GRANTS
Local Fire Departments looking to rehabilitate or build a fire station may be interested in $5 million in grant funding available to fire departments across the state. Applications are due by February 28, 2025.
UTILITIES
Illinois American Water is increasing water rates in 2025. Here are details of what customers can expect:
Details revealed of Illinois American Water’s rate hike
ENERGY
As coal plants shut down, the urgency to fill that void has led to an over-reliance on battery solutions which cannot provide the consistent power necessary to maintain grid stability.
NEW LAWS
Each year, hundreds of new state laws go into effect. Here are some of the laws you should know about heading into 2025.
GUN RIGHTS
In case you missed it, Democrats’ firearms ban will remain in place for now, at least until a federal appeals court can hear full arguments on a recent lower court ruling that found the ban unconstitutional.
Appeals court keeps Illinois’ assault weapons ban in place | Capitol News Illinois
DRIVER’S LICENSES
Here are some of the changes you should know about for Illinois driver’s licenses in the coming years.
Changes coming to drivers’ licenses in Illinois
STATE GOVERNMENT
DFPR responds to House Republican pressure, announces first phase of plan to modernize professional licensing. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (DFPR) is the State agency that oversees the issuance of licenses for working professionals. Repeated delays and failures with the archaic licensing system has created a cascade of increasingly severe problems for licensed professionals.
Until a few decades ago, DFPR accepted license applications on paper, and issued paper licenses to people holding various professional positions ranging from M.D. physicians to nail technicians. With the advent of computers in the late 20th century, DFPR moved to a first-generation process of partially electronic licensure. The then-new process used an operating system or systems that assumed that computerized records would continue to be kept on 1970s-era mainframe computers. Furthermore, in many individual professions, applicants were allowed to continue to submit paper applications, creating data sets that had to be scanned or transcribed into DFPR’s primitive computer system.
This first-electronic-generation DFPR process has been added to many times, including numerous add-ons and additions intended to create database security firewalls. DFPR licensure software is currently aging, dysfunctional, and well past the end of its useful life. Many Illinois licensed professionals have talked to their lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, about the problems they are finding when they submit an application to the DFPR for a license or a license renewal. In some cases they have to wait months for these all-important documents to be completed.
With House Republican pressure serving as a key part of the legislative process, the General Assembly eventually demanded action. In the 2023 veto session, the legislature passed HB 2394, a measure that made major amendments to the law governing DFPR and its operations. The new law instructed DFPR to switch out its old licensure computer system. The law also instructs DFPR to buy new software to implement the licensure laws of the State of Illinois. The legislative intent of this measure is to move DFPR’s licensure software into an all-electronic, cloud-based, verified-password system for data storage and rapid retrieval. A system of this type operates in line with what has become the universal standard for secure global databases.
The Department at first dragged its feet in response to this new State law. They reported difficulties in procuring new software and complained of snags in transferring the data contained in existing and ongoing licensure databases from the old system to the proposed new system. The Department now reports, however, that these difficulties are beginning to be resolved. The new DFPR Comprehensive Online Regulatory Environment (CORE) will give Illinois residents the opportunity, working from home, from an office, or from a mobile device, to log into a secure, password-access-controlled system. Once there, they can interact directly with the DFPR database. This will reduce the need for human DFPR personnel supervision of the paperwork associated with the intake of a license application, will improve DFPR productivity, and will speed up the licensure turnaround times for those professions selected for admission to the new process.
As of December 2024, the DFPR CORE system is still being rolled out. It is open only to new professional licensure applications in the following three professions:
- Clinical psychologist
- Music therapist
- Nail technician
Additional professions will be rolled into CORE in what is expected to be a two-year process. Illinois professionals and licensure applicants may need to continue to work with their lawmakers to ensure that other professions are moved to the new user-friendly application process in a speedy and functional manner.