New Illinois law requires state to divest from Russian banks and companies

Late in 2022, Illinois joined Minnesota and a handful of other U.S. states where legislatures have passed laws requiring pension and other investment funds to divest from Russian banks and companies. Both of the signed bills from the Midwest received unanimous legislative approval.

Under Minnesota’s HF 4165, legislators are requiring a complete divestment within 15 months of enactment of the law; it was signed early last year and applies to the countries and businesses of Russia and Belarus. Minnesota’s measure also calls for state agencies to terminate any existing contracts with Russian and Belarus entities and not enter into new ones.

Along with adding statutory language for the state to divest from Russia and Belarus, Illinois’ HB 1293, signed into law in December 2022, includes several other provisions:

State colleges and universities must disclose endowments and donations provided by Russian companies.
A new state-level task force will work to close loopholes in state law and practices that individuals, including Russian oligarchs, can exploit to launder money via purchases of high-end real estate.
Another task force will explore policies to protect Illinois elections from possible Russian or other foreign interference.

Other state-level responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine have included divestment-related executive orders from governors, directives from state treasurers, and independent actions from pension and investment boards.

The post New Illinois law requires state to divest from Russian banks and companies appeared first on CSG Midwest.

Midwest lost more than 400,000 people to other U.S. regions between 2020 and 2022

During the first two years of this decade, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio lost population, and another six Midwestern states lagged behind the U.S. increase of 0.6 percent. Driving these trends are losses in people due to domestic migration: the movement of individuals from one U.S. state to another state.

States in the U.S. South (led by Florida and Texas) gained more than 1.7 million people due to domestic migration between April 1, 2020, and July 1, 2022. Every other region experienced a net loss, including the Midwest, which had a net decline of more than 400,000 residents. In all, nine Midwestern states are losing population due to domestic migration (see the map), though Illinois stands out: Its net loss was third highest in the nation, behind only California and New York, and accounted for 68 percent of the region’s total drop.

Along with domestic and international migration, population changes are determined by a state’s number of births compared to its number of deaths. Historically, most or all U.S. states have experienced “natural increases”: more births than deaths. In recent years, however, “natural decreases” have become more common. Between April 1, 2020, and July 1, 2022, the number of deaths exceeded births in 24 U.S. states, including Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin (see map).

Nationwide, between 2020 and 2021, the population grew at a historically low rate of 0.1 percent, due in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on international migration and mortality. The increase between 2021 and 2022 was 0.4 percent.

A rebound in net international migration, along with the largest year-over-year increase in total births since 2007, led to the “sizeable uptick” in U.S. population numbers between 2021 and 2022, says U.S. Census Bureau demographer Kristie Wilder. All 11 Midwestern states had a net gain in population from international migration.

 

Overall population change in Midwestern states, April 2020-July 2022, tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau

State% change

Illinois-1.8%

Indiana+0.7%

Iowa+0.3%

Kansas0.0%

Michigan-0.4%

Minnesota+0.2%

Nebraska+0.3%

North Dakota0.0%

Ohio-0.4%

South Dakota+2.6%

Wisconsin0.0%

U.S.+0.4%

The post Midwest lost more than 400,000 people to other U.S. regions between 2020 and 2022 appeared first on CSG Midwest.

On the Road with CSG West: Wyoming

Boots and bolo ties were in full swing at the Wyoming State Capitol, as CSG West kicked off its 2023 state visits in the Cowboy State. The visit provided staff an opportunity to engage with legislators and legislative leaders about CSG West events, programs, and training opportunities this year, including the Colorado River Forum to be hosted in Wyoming.

CSG West staff enjoyed meetings with House Speaker Albert Sommers and Senate President Ogden Driskill, who will appoint members to CSG West committees for the 2023-24 biennium, and who shared insights into current policy priorities in the state. 

The visit was also an opportunity to connect with Wyoming policymakers engaged in CSG West leadership or co-chair roles, including Representative Mike Yin, CSG West Vice-Chair and Wyoming’s House Minority Floor Leader; Representative Landon Brown, Westrends Co-Chair; Senator Eric Barlow, Energy & Environment Committee Co-Chair; and Senator Larry Hicks, Colorado River Forum Co-Chair. 

The visit concluded on a high note with CSG West hosting its annual lunch for Western Legislative Academy (WLA) alumni and interested applicants. The strong turnout was evidence of the enduring relationships built through WLA and its continued reputation as the region’s premier legislative training program.

CSG West was grateful for the floor introductions by Senator Barlow and Representative Yin, respectively, and for the warm welcome to the Wyoming Legislature. We look forward to Wyoming’s leadership and engagement in 2023!

The post <strong>On the Road with CSG West: Wyoming</strong> appeared first on CSG West.

On the Road with CSG West: Wyoming

Boots and bolo ties were in full swing at the Wyoming State Capitol, as CSG West kicked off its 2023 state visits in the Cowboy State. The visit provided staff an opportunity to engage with legislators and legislative leaders about CSG West events, programs, and training opportunities this year, including the Colorado River Forum to be hosted in Wyoming.

CSG West staff enjoyed meetings with House Speaker Albert Sommers and Senate President Ogden Driskill, who will appoint members to CSG West committees for the 2023-24 biennium, and who shared insights into current policy priorities in the state. 

The visit was also an opportunity to connect with Wyoming policymakers engaged in CSG West leadership or co-chair roles, including Representative Mike Yin, CSG West Vice-Chair and Wyoming’s House Minority Floor Leader; Representative Landon Brown, Westrends Co-Chair; Senator Eric Barlow, Energy & Environment Committee Co-Chair; and Senator Larry Hicks, Colorado River Forum Co-Chair. 

The visit concluded on a high note with CSG West hosting its annual lunch for Western Legislative Academy (WLA) alumni and interested applicants. The strong turnout was evidence of the enduring relationships built through WLA and its continued reputation as the region’s premier legislative training program.

CSG West was grateful for the floor introductions by Senator Barlow and Representative Yin, respectively, and for the warm welcome to the Wyoming Legislature. We look forward to Wyoming’s leadership and engagement in 2023!

The post On the Road with CSG West: Wyoming appeared first on CSG West.

Disability Mentoring: Benefits for Youth with Intersecting Identities

By: Luke Byram

January is National Mentoring Month. While mentoring relationships benefit all youth, they may have a particularly positive impact on youth who face barriers to education and employment—such as youth with disabilities and especially those who may have intersecting identities.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), disability mentoring occurs when a person with a disability provides advice and support to another person, usually someone with a similar disability. Mentoring can be short-term in nature, such as a single-day job shadowing opportunity or career exploration experience, which could occur on National Job Shadow Day on February 2, 2023 or on National Mentoring Day on October 27, 2023. Mentoring could also reflect a more robust ongoing relationship between a mentor and youth with regularly scheduled meetings focused on supporting the youth in planning and achieving their goals. The relationship often focuses on a specific task, such as living independently, recovering from a traumatic event, obtaining employment or transitioning into the workforce. The mentor serves as a role model and provides information and guidance specific to the mentee’s experiences and identified needs.

Research clearly indicates the success of disability mentoring. Mentoring promotes career exploration and helps youth and young adults with disabilities make more informed choices about their academic and employment goals. The National Mentoring Resource Center reviewed 40 studies on mentoring for youth with disabilities and found that having a mentor with the same disability is associated with better employment and career development outcomes, including a stronger academic trajectory, smoother transitions, more well-developed life skills and higher quality of life.

These findings reinforce the benefits of mentoring overall. According to Mentor, mentoring programs help middle and high school students develop essential cognitive and social-emotional skills for school and workplace success. Guider reports similar long-term benefits for marginalized populations, including increased self-esteem and confidence in their ability to achieve goals.

Youth and young adults who have intersecting identities—such as youth of color with disabilities—are particularly vulnerable to discrimination and other barriers and may need tailored mentoring to fit their unique needs. Bernadette Sánchez of DePaul University states that there is a strong need for mentoring youth of color (Black youth in particular) to help them achieve positive academic, social and employment outcomes in the long term.

Hamza Jaka is a person of color and disabled attorney who has experience with these positive benefits from both sides, having been mentored and served as a mentor himself. Recently, CAPE-Youth had the opportunity to speak with him about his mentoring experiences.

Question: In what ways did you benefit by having a mentor?

Jaka: My mentors have always helped me think about my life and what I want, helped me plan out my career and my future and provided a comforting, but firm presence in my life.

Question: What tips, suggestions, recommendations or advice do you have for those considering whether to be mentored?

Jaka: Find a mentor who fits your life. Don’t just take people’s suggestions, and certainly take a mentor’s advice with a grain of salt. It is your life – you need to find someone who fits. Mentors should have hard conversations if you want to have them, but they should not make you feel awful.

Question: In what ways did you benefit by being a mentor yourself?

Jaka: I learned just how much I have grown and the importance of being a presence in someone’s life, without overstating my own experiences.

Question: What tips, suggestions, recommendations or advice do you have for mentors of other youth and young adults with disabilities?

Jaka: Be kind, don’t project [your experiences onto them] and remember your mentee is different from you and doesn’t always need to take your advice. Respect their time as well. Your mentees are awesome people and deserve that respect.

Question: What did you learn through your mentorship relationships?

Jaka: How to keep my promises and share my experiences without living vicariously through other people. Too often mentors bring their own lived experiences into a mentee’s life rather than listening to the mentee.

Question: What challenges did you experience in the mentoring relationship?

Jaka: Finding time to connect! I also would have loved to meet in-person.

Question: What can state policy leaders do to advance disability mentoring for youth and young adults with disabilities at the state level?

Jaka: Fund evidenced-based mentoring programs, make connections between disabled constituents and come to disability events. Also, make it a priority to listen to organizations run by disabled people, especially disabled people of color.

CAPE-Youth offers a number of resources to help state policymakers explore ways to implement programs and services—including mentoring initiatives—that meet the needs of youth and young adults with intersecting identities. Further information about Mentoring Month, including outreach tools and tips, is available at MENTOR. 

Capital Closeup: In the Midwest, varying methods and thresholds are used to amend state constitutions

How high should the bar be set for adding to or changing a state’s constitution?

It’s a question that some political leaders in Ohio say is worth re-examining in their state, one of five in the Midwest where constitutional amendments don’t need legislative approval before appearing before voters for final passage. Their idea: Raise the bar, via a constitutional change requiring citizen-initiated/petition-based amendments to get 60 percent of the statewide vote, rather than a simple majority. Proponents unveiled their proposal near the tail end of last year and are pursuing its passage in 2023. They cite several reasons for the higher threshold, including to protect the Ohio Constitution from “special interests and out-of-state activists.”

In 2018, South Dakotans rejected a legislatively referred proposal that would have required constitutional amendments to get 55 percent of the statewide vote. The proposal was based on a Colorado law. This past year, the South Dakota Legislature sought voter approval of a 60 percent requirement for any ballot measures that increase taxes. This proposed amendment failed as well.

Once a proposed citizen-initiated or legislatively referred amendment reaches the ballot, it only needs simple-majority approval in most U.S. states. However, there are exceptions — for example, Colorado’s 55 percent threshold, a two-thirds vote in New Hampshire, and a 60 percent vote in Florida, according to Ballotpedia.

In the Midwest, a few states have slight variations on the simple-majority requirement. In Illinois, a constitutional amendment gets passed in one of two ways: approval by three-fifths of the people voting on the question or a majority of all those who voted in the election. The latter requirement also applies in Minnesota. In Nebraska, only a simple-majority vote is needed, but with a stipulation that the number of votes in favor of the amendment equal at least “35 percent of the total votes cast at such election.”

States also are split on the threshold for legislatures to refer constitutional amendments to voters — super-majority votes in Illinois, Nebraska and Ohio (three-fifths) and Kansas and Michigan (two-thirds). The region’s six other states require only simple-majority votes for legislative referrals, though approval by successive legislatures is needed in Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin.

In 2022, a total of 14 proposed constitutional amendments appeared before voters in eight Midwestern states.

According to the nonpartisan, nonprofit research group Open Secrets, the five proposals generating the most spending were:

A citizen-initiated amendment in Michigan guaranteeing a right to an abortion ($46.4 million); it passed.
A legislatively referred amendment in Illinois guaranteeing a right to collective bargaining ($14.5 million); it passed.
A citizen-initiated amendment in Michigan to enshrine certain voting rights and policies ($14.1 million); it passed.
A legislatively initiated amendment in Kansas to declare no state constitutional right to an abortion ($13.2 million); it did not pass.
A legislatively referred amendment in South Dakota establishing a super-majority requirement for ballot measures that increase taxes ($2.7 million); it did not pass.

Capital Closeup is an ongoing series of articles focusing on institutional issues in state governments and legislatures.

The post Capital Closeup: In the Midwest, varying methods and thresholds are used to amend state constitutions appeared first on CSG Midwest.

Private: Tools for States to Address Crime

State leaders—governors, legislators, and agency officials—share the goal of advancing safety and justice. To be successful, they need facts about the challenges in their states and practical, research-backed strategies. But the data we need to address these challenges are scattered across agencies and are often not made public soon enough to be useful, if at all. As a result, many leaders are clamoring for solutions. The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center has developed two key tools to help state leaders make public safety decisions this year: (1) the latest 50-state data on crime, arrests, and prison populations and (2) 10 strategies states can use to lower crime.  

Learn more: https://projects.csgjusticecenter.org/tools-for-states-to-address-crime/ 

The post Private: Tools for States to Address Crime appeared first on CSG Justice Center.

BILLD graduates leading the way in their state legislatures in 2023

One marker of success of the Bowhay Institute for Legislative Leadership Development (BILLD) has been the ascension over the years of many graduates to leadership positions.

The year 2023 is no exception.

Sessions began with more than 50 BILLD graduates in legislative leadership positions of some kind in the 11-state Midwest, including 18 alumni serving as the top party leader, majority floor leader, and/or presiding officer in a chamber.

Now in its 28th year, BILLD, a signature program of CSG Midwest’s Midwestern Legislative Conference (MLC), is designed for state and provincial legislators in their first four years of legislative service. Its highly interactive curriculum includes a series of leadership training courses, policy seminars and professional development workshops.

The 2023 institute will be held Aug. 18-22; the deadline to apply for a BILLD fellowship is April 17. The program’s competitive application process is overseen by the MLC’s BILLD Steering Committee, a bipartisan group of legislators from each of the MLC member states.

Learn more about BILLD and the application process »

Nearly 1,000 legislators have now gone through the program. Many have gone on to serve as leaders in their legislatures and state executive branches; others are now members of the U.S. Congress.

Congratulations to the BILLD graduates selected to legislative leadership this year.

Here is a list of the 18 alumni serving as the top party leader, majority floor leader, and/or presiding officer in a chamber in their respective legislature.

Senate president or House speaker

 

Majority or minority party leader

 

Majority or minority party floor leader

 

Senate President Pro Tempore or House Speaker Pro Tempore

 

 

The post BILLD graduates leading the way in their state legislatures in 2023 appeared first on CSG Midwest.

Expanding Health Care Access: Undesignated Glucagon in Schools

By Sandi Abdelshehed and Daniel Clothier

In 2018, registered nurse Jennifer Jacobs attempted to treat a middle school student experiencing symptomatic hypoglycemia, otherwise known as low blood sugar. She first used snacks to try to increase the seventh-grader’s blood sugar, but the student ultimately lost consciousness. Jacobs also attempted to use glucose gel inside the student’s cheek, but application of the medication was ineffective. As a last resort, she used her only accessible glucagon kit belonging to another student.

Jacobs, who for 21 years has been a certified school nurse at Glenview Middle School in East Moline, Illinois, administered the glucagon knowing it was prohibited and could put her license and career in jeopardy.

“I chose to use a life-saving medication to treat her; however, it was prescribed for another student,” Jacobs said. “Knowing full well I could get fired, I knew it was the only answer to this situation. How could I not? Her life in my hands was larger than anything else.”

Recognizing a school nurse should not have to risk their career to treat a student, Jacobs worked to instill change in Illinois state policy.

Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects 37.3 million American adults and is one of the major causes of blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, stroke and lower limb amputation. The number of people with diabetes has also increased exponentially over recent decades.

Individuals with Type 1 diabetes suffer from symptomatic hypoglycemia, on average, twice a week. It occurs when sugar (glucose) levels drop in the person’s blood. If left untreated, diabetic hypoglycemia can cause seizures, unconsciousness and, at times, death. Glucagon injections can be used as an emergency medicine to treat severe hypoglycemia  

Access to this life-saving medication has become an equity issue as it sometimes poses financial or logistical challenges for families with children with diabetes. Families with limited financial resources or insurance coverage may not be able to supply the medication to their children’s school, increasing the chances of adverse outcomes in school settings.

To help address this issue, Jacobs worked with Illinois state Rep. Michael Halpin and Sen. Neil Anderson. The two policymakers sponsored HB0822, allowing school nurses or delegated care aides to administer undesignated glucagon through a student’s diabetes care plan if the student’s prescribed glucagon is unavailable on-site or has expired. The bill passed unanimously through the state Legislature and was signed into law on Aug. 19, 2019.

Policies such as the undesignated glucagon law represent examples of bipartisan policy solutions that can improve health care equity and access to care across states. After Illinois became the first state to pass an undesignated glucagon law, Ohio followed suit with the Allison Rose Act, HB231. Other states have since considered their own legislation.