville, will begin holding monthly Community Women’s Caucus meetings across Metro East communities. The Caucus was born from conversations at a Women’s Community Advisory Committee held in Stuart’s district last month, with attendees advocating for more spaces for women-led community advocacy and engagement.

“My district and I run a series of recurring events in our district and online—from Primetime with Katie, where I can keep my constituents informed, to mobile office hours so we can be accessible to constituents all throughout our district,” said Staurt. “Developing a committee of women committed to action and active conversation was a no-brainer.”

The 18-member Community Women’s Caucus will meet monthly to discuss legislation, community concerns, proposals and any other timely topics. Though Stuart hosts recurring Community Advisory Committee meetings, community members voiced a desire for recurring meetings specific to women to create both a safe space for discussion and the opportunity to meet regularly to track the progress of any caucus initiatives.

“I’m so excited to get this caucus started and to see all that we can accomplish together,” said Stuart. “Announcing this caucus during Women’s History Month is kismet. Women are crucial to so many movements and initiatives across the country and across Illinois, but rarely do they get the recognition they deserve. I’m honored to join the women in my district to be the change we want to see in our communities.”

Caucus meetings will be by invite only. Please reach out to newsletter.repstuart@gmail.com for more information on the caucus and for upcoming meeting details.

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WREX — State Representative Dave Vella is bringing forward two new bills.

One focuses on homeowner and auto insurance, aiming to lower costs and ensure people are just paying for losses locally.

This comes as insurance plans have risen by nearly 30% in the last year alone, now creating a rate review process and requiring insurance companies to give a 60-days’ notice before double-digit rate jumps.

"Illinois is one of the outlying states. We don’t have any oversight at all for how rates are set so what this does is it gets a check on all different homeowners’ insurance and auto insurance and makes sure that if a rate is too high, they have to check with us and they also have to give notice to the people," Vella said. "So, the concern is if there is a hurricane in Florida or a wildfire in California, that those will be passed onto Illinois consumers. We just want to make sure that’s not the case. So, we will have some oversight now. We will keep the market open, but we’ll have some oversight to make sure that our constituents are not taken advantage of."

He also added one more benefit for older adults.

"A lot of people were coming to me and my office, I have an open office, and people come in and just talk about how hard it is to make ends meet now-a-days, especially older people and they talked about their homeowner’s insurance going up and their auto insurance going and it’s just been tough, right? So, I looked into it and you know, I had some concerns and as I looked into it, I realized we just don’t have a lot of oversight over the insurance company," Vella said.

Representative Vella is also aiming to give education a boost.

House Bill 2564 aims to give school districts a relief, excluding pay increases for additional work completed by teachers and taking away extra pensions costs for teachers later in the career doing so.

This comes amidst a teacher shortage.

"Rockford 205 came to me and said, hey we have to have teachers take extra shifts and the teachers want to take the extra shifts but because they are their salaries are going up and because if they’re at the end of their salary tenure time their pensions going to go up, but we have no other teachers to teach," Vella said. "This makes sure that the teachers can teach and take over. We have good, qualified teachers to teach and that the district doesn’t get penalized because they can’t find teachers who need to teach."

He also added more details on how far the challenges are reaching.

"Our school districts are really underfunded, right? We’re still trying to find funding in the budget to really up. Rockford needs more, Belvidere needs more, Harlem needs more and it’s hard to find teachers, right? So, this is going to keep good teachers in the classrooms, in the class periods, it’s going to pay them what their owed," Vella said.

Both of these bills are currently making their way through Illinois’ legislative system.

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An Illinois lawmaker from Bloomington wants to limit corporate money in elections but could face legal challenges.

Democratic state Rep. Sharon Chung, who represents parts of Bloomington-Normal and Peoria plus rural areas along Interstate 74, has introduced a bill that would change the definition of corporation powers in the law by stating corporations cannot engage in activities related to primaries or elections.

Chung is trying to get around Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a Supreme Court ruling which gave corporations, unions and individuals the ability to make unlimited contributions, pool them together and use the money for political campaigns.

Such entities are known as Super PACs.

Chung said she got the idea to limit corporate campaign donations from Robert Reich’s Substack. Reich served as U.S. Labor Secretary under President Bill Clinton.

Chung said she wants to limit corporate money and influence in elections. She added this would affect every Illinois campaign—including hers.

“It probably will affect my campaign, but it’s going to affect everybody else’s campaigns as well,” Chung said.

Chung outspent her opponent in the 2022 election and has received $20,000 from Boyd Gaming corporation, according to campaign disclosures filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Chung said she does not think that the corporate money donated to her campaign has affected her votes because she said she is still prioritizing her district.

“I’ve seen this also sort of where other people are sort of saying that you take some corporate PAC money and individually, like to your campaign, but you also vote your district every time,” Chung said.

Chung said she did support the development of an East Peoria casino owned by the Boyd Gaming company. The Illinois legislature had nothing to do with the approval of the casino, but Illinois does set regulations on casinos and gaming companies. The Illinois Gaming Board approved plans for the $160 million development in February.

There has also been criticism of labor unions acting in a similar way to corporations when influencing a campaign and making financial contributions.

Chung said unions speak for each of their due paying members, unlike corporations.

“The unions will have people voting on that process where corporations sort of put money in because nobody votes on corporation money,” Chung said.

Chung said only a few people decide where the corporate money goes with little input from the employees.

Chung said she is confident her bill will be heard, but the bill has not made it to committee.

“It might have to mean that we have to deal with some hard truths and look at the mirror and look at ourselves a little bit. Personally, I’m okay with that,” Chung said.

Chung said lawmakers have to play by the rules, which means using corporate money, but by passing the bill the rules would change.

“We kind of have an auspicious history in Illinois when it comes to politicians sort of taking money,” Chung said.

Chung said one way to get rid of the infamous legacy of former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan in the legislature is to limit the influence corporations have with their money.

Chung said she thinks other lawmakers would support this bill, but understands that there is still the road block of the same corporate influence halting the bill before it gets a vote.

Legal concerns

Alisa Kaplan, the executive director of Reform for Illinois, a nonpartisan good government group, said any law trying to limit corporate influence in elections would meet legal challenges because of Citizens United.

“Bills like this face an uphill battle in the federal courts because of the way the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution over the last few decades,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan said Reform for Illinois does support the intent behind the bill but does not think it is viable to fight the legal battles to pass the bill.

Kaplan said the other issue is that corporations will flood a race with money to support candidates that align with their interest, which leads the opposing candidate to find their own corporate supporter.

“In elections, there’s a good chance that a corporation will put its profits over the public interest,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan said this can be seen with oil companies fighting climate change regulations.

Kaplan said Reform for Illinois is currently supporting a bill that would bring more transparency to super PACs, which are organizations that can support a candidate with unlimited sums of money but can not work with the campaign.

“This could be fixed in ways that even this Supreme Court should be okay with with stronger disclosure rules that require super PAC donors to reveal where their money is actually coming from,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan said super PACs already have to disclose who donates to them but some companies donate through a third party disguising their names.

“The problem is that they can disclose a donor where the donor name is like, I love Illinois LLC, and you won’t necessarily know who’s behind that entity that’s donating,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan said companies can donate an unlimited amount of money to super PACs, sometimes anonymously.

Kaplan said Reform for Illinois has found it to be an uphill battle every time they introduce a bill to reform campaign finance.

“We haven’t found that the General Assembly has had a great interest in strengthening campaign finance regulation in Illinois, despite the fact that Illinois has some of the weakest campaign finance rules in the country,” Kaplan said.

Illinois is the 6th worst state in campaign finance laws, according to the Cato Institute a Libertarian think tank.

Kaplan said the challenge with campaign finance reform is that the people who are changing the law are the ones benefiting from the current laws.

Other states

Similar bills in other states want to change the definition of what a corporation is, allowing them to get around the Citizens United decision. The new definition allows states to stop corporations from engaging in political campaigns.

The Center of American Progress, a progressive think tank, argues that unlike humans, who are granted rights when we are born, corporations are legal entities to gain rights through the law. This allows states to change the definition of corporation and take those rights away.

The Center said this would change the question before the supreme court to do corporations have the power to have free speech.

No state has passed this bill and it would face legal challenges if passed, Kaplan said.