How old is too old to dress up for Halloween? Asking for a “friend” whose wife wants him to dress up as a giant lobster from Little Mermaid…
Session Update
The General Assembly returns next Tuesday for six scheduled days of Veto Session. Since all of the actual vetoes have been dispensed with during the extra days of session for the energy bill, this Veto Session is going to focus mainly on two topics: Congressional Maps (View the map here) and legislation dealing with abortion.
The danger for the business community is that these two contentious issues get bogged down and leave openings for surprise legislation. We saw a similar dynamic to this with the prejudgment interest bill in late May. One such area to watch out for similar misplaced legislative meddling is the data center industry. Let’s take a deeper dive into that possibility next.
Just Say No to Labor Peace Agreements
First a trip in the Wayback Machine from last May to refresh your memory:
This session the Chamber and other advocates introduced a cleanup bill with four provisions. This measure passed the Senate unanimously. The data center cleanup bill, SB 2182 was drastically changed in the House in the form of a hostile amendment introduced by Representative Walker.
The Illinois Chamber was left opposing a bill that began as our initiative as the bill in its current form no longer is a benefit to the tech industry.
The amendment provides that within 180 days after the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 120nd General Assembly, all new and existing data centers seeking a certificate of exemption under this Section shall require the contractor to enter into a labor peace agreement with any union representing workers who operate and maintain a critical system or equipment used or maintained by the data center.
The amendment, which would be detrimental to the data center industry, is a power play by a local union. The Chamber is disappointed that the House Sponsor of SB 2182, Representative Mark Walker has acquiesced in this attempt. On Wednesday, Representative Walker filed a second amendment to SB 2182 that delays the effective date of the legislation to January 1, 2022. Delaying the effective date does nothing to lessen the adverse impact of the bill.
Public pressure from the Chamber and our allies, opposition from data centers with existing applications and quiet opposition from shovel unions benefitting from the thousands of construction jobs helped save the incentive as Senator Sims held the bill on concurrence. The Chamber thanks Senator Sims for his leadership on this and other tech issues. Also important to note that HB 2411, also sponsored by Senator Sims, contained the most important of the clean up provisions (extending the time to become green certified to two years) passed the General Assembly unanimously.
Since we prevented that takeover attempt, the Governor has convened meetings between the Operators 399 and some business groups to try and find a middle ground. Unless one of you has a novel idea (and I’d love to hear from you on this), the Chamber position is clear- there is no middle ground when it comes to control of the data center workforce.
Attempts to take away that control and forcing new hires to come solely from a list supplied by a union is an especially egregious power play and will result in destroying any future growth resulting from the Governor’s best pro-growth policy. When it comes to destroying the Midwest’s best data center incentive: just say NO.
Other Legislative Updates
HB 1839 (Croke-Cunnigham)- HB 1839 was placed on 3rd Reading in the Senate after being held during May. This bill is opposed by the Chamber as it would allow DCEO to pull grants for businesses for exceedingly mild offenses, including complaints. This would make any incentive tenuous at best and hurt recruitment and expansion in Illinois.
HB 2379 (Walsh-Jones)- Released from Senate Assignments and placed on the calendar. This would extend the Small Wireless Facilities Deployment Act.
Governor Unveils the Illinois Broadband Lab
On October 7, Governor JB Pritzker and the Illinois Office of Broadband unveiled the new interactive Connect Illinois Broadband Map and the Illinois Broadband Lab, a collaborative effort by the State of Illinois, university partners including the University of Illinois System and the Illinois Innovation Network, and key stakeholders including the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.
The new interactive state broadband mapping tool, county-level maps, and other resources are now available to the public via the Illinois Broadband Lab website, http://ibl.illinois.edu, which was developed by and will be housed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Technology Services unit
Designed to guide investment and programming, to inform policymaking, and to engage communities in broadband planning and all Illinoisans in broadband speed measurement, the new mapping tool combines data from local broadband providers, Illinois households, and field testing of available bandwidth. In addition, the Illinois Broadband Lab will integrate complementary data sets to house hundreds of interactive and static PDF maps.
Illinois residents can enter their home address and access basic information about broadband providers, service levels, and available technologies in their area.
