State Sen. Chapin Rose says wages for direct support professionals who provide services for people with developmental disabilities and serious mental illnesses lag behind where they were when Gov. JB Pritzker took office.

House Bill 4327, which was described as a “transparency” bill, calls on the Illinois Department of Insurance to conduct an audit of the 340B program in Illinois to determine how much revenue hospitals and clinics are earning through the program and how that money is being used.

The Illinois State Board of Education expects the state’s number of “low-income” students to drop over the next several years. Instead of celebrating that, the board asked lawmakers for money to redefine “low income” so more students will qualify for benefits under the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP).

“It’s a pretty straightforward tax on speech, and a discriminatory one at that,” said Adam Thierer, senior fellow at the R Street Institute. “It basically suggests that it’s alright for government to be singling out types of media or media platforms that it does not like and assessing special taxes accordingly.”