Sen. Ram Villivalam

Amends the Election Code. Provides that an election authority shall provide a trackable return envelope to return a vote by mail ballot, including absentee ballots for voters in military or naval service. Requires each election authority to provide online access to the vote by mail ballot list and corresponding dates to when the ballot was requested, received, and returned to the election authority and to update the online vote by mail status list daily. Effective immediately.

Declares March 28, 2019 as Celebrating Women in Public Office Day.

Creates the Family and Medical Leave Insurance Program Act. Requires the Department of Employment Security to establish and administer a Family and Medical Leave Insurance Program that provides family and medical leave insurance benefits to enable eligible employees to take paid family or medical leave for their own illness or to care for a newborn child, a newly adopted or newly placed foster child, or a family member with a serious health condition. Provides for the collection of payroll premiums beginning one year after the effective date of the Act and for benefits under the Act to be available one year after the commencement of premium collection. Sets forth eligibility requirements for benefits, including that the employee must have worked for the same employer for 12 weeks or more and worked 240 or more hours. Provides that the work requirements must be met annually. Defines "employer" as a person, partnership, corporation, association, labor placement agency, or other business entity that pays wages and any other employer subject to the Unemployment Insurance Act except the State and its political subdivisions and instrumentalities. Contains provisions concerning disqualification from benefits; premium payments; the amount and duration of benefits; the recovery of erroneous payments; hearings; defaulted premium payments; elective coverage; employment protection; coordination of family leave; and other matters. Provides phase-in periods for collection of moneys and claims for benefits under the Act. Amends the State Finance Act. Creates the Family and Medical Leave Insurance Account Fund. Effective January 1, 2020.

Amends the Election Code. Requires a permanent polling place for early voting to remain open beginning the 22nd day (rather than the 15th day) before an election. Makes changes to the hours a permanent polling place for early voting must remain open. Requires certain permanent polling places to be open a total of at least 16 hours (rather than 14 hours) on the final weekend during the early voting period. Effective immediately.

Declares the month of March 2019 as Social Work Month in the State of Illinois.

Amends the Freedom of Information Act to provide that in the case of sexual assault or sexual abuse by a school district employee or volunteer, nothing in the Act prohibits a school district from disclosing the disciplinary records of that person. Amends the School Code to require a school board to report all credible cases of sexual assault or sexual abuse by a licensed educator to the State Board of Education, to establish a hearing procedure for student victims, and to ensure that a licensed educator under investigation by the State Superintendent of Education is reassigned to non-classroom duty. Provides that, beginning with the 2019-2020 school year, the State Board of Education must monitor all fingerprint-based criminal history records checks and any other database checks conducted by a school district or regional superintendent for applicants for employment with a school district. Makes changes concerning educator licensure and allegations of physical or sexual abuse. Amends the Criminal Code of 2012 to create the criminal offense of sexual conduct or sexual relations with a student by an authority figure. Amends the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963 to require an arresting enforcement agency to share its reports pertaining to the arrest of a licensed educator with the superintendent of any school district that employs the educator (or, in the case of the arrest of a superintendent, with the school board of any school district that employs the superintendent). Amends the Personnel Record Review Act to provide that the Act does not prohibit a school district from divulging internal investigative findings and discipline to another school district. Effective immediately.

Amends the Medical Assistance Article of the Illinois Public Aid Code. Requires managed care organizations (MCOs) to publish, at least quarterly for the preceding quarter, on their websites: (1) the total number of claims received by the MCO; (2) the number and monetary amount of claims payments made to a service provider; (3) the dates of services rendered for the claims payments made under item (2); (4) the dates the claims were received by the MCO for the claims payments made under item (2); and (5) the dates on which claims payments under item (2) were released. Effective July 1, 2019.

Amends the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act. Provides that the term "student" within the definition of "educational employee" or "employee" as used in the Act excludes (rather than includes) graduate students who are research assistants primarily performing duties that involve research, graduate assistants primarily performing duties that are pre-professional, graduate students who are teaching assistants primarily performing duties that involve the delivery and support of instruction, or any other graduate assistants. Effective immediately.

Amends the Small Business Job Creation Tax Credit Act. Provides that the Act applies for a second set of incentive periods beginning on July 1, 2019. Provides that certain provisions concerning employees who had participated as worker-trainees in the Put Illinois to Work Program during 2010 do not apply to the second set of incentive periods. Effective immediately.

Supports, as a civil right, automatic citizenship to all qualifying children adopted by a U.S. citizen parent, regardless of the date on which the adoption was finalized. Condemns the deportation of individuals who were adopted into American homes and should have every expectation that their citizenship matches that of their adoptive parents. Welcomes legislation that will provide citizenship for all adult adoptees whose adoptive parents did not complete the naturalization process while they were children.