Sen. Chuck Weaver was the chief sponsor of 16 bills that became law this year.
The laws run the gamut effecting barbers, green buildings, bus evacuation drills and state procurement code.
Some of those bills were done by what Weaver refers to as “citizen legislating” and he hopes to do more of it.
Just this past year Weaver points to three bills he sponsored that came about this way.
Citizen legislating is where a citizen comes to Weaver with an issue regarding state law, and he’ll sponsor the bill if the concerned citizen is willing to advocate and assist with its passage.
He holds as a prime example of this process, when Molly Palmer came to him with an issue.
“[She is an] attorney, smart, has been on school boards so she had a good background in education and her children have been limited on how many duel credit hours they can get,” Weaver tells WGIL. “So we worked together to change the law.”
Another came from Mike Freilinger, President of the Downtown Development Corporation in Peoria.
Freilinger was having difficulty with tax credits for historic buildings and Weaver talked to him about the process in Illinois for historic building refurbishments and in his opinion, the process was a mess.
“I said, ‘Mike if you’ll put the information together, I’ll get you into the right room,’ and we were able to change how that law works..” said Weaver, “and I think as a result will save a lot more historic buildings in our state.”
Weaver says he also worked with ROE 33 Superintendent Jodi Scott on legislation to help end Illinois’ teacher shortage with the preconditions that bills don’t cost the state but put more teachers to work.
