The bill now awaits Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s signature. A spokeswoman for the governor said he looks forward to reviewing “this meaningful legislation.” Rep. Carol Ammons, a Democrat from Urbana-Champaign who co-sponsored the measure, said that the governor has told her he supports the bill’s intent and that she expects him to sign it.

The legislation, known as the License to Work Act, would end license suspensions for a number of non-moving violations, including the largest category: unpaid parking and vehicle compliance tickets. Advocates say that cutting off driving privileges hurts people trying to get to work, earn a living and pay off debts.

The vast majority of those suspensions affect motorists from low-income, black neighborhoods in Chicago and its suburbs, ProPublica Illinois has reported. Many of those affected have been unable to drive legally for years but do so anyway, risking arrest and getting swept into the criminal justice system.

The bill also restores driving privileges for some 55,000 motorists whose licenses are currently suspended.

If signed, the law would go into effect in July.

“This is a tremendous step forward to move away from trying to squeeze revenue out of people who don’t have it, and by using these egregious and life-altering tools like suspending a driver’s license over parking tickets,” said Eric Halvorson, a policy and communications associate at the Chicago Jobs Council, which has led a coalition of nonprofit organizations advocating for reform for the past three years.

Tuesday’s 88-27 House vote came on the second day of the General Assembly’s annual veto session and seven months after the state Senate approved the measure. It also came after Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot voiced her support for the legislation and ushered through an overhaul of the city’s ticketing and debt collection system, including an end to the city’s practice of seeking driver’s license suspensions over unpaid parking tickets.

Ammons said Lightfoot’s support and the city’s reforms were critical to getting the legislation passed. “Because of those changes, a lot of the members that are from the greater Chicagoland area felt a lot more comfortable in saying, ‘Let’s do this whole thing statewide,’” she said. “It was important for largest municipality in the state of Illinois that would be financially impacted by the removal of this suspension to be on board with this reform.”

Lightfoot’s predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, had opposed the state legislation. Chicago has long relied on the threat of driver’s license suspensions to extract ticket revenue. In 2016, close to 58 percent of Chicago drivers threatened with license suspension paid their debts or signed up for payment plans to forestall suspension or recover their licenses, ProPublica Illinois found.

But many can’t afford to pay what they owe and turn to bankruptcy instead, contributing to a boom in Chapter 13 bankruptcies here. Close to one in five motorists threatened with license suspension over unpaid tickets in 2016 filed for bankruptcy.

Among them: Laqueanda Reneau, whom ProPublica Illinois profiled in an investigation last year. “The worst part was the commute,” she said Tuesday, recalling the years she went without a driver’s license. Reneau spent hours each day riding several trains and buses to get her young son to day care in the south suburbs, get to work in the city and take classes at DePaul University. “I’m glad. It’s a step forward,” she said of the legislation.

The city of Chicago said Friday that it will wipe out some, if not all, debt due to unpaid vehicle sticker tickets for motorists who come into compliance by the end of October, a program that has the potential to benefit an estimated 500,000 motorists and lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in debt forgiveness.

The announcement comes as the office of City Clerk Anna Valencia prepares to offer its own amnesty program next month allowing residents to buy prorated vehicle stickers without incurring late penalties.

The two-pronged approach from two offices of City Hall amounts to what officials term a “fresh start” for struggling Chicagoans, as the city purges old debts and makes stickers more affordable.

The use of city stickers is Chicago’s way of charging vehicle owners for using city roads. Stickers typically cost between between $88 and $139 per year, depending on vehicle weight.

Failure to buy a sticker can lead to some of the costliest citations in the city. Debt from those tickets, in turn, has contributed to tens of thousands of vehicle impoundments, license suspensions and Chapter 13 bankruptcies, ProPublica Illinois and WBEZ Chicago have reported.

At $200, city sticker tickets could rise to $488 with late penalties and collection fees, though last week the City Council voted to slash the late penalties. Aldermen also reinstated a 15-day grace period for lapsed stickers and banned consecutive and same-day ticketing.

Unpaid city sticker tickets are the largest source of outstanding ticket debt and represent one in four parking tickets tied to Chapter 13 bankruptcies. Motorists owe the city more than $500 million in unpaid city sticker tickets issued since 1990.

Chicago’s majority-black neighborhoods have been hit the hardest with sticker ticket debt, in part because they are ticketed at a higher rate, per household, than other parts of the city, according to the ProPublica Illinois-WBEZ Chicago analysis of sticker tickets from 2011 to 2015. Tickets issued by police drive the disparity.

“City sticker amnesty and debt relief are just the first steps toward building a more equitable Chicago,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a video announcement Friday. “It’s a new day in Chicago and we’re going to make sure every single person gets a fair shot at economic opportunity.”

The city launched a website with more information about the amnesty program. Here are some key points about how the programs are supposed to work.

More affordable vehicle stickers: Starting next month, Valencia’s office will allow motorists to buy four-month city stickers at a prorated cost, a program designed to help low-income motorists comply with the municipal requirement and avoid tickets. What’s more, the clerk’s office in October won’t charge late penalties or backdate stickers for motorists who had allowed their vehicle stickers to lapse.

“As government we should be removing barriers from people’s lives, not put barriers in their lives,” Valencia said. “We want to make sure that we are helping people get out of debt, and stay out of debt, and prevent it from ever happening again.”

Debt relief for vehicle sticker debt: Between Nov. 15 and Dec. 15, motorists who have valid city stickers can apply to have at least three city sticker tickets forgiven. Those who are in financial hardship can qualify to have all of their city stickers forgiven. As part of the reforms passed last week, the City Council also expanded the hardship qualifications so motorists whose households earn 300% of the poverty level or less qualify.

Indebted motorists can sign up to be notified when the debt forgiveness program opens. The city is not offering refunds for motorists who have already paid their tickets.

The city is offering the debt forgiveness to motorists who have valid city stickers as of Oct. 31.

Motorists in bankruptcy or on city payment plans also qualify.

Indebted motorists who no longer own their vehicles or have left Chicago entirely and no longer need a city sticker will also qualify for the debt relief, city officials said. This year, WBEZ Chicago reported that tens of thousands of drivers whose cars were booted, towed and sold were still responsible for their ticket debt.

Though some families remain unapologetic about their use of a practice that had gone largely unnoticed until three weeks ago, they say the real issue is not that they tried to take advantage of a legal loophole but the exorbitant cost of higher education.

“A lot of families are afraid to say what they are thinking,” said one mother, whose son’s case closed last week when the family decided not to pursue it. “They have OK incomes. But having a good income does not make you able to pay for college. I would have to not drink or eat to pay for my two boys.”

She, like other parents, agreed to speak about their cases on the condition of anonymity.

One Northbrook mother said she had been mulling guardianship but feels it’s no longer an option.

“I said, ‘Is that off the table?’” she said she asked the college consultant at the center of the guardianship scandal. “She goes, ‘I don’t think … any judge in Illinois would sign off on anything.’”

Last month, ProPublica Illinois reported that almost four dozen families from affluent suburbs in Lake County had gone to court to turn over legal guardianship of their children to a relative or friend, typically a few months before the children turned 18. By doing so, the teens could then declare themselves financially independent and apply for need-based federal, state and university aid without their parents’ income being taken into account.

ProPublica Illinois has since identified about a dozen more families in McHenry, Cook and Will counties who filed similar guardianship petitions since 2017. Among them was the family of a 17-year-old who lived with his parents in suburban Long Grove. Four days after a Lake County judge denied their petition last month, they refiled the case, naming a different guardian, in neighboring McHenry County. The family said it was in their son’s best interest to “obtain independent student status in order to qualify for financial aid necessary for the minor to attend a state college” and, eventually, become a doctor, court records show.

But Judge Michael Chmiel, who had approved at least nine other guardianship petitions for college-bound students, questioned the move after learning the parents would continue to provide their son financial support.

“So it’s a charade?” he asked attorney Nina Neuber of the Kabbe Law Group in Naperville, which has handled about half of the 59 petitions identified by ProPublica Illinois from Chicago’s suburbs.

“No, your honor. It is not a charade,” Neuber replied, according to a transcript of the July 16 hearing.

But Chmiel remained skeptical.

“I’m challenged by this practice of a parent giving up parental rights for no reason other than an alleged attempt to qualify the kid somehow for financial aid, but yet the parent is still providing financial aid,” Chmiel said. “It doesn’t sound right to me. It just doesn’t.”

Other officials also have been troubled by the practice. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s director of undergraduate admissions called the guardianships a “scam,” while federal and state officials have opened investigations. The U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general has recommended modifying the language on financial aid forms so students in guardianships who receive medical and financial support from their parents don’t qualify as independent.

State lawmakers held a hearing over the matter and discussed possible reforms, from changing the guardianship laws to new regulations for college consultants. The Wall Street Journal has also reported on this practice.

Families involved in the questionable guardianship cases live in some of the most affluent suburbs of Chicago, including Lake Forest, Libertyville and Deerfield. The parents work as lawyers, doctors, technology specialists, entrepreneurs, teachers and real estate agents.

It’s impossible to know if the families are struggling financially. Some live in homes worth more than half a million dollars, records show. A handful have declared bankruptcy in recent years.

Many appear to have been directed to guardianships by the same college consultant, Lora Georgieva. The Bulgarian immigrant has worked in the industry for close to a decade and, in 2013, launched her own firm, Destination College, state records show. Her website, which includes an image of a graduation cap with $100 bills spilling out of it, describes some of her services as “strategies to lower tuition expenses.”

In an interview this week, Georgieva said she has done nothing illegal or unethical but has worked hard to help middle-income families who find it a financial struggle to send their children to college.

She pushed back on the perception that her clients are all wealthy. In the interview and in a three-page statement, she said her clients earn between $35,000 and $180,000 a year, and some are still paying off their own student loans. Many of the families have more than one child they plan to send to college, she said; court records show that at least six of the families involved in the guardianships had filed petitions for siblings.

Two families said they paid Georgieva around $4,500 to $5,000 for her services. Several families, including one that had not gone through with a guardianship change, said they signed nondisclosure agreements. Georgieva said the agreement is meant to protect her unique process of helping students and their families find the right college, write admissions essays and explore financial strategies, including the guardianship option.

Not all of her clients pursue that option, she said, and “nobody was pressured into using it.” Georgieva said “some people, out of being desperate, they acknowledged the fact that they need it. Some people said, ‘We have enough money to pay for college, we don’t need that or don’t feel comfortable with it.’ It is up to the families to decide whether to do it.”

For now, Georgieva said, she will stop recommending guardianship petitions to her clients, although she has gotten phone calls from families interested in pursuing that strategy. “The news that broke, you guys opened the eyes of a lot of families of what they can do,” she said. “If legislators are not going to do this quickly to close that” loophole, then families in Illinois and elsewhere will pursue it.

However, she also urged broader reforms, including increasing the amount of the federal need-based Pell grant, currently up to $6,195, and lowering the age that children are considered financially independent from their parents, now at 24.

Before providing any of her clients with information about guardianships, Georgieva said she spoke with a representative from Federal Student Aid, an office of the U.S. Department of Education, and several lawyers who are her clients “who all confirmed this is a valid legal approach.” Department of Education officials said Tuesday they were unaware of any conversations with Georgieva about guardianship.

They said that the laws governing “dependency status were created to help students who legitimately need assistance to attend college” and that “those who break the rules should be held accountable.”

While federal financial aid isn’t limited, state need-based grants in Illinois are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. Some 82,000 students qualified for the state funds last year but did not receive them because the money ran out.

Several families who spoke with ProPublica Illinois said guardianship was one of many strategies that Georgeiva presented them.

“It was introduced as a program that helps people like us. We weren’t looking at it as something unethical,” said one mother, who successfully petitioned to transfer guardianship of her daughter to a family friend last year.

She said she and her husband both work and “by no means do we live in a lavish home.”

Another parent, from a wealthy community in southwestern Lake County, said she hired Georgieva after interviewing several college consultants. “I did graduate from college, and so did my husband,” she said. “But the whole process changes every year. Why not get the best results? My kids are doing very good in school. I want them to do the best.”

She said Georgieva reviewed her son’s college application essays and recommended strategies to become a more attractive candidate, such as volunteer work.

The woman said she and her husband both work, earning more than $200,000 a year, to support their two teenage sons. The family is among those who have allowed their guardianship petition to lapse following the reports about the tactic.

“Why should the kids of people who work hard and are busy every day and have no time to see their kids, why are their kids being punished?” the Lake County mother asked. “They will have to take huge loans and not be able to pay.”

Both of her sons want to become doctors. The guardianship strategy may have helped them avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, she said. That now seems inevitable.

“I don’t want to be discouraging them, but I’m looking at this and thinking, ‘I have to support them all of their life?’” she said.

She worries her sons will get “stuck doing something they don’t like,” perhaps attending community college and working in fast food if they can’t afford to become doctors.

“I thought they encouraged kids in school to do what they have a passion for,” she said. “Do we have to kill a passion in our kids?”

Another one of Georgieva’s clients, the Northbrook mother who worried guardianship was no longer an option, said “something resonated” when they met with the college consultant in the spring of 2018. The family had attended a number of free college planning sessions that focused on wealth management or gaining admission to elite universities. Nobody spoke as plainly as Georgieva about the high costs of college.

The family has struggled financially, said the woman, who spoke to ProPublica Illinois on Georgieva’s recommendation. She and her husband both lost their jobs, forcing them to go through their emergency fund. They borrowed money and tapped into their retirement and children’s college savings, she said.

Eventually, she found work. Then she said her husband suffered a stroke, requiring medical care around the clock. He remains in a nursing home. She said she sold their house and moved into a rental property with her two children. When she met Georgieva, her oldest son was enrolled in community college and her daughter was a high school sophomore.

Georgieva charged the family about $4,500 for her full package of services, letting them pay in installments. She helped the daughter identify what kind of career matched her interests, told her to focus on improving her ACT scores and encouraged her to take an academic enrichment program.

She assured the family there were ways to finance a higher education, including scholarships and loans. Then she mentioned the possibility of giving up guardianship, perhaps to the girl’s aunt, who had been supportive during the family’s difficulties. Her initial reaction was surprise. “I’m like, ‘Oh my God … I’m not emancipating my child,’” she recalled saying. “I had, like, a million questions.”

But as Georgieva explained how it worked, she warmed to the idea. If her daughter was considered financially independent, then her salary from her job in marketing — more than $100,000 a year, she said — wouldn’t be taken into account.

“Because of how the system is structured they’re telling me I make too much money,” she said. “But I don’t have $30,000, $40,000 or $50,000 sitting [around].”

Before they made a decision on whether to pursue guardianship, the scandal made national headlines. Their Plan A was off the table. Now they’re scrambling to figure out how they will pay for college.

ProPublica Illinois is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. Sign up for The ProPublica Illinois newsletter for weekly updates.

At a packed hearing in Chicago, more than a dozen members of the Illinois House discussed possible reforms, from tweaking state laws and educating judges who sign off on questionable guardianship changes to denying college admission to students whose families have exploited legal loopholes for financial gain.

“Need-based financial aid programs are a zero-sum game. When a student who does not qualify for the aid manipulates the system and is awarded money, there are students who are qualified for the aid who don’t receive it … and consequently they lose out on college altogether,” said State Rep. Carol Ammons, a Democrat from Champaign. “However, the rising costs of college should not be overlooked in this case. A system that drives families to cheat is a broken system.”

Yet lawmakers appeared unsure what they could do to stop the practice, even as they tried to pin down whether any laws were broken. “You’re not alarmed or think they committed an illegal act?” Rep. La Shawn K. Ford, a Chicago Democrat, asked one state financial aid official. “So we’re here only because we want to fix the moral compass of people?”

The hearing before two House higher education committees was called after a ProPublica Illinois investigation last week exposed how nearly four dozen families from the northern Chicago suburbs in Lake County went to court to give up legal guardianship of their children, sometimes a few months before they turned 18, to relatives or friends. Reporters subsequently identified an additional 10 cases in McHenry County and two in Cook County.

By having someone other than their parents be their legal guardian, students can declare themselves financially independent so their parents’ earnings and assets aren’t taken into account when applying for need-based federal, state and university grants. They can also qualify for subsidized federal student loans. The Wall Street Journal also reported on this issue.

Officials from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign first flagged the questionable guardianship changes last summer and alerted federal authorities. University officials said they can decline to give institutional funds to these students but are obligated to award state and federal need-based grants.

At Thursday’s hearing, university officials implored lawmakers to give them the authority to reduce or block state need-based grants from the Monetary Award Program, known as MAP, in cases where students obtained independent status because of questionable guardianship transfers. MAP grants are worth $300 to $5,300 a year.

“That level of authority and flexibility would give us a much stronger set of tools to immediately and effectively address instances like the ones that we are discussing today,” said Michelle Trame, the University of Illinois director of student financial aid.

Trame urged lawmakers to enact safeguards soon since financial aid for the coming school year will be distributed before the end of August.

Ford, who chairs the House higher education appropriations committee, told reporters after the hearing he was not convinced that giving universities discretion to reduce MAP grants was the solution. Instead, he said the focus should be on educating judges and examining the guardianship law itself.

“It’s not illegal. We can make it illegal,” he said.

Ford and other lawmakers cautioned that they want to protect children in legitimate guardianships and avoid making the financial aid process unnecessarily burdensome for them.

Several lawmakers highlighted the need to hear from judges in future hearings. “We have no one here today from the judiciary, is that right? I’m a little bit concerned we may be getting ahead of our skis,” said Rep. Terri Bryant, a Republican from Mt. Vernon in southern Illinois. “It appears to me that this is a problem with the judiciary granting guardianship rather than what the schools are going to do about it.”

The Illinois Probate Act, the law that governs guardianship, does not specify circumstances in which guardianship should be denied. According to the law, a court can appoint a guardian if the parents consent, the minor agrees and the court determines it is in the child’s best interest.

ProPublica Illinois found that one judge in Lake County, Donna-Jo Vorderstrasse, approved dozens of guardianship changes brought to her court since January 2018 on behalf of college-bound students. Vorderstrasse, who has since moved to another division, declined to comment and referred questions to the court’s executive director, who did not return a call.

This year, however, another Lake County judge, Joseph Salvi, took over hearing guardianship cases and last month denied the guardianship petition of a 17-year-old who lived with his parents in suburban Long Grove.

Four days after Salvi denied the petition, the same family filed a new petition in McHenry County. The case was supposed to be heard Monday, but the family didn’t show up.

Eric Zarnikow, executive director of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, which administers the MAP grant, told lawmakers his agency plans to reach out to judges to educate them about the potential abuse of guardianship.

Zarnikow also said it appears that the scheme came to light before it became widespread.

“The good news is this appears to have been caught early,” he said. “If this works in Illinois, it likely works in other states.”

State Rep. Dan Brady, a Republican from Bloomington-Normal in Central Illinois, said he thought the law may need “some fine-tuning.”

Noticeably absent from the hearing were families involved in the questionable guardianships and attorneys who filed the cases. In an interview after the hearing, Ford said lawmakers asked the universities to notify families of the hearing, but “nobody wanted to come.” Parents still may be subpoenaed to appear at future hearings, he said. Ammons also said after the hearing she thought it was appropriate for the state’s attorney general’s office, which is investigating the abuse of guardianships, to finish its work before families are called to testify.

“We don’t know yet what the AG is thinking,” Ammons said. “Is this considered theft?”

An attorney for some of the families, Mari Berlin, of the Kabbe Law Group, has said families who took part in the guardianship changes said they make too much money to qualify for financial aid but struggled to pay for college.

Lawmakers repeatedly asked for more information about the students who have enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, including their high schools and how much money they received in need-based grants. University officials declined to provide that information, citing privacy laws.

State Rep. William Davis, a Democrat from East Hazel Crest, in the southern suburbs of Chicago, asked university officials whether they could deny admission to applicants who misrepresented their true financial status. Andy Borst, director of undergraduate admissions at the university, said the issue wasn’t clear-cut.

“I feel like we were limited with the judges in the state saying, ‘Yes, this was a legal transfer of guardianship,’” Borst said. “We have to abide by that.”

University officials also asked lawmakers to regulate college consultants. Several of the families identified by ProPublica Illinois hired the same firm, Destination College, which boasts on its website of “strategies to lower tuition expenses.” The company’s owner, Lora Georgieva, has declined to comment to ProPublica Illinois but said elsewhere she did nothing wrong and was merely pointing families to a legally available option.

The reporting last week from ProPublica Illinois drew national attention and spurred the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General to call for reforms. That office, which called the tactic “student aid fraud,” has recommended adding language on federal financial aid forms to clarify that students involved in this kind of guardianship no longer qualify for aid if they continue to receive medical and financial support from their parents.

In addition, other universities across Illinois and in other states have begun examining their own records to see if students in questionable guardianships had obtained financial aid to which they otherwise would not have been entitled.

At Thursday’s hearing, representatives from all of the state’s public university systems testified about the issues. None, apart from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had identified any questionable guardianship cases. Illinois State University said it was still seeking further documentation from fewer than five students in guardianships.

Only one official from a private institution, Dominican University, testified at the hearing. Lawmakers said they hoped to hear from some of the most prestigious private universities in the state, including the University of Chicago, in future hearings.

In a recent interview, Loyola University Chicago’s associate director of financial aid, Kelsey Gerber, said her office began looking into questionable guardianships last year after learning of the practice from officials at DePaul University.

Loyola has since identified two applicants with a similar guardianship setup. When the university asked for additional documentation, Gerber said, the students didn’t respond and didn’t attend Loyola.

DePaul has seen a “small number” of these types of guardianship cases, a spokeswoman said in an email, adding that the university has been in touch with the U.S. Department of Education for guidance.

ProPublica Illinois is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. Sign up for The ProPublica Illinois newsletter for weekly updates.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot proposed Tuesday an end to the city’s punitive practice of suspending driver’s licenses over unpaid parking tickets and said she would support legislation to change state law, moves that are likely to bring relief to tens of thousands of mostly black, low-income motorists and lead to a reduction in bankruptcy filings here.

Lightfoot unveiled an array of significant reforms to the city’s system of ticketing and debt collection, beginning to fulfill a campaign promise to stop balancing the budget on the backs of those least able to bear the burden.

“We know this hurts black and brown families the most,” Lightfoot said during a press conference on the city’s West Side, alongside dozens of advocates and elected officials. “It doesn’t make sense to punish people for not paying for their fines by taking away their ability to pay their fines.”

Tuesday’s announcement is significant as it marks the first time any proposed reforms have the weight of the mayor’s office and a likely fast-track through the City Council. The proposals go to the City Council on Wednesday but aren’t expected to get final approval until September, given they first must pass through a committee and August is a recess month.

Some of Lightfoot’s other proposals seek to make city-sponsored payment plans more attractive and affordable than filing for bankruptcy. In addition, she is proposing to reduce late penalties tied to city sticker tickets and provide some debt relief for motorists who come into compliance by purchasing vehicle stickers.

The reforms seek to address problems uncovered in reports by ProPublica Illinois last year that showed how the city’s punitive ticketing was sending tens of thousands of low-income, mostly black motorists into bankruptcy as a way to lift license suspensions or recover impounded vehicles. The Driven into Debt investigative series, later continued in collaboration with WBEZ, also showed how a 2011 decision to raise the price of tickets for not buying a vehicle sticker — already one of the costliest in the city — led to significantly more debt for motorists and little additional revenue.

A coalition of community groups has led the public call for an overhaul of the city’s ticketing and debt collection system. Among them: Community Organizing and Family Issues, or COFI, which last year issued a series of recommendations to the city on how to make ticket debt less punishing for low-income families; the Chicago Jobs Council, which has headed advocacy efforts to change state law around license suspensions for non-driving related offenses; and the Woodstock Institute, which last summer published a research report on racial disparities tied to ticketing.

Late last year, some aldermen, including Gilbert Villegas, of the Northwest Side’s 36th Ward, introduced proposals to begin fixing the problems. But there was little political traction until December, when City Clerk Anna Valencia, who had already ushered in some minor reforms through her own office, formed a citywide task force to study the issues.

During the heated race for mayor this year, all 14 candidates promised reforms. Last month, the task force issued its series of recommendations.

Lightfoot’s promise to support a bill to end license suspensions tied to unpaid parking tickets has the potential to change the lives of tens of thousands of families across Illinois. Ten unpaid parking tickets can trigger a driver’s license suspension. Some 55,000 licenses are currently suspended because of parking ticket debt, Illinois secretary of state officials said Tuesday. ProPublica Illinois has previously reported that the vast majority of these suspensions are in low-income, black neighborhoods in Chicago and its suburbs.

Lightfoot’s support will most likely revive efforts to bring to a vote this fall a bill in the General Assembly to lift suspensions. That bill had previously stalled in the House. In the meantime, Lightfoot’s proposal would immediately stop the city’s practice of seeking suspensions tied to parking ticket debt.

“Today marks a turning point in the fight to pass that bill,” said Eric Halvorson, of the Chicago Jobs Council. “When our scrappy coalition first tried to get the License to Work Act passed, we were told that we were asking for too much. Now, for the first time, the mayor of Chicago is joining us in the effort to end license suspensions for parking and compliance tickets.”

If passed, the legislation would apply retroactively, meaning some 55,000 motorists’ driving privileges could soon be restored. Lightfoot said she would work with community groups and state officials to simplify the reinstatement process and potentially eliminate the fees motorists pay to lift license suspensions.

The legislation, however, would not affect suspensions for unpaid red-light or speed-camera tickets. Officials from the mayor’s office said they prioritized the parking ticket suspensions but would consider those for camera tickets in the future.

Reforms of Payment Plans and City Sticker Tickets

Another one of Lightfoot’s proposals would dramatically lower the down payment requirements for motorists who want to enter a city-sponsored payment plan for their ticket debt. Currently, low-income motorists with significant debt have to pay up to $1,000 to get on a payment plan. ProPublica Illinois has reported that thousands of motorists who can’t afford the down payment turn to Chapter 13 bankruptcy because it’s cheaper; many large bankruptcy firms here will file for no money down.

Lightfoot’s proposal would reduce the required down payment to as little as $35 to $100 for low-income motorists, depending on whether their vehicles have been impounded or their licenses suspended.

“Nobody should be forced to choose between unaffordable payment plans or bankruptcy,” Lightfoot said.

What’s more, low-income motorists on payment plans would have as long as 60 months to pay off their debts. Currently, payment plans are capped at 36 months.

In addition, motorists would have the option of paying off a single ticket within six months before incurring additional late penalties or fees. Tickets that aren’t paid eventually double and go on to accrue an additional 22% fee when sent to collections.

Several proposed reforms focus on vehicle city sticker citations, which can rise to $488 each with late penalties and collections fees. ProPublica Illinois and WBEZ have reported on how unpaid vehicle sticker citations are the single largest source of outstanding ticket debt and the most likely to be tied to notices of pending license suspensions.

Lightfoot is proposing to cap late penalties on these tickets at $50, plus the 22% collections fee, and reinstate a 15-day grace period after stickers expire so motorists have more time to come into compliance. Lightfoot had campaigned on reinstating the policy, which was included in Valencia’s task force report. City stickers cost between $88 and $139 per year, depending on the weight of a vehicle.

Another proposal would involve wiping out some portion of old debt tied to sticker tickets when motorists come into compliance. The debt relief will be timed to overlap with a monthlong amnesty planned for this fall by the clerk’s office to forgive late fees tied to sticker purchases.

Details on the ticket debt relief plan are still being worked out, officials from the mayor’s office said, but records obtained by ProPublica Illinois and WBEZ show that there was more than a half-billion dollars in outstanding sticker ticket debt as of last summer.

“As government, we must be and have to be reflective about our past practices and be OK with thinking differently and critiquing our previous policies,” Valencia said Tuesday. “We also realized we needed to reframe our thinking. What if people weren’t trying to skirt the law but simply couldn’t comply with it in the first place?”

Under Lightfoot’s proposals, the city would also stop issuing multiple tickets for compliance violations to motorists on the same day or consecutive days in order to give them more time to get into compliance. City sticker violations and expired plates are the most common compliance citations. ProPublica and WBEZ previously reported that the city had issued some 20,000 duplicate sticker ticket violations, issuing multiple tickets to the same vehicle on the same day, between 2007 and 2018, a practice that appeared to violate city code. In November, the city agreed to refund drivers for duplicate sticker ticket violations.

The proposal to end duplicate ticketing for additional types of violations on the same or consecutive days promises to affect tens of thousands more motorists.

Another proposal would give motorists the ability to ask for an additional 24 hours to pay off boot fees or get on a payment plan before their vehicles are impounded over unpaid tickets. This would double the current 24-hour window.

Promises of More to Come

Lightfoot’s proposed reforms did not address a number of other related issues, such as Chicago’s various tow and sale programs, which sell vehicles of indebted drivers or of those arrested in some crimes to a private towing company — sometimes for as little as $200 each, as WBEZ has previously reported.

The city is currently facing a class-action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of some arrest-related tows.

In her election campaign, Lightfoot proposed a series of reforms, which included scaling back some of the red-light cameras. She had also campaigned on ending the city’s “anti-scofflaw” policy for taxi and ride-share drivers in limited cases.

But she and her staff promised more reforms are coming.

“We want to make sure that we start the process of untangling this big, massive problem, and it is substantial, and it’s not going to be easy to fix overnight,” Lightfoot said. “We wanted to make sure that we took the first steps to give people hope.”