McHenry Times

Democrat lawmakers are trying to play catch-up ahead of this year's elections after their law-and-order bill, passed last year, fell short, state House Rep. Dan Ugaste (R-Geneva) said in a social media post this week.

The Illinois Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (SAFE-T) Act has turned out to be a menace and Democrat lawmakers know it, Ugaste said in his Monday, April 18 Facebook post.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker in Geneseo in 2020 | facebook.com/GovPritzker/

"The safety of our residents should be a top priority for lawmakers every day, not just in an election year," Ugaste said. "Democrats are now scrambling to clean up the crisis they created by passing the unvetted and dangerous SAFE-T Act last year."

Ugaste has represented Illinois' 65th House District since January 2019. The previous November, he defeated Democrat challenger Richard Johnson by taking 52% of the vote and winning the seat formerly held by Rep. Steve Andersson, who did not seek a second term. He was elected to a full term in 2020, taking more than 51% of the vote from his Democrat challenger, Martha Paschke. He is unopposed in the Republican primaries in June.

The 65th House District is within the Chicago metro area and includes Batavia, Elgin, Geneva, St. Charles, Burlington, Dundee, Grafton, Hampshire, Plato and Rutland.

The Pritzker administration's $46.5 billion budget, approved earlier this month and signed Tuesday, April 19, included direct relief checks for state residents, suspended the 1% tax on food and froze the state's motor fuel tax at 39 cents per gallon. The budget also includes property tax rebates of up to $300 per household. Illinois Democrats have generally praised the budget for the relief it extends to taxpayers and for being balanced.

The budget also considerably bolstered the SAFE-T Act.

"The budget I'm signing into law today brings real improvements to the lives of working families and sets us up for a stronger fiscal future," Pritzker said in an 11-page statement issued the day he signed the budget into law. "Investments in stronger schools, modernized airports and newly paved highways, hundreds of thousands of well-paying infrastructure jobs, and a better funded pension system."

The budget, which becomes effective July 1, includes "the kind of priorities we can invest in when our state is governed responsibly," Pritzker said.

It was a Democrat proposal to add $236 million for public safety on top of the public safety measures including in the budget, according to an Advantage News story to which Ugast linked in his Facebook post. The proposal also included $48 million for youth programs, aimed at alleviating the state's spike in carjackings, and $124 million for police officer body cameras and other equipment.

Republican legislators have been critical of those measures in light of the SAFE-T Act passed last year, according to the Advantage News story. The SAFE-T Act, among other things, changed how felony murder is handled in the state, making it so that third parties to murders who inadvertently kill while the crimes are committed by others are no longer charged with murder.

The SAFE-T Act also requires all police officers in Illinois to wear body cameras and other equipment. Law enforcement groups and police unions claim the SAFE-T Act poses a threat to public safety, though Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx supported the legislation, according to Injustice Watch's assessment published in November.

Republicans are not just criticizing the SAFE-T Act. GOP lawmakers have proposed a package of proposals that included House Bill 1103, which would amend the state's Expressway Camera Act to add cameras to highways in more than 20 Illinois counties. Camera images could be used to investigate crimes and monitor highway safety and incident management. HB 1103 also would pay $100 to anyone who captures a video with their residential security cameras that, in turn, could be used to "contribute to a criminal conviction," the text of HB 1103 says.