Democrats Still Negotiating Changes to Cash Bail Law
Gov. JB Pritzker, Senate President Don Harmon, and House Speaker Chris Welch may have a difficult time keeping Democratic legislators on board changes to the controversial SAFE-T Act during the final week of veto session in Springfield.
Lawmakers, state’s attorneys, public defenders, and victim’s rights advocates spent hours on Zoom meetings Monday working to finalize a deal to amend the controversial cash bail elimination provision in the much debated SAFE-T Act.
A contingent of House and Senate Democrats have been negotiating for months, but Thursday is the presumed deadline to amend the law before it takes effect January 1.
Senate Democrats will likely go over a draft piece of legislation in caucus Tuesday and see if they have enough votes to pass the bill before the end of veto session.
The starting point appears to be a bill proposed earlier this year by Sen. Scott Bennett (D-Champaign), a former prosecutor, which created a broad list of charges that a judge could have the authority to hold a defendant in county jail while awaiting trial.
Democratic sources familiar with the negotiations say draft language appears to narrow the number of charges that can be held in pre-trial detention, limiting the options mostly to forcible felonies.
Bennett declined to discuss negotiations or confirm the potential changes when reached Monday.
But sources say a group of advocates believed the “spirit” of the provision ending cash bail was intended to keep almost no defendants in jail awaiting trial.
“That isn’t true,” the source said. “The spirit of the law is to get cash out of the court system.”
We’re told a number of members of the Senate Black Caucus have been especially frustrated with potential changes to the law.
“They have seen this as such a point of their legislative identity, that they’re very concerned changes are an erosion of that,” the source said. “It would be a slap in the face to certain members of the black caucus.”
Though the biggest challenge of getting the bill out of the legislature this week lies with the most progressive members of the House and Senate Democrats who are deeply opposed to potentially holding more defendants in jail.
It isn’t clear yet how hard House Speaker Chris Welch or Senate President Don Harmon will work to get their members to pass legislation this week and Governor JB Pritzker has yet to weigh in on the legislative changes he supports.
“I don’t know what his position is currently now that the election is over,” the Democratic source said of the Governor.
But don’t expect Republicans to be a part of any final solution. House Republican point man on the issue, Rep. Patrick Windhorst (R-Metropolis), says GOP lawmakers have not been involved in any negotiations, though DuPage County’s Republican State’s Attorney, Bob Berlin, has been in some negotiations.
“We should have done that,” the Democratic source said of including Republicans. “But the position of the GOP during the election was ‘repeal, repeal, repeal’ and anyone who said that can’t be part of this discussion.”
If Democrats can’t make a deal this week, they could delay the implementation date of the cash bail provision, which would also allow courts to begin to rule on lawsuits filed challenging the law, but delay has been described by some as a “last ditch” scenario.