There’s another push in Springfield to tax motorists by the mile. Illinoisans already pay the second-highest gas taxes in the nation behind only California.

Illinois state lawmakers again want to tax drivers on each mile of road they use – an idea that lasted a week the last time they raised the idea.

With electric cars and cars being more fuel efficient, Illinois is not seeing as much revenue per vehicle, so state lawmakers are considering a vehicle miles traveled tax to raise more money from motorists. State Sen. Ram Villivalam, D-Chicago, proposed legislation exploring a “road usage charge” to tax drivers by the mile.

The tax might involve transponders, meaning the taxman would be tracking a driver’s movement. Or a photo of the odometer could be sent. Both gas and electric vehicles would be part of a 1,000-vehicle test of drivers who volunteer to be taxed based on miles driven, and possibly on the time of day they use roads. The move would target Illinois drivers who don’t pay the gas tax by driving electric cars or use less gas because their vehicles are efficient.

Proponents say electric vehicle drivers should contribute more than they are to funding roads. Electric vehicle license plate renewals are $251 compared to $151 for a gas vehicle. The pilot program would incentivize EV drivers to join with a discount on annual registration.

Since Gov. J.B. Pritzker doubled the gas tax in 2019 and built in automatic annual increases so lawmakers would no longer vote on the unpopular taxes, the amount drivers pay in gas taxes has reached roughly $2 billion. Illinois drivers pay the second-highest gas taxes in the nation, behind only California.

Illinois last discussed a VMT tax in 2019, but the bill’s sponsor drew so much ire that he pulled the bill a week later.

This effort, Senate Bill 1938, was being co-sponsored by state Sen. Christopher Belt, D-East St. Louis, but he pulled his name off the bill. It is assigned to the Transportation Committee, where it must receive a passing vote by March 21.

It’s hard to believe Illinois would ever be strapped for infrastructure cash. The state is going to spend $40 billion on roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects during a six-year span.

Another broken promise would be easier to believe. Illinoisans were once promised “Toll free in ’73,” meaning toll roads would eventually cost drivers nothing, but that never happened.

Some Illinois lawmakers are proposing a legislation that would ban third-party service companies from selling restaurant reservations online.

Other states like California, Nevada, and Florida are considering similar proposals after New York passed a law last year.

Margaret Croke, who is the State Representative for Illinois’ 12th District is one of the sponsors of the bill that would ban the illegal sale of restaurants reservations online.

“I think this is going to help you get the reservation that you been wanting from that fun hot new restaurant that for some reason you’re racking your brain and why you can’t do this,” Croke said.

Croke is backing the proposed ordinance after running into problems herself trying to book a table at popular restaurants downtown.

“This doesn’t impact Resy, Open Table, Tock, actually those organizations have been in favor of legislations like this across the country,” she said. “This really impacts only those third-party vendors who are using bots and sometimes they are using individuals, but they’re actually taking something that is free and reselling them.”

She’s been working with the Illinois Restaurant Association, which drafted the ordinance.

“I think it will allow the customers of these restaurants to get these restaurants, and it would reduce no shows, which also helps the employees because you know, a lot of these third-party apps they’ll make reservations and people won’t show,” IRA president Sam Toia said.

Known as the Restaurant Reservation Anti-Piracy Act, it would ban third-party reservation service companies from listing, advertising, promoting, or selling reservations unless there’s a written agreement between the third party and the restaurant.

“Customers shouldn’t have to compete with bots or predatory third-parties’ resellers they should not,” he said.

One of the third-party companies is Appointment Trader. Founder Jonas Frey told NBC Chicago he feels as though his small company is being targeted and argues restaurants do not own the reservations, but the consumers.

“It’s not the restaurant’s reservations, it’s the person’s reservation,” Jonas Frey, Appointment Trader’s founder said. “It shouldn’t be prohibited that you sell what you own if you change your mind, especially if you have to be liable for no show fee if you don’t go—that’s crazy then there’s a restriction on what you can do with it.”

The platform launched in 2021 and has more than 80,000 active users. The website and app allow users to list, trade, and sell their appointments or reservations. Frey said they have piracy measures and metrics in place to combat against bots and scalpers.

“If every restaurant had the ability to dictate how their reservation can be sold it’s not going to be an actually free market so I can’t see how that could benefit any consumer,” he said. “We are the one that puts the little guy that generally does not have the ability have access to restaurants like this into those restaurants and they claim that we are hurting restaurants because we generate no shows and that’s literally made up.”

The proposed bill passed the committee unanimously, according to State Rep. Croke. The bill now heads to the House floor.

Governor JB Pritzker denounced the Trump administration’s massive Department of Education layoffs in front of hundreds of Illinois teachers this morning, prompting a chorus of boos for the president.

Speaking at an Illinois Education Association conference in Rosemont, Pritzker said the cuts announced this week put at risk more than $3 billion in federal funding that Illinois is expecting this summer, which is something he said the state “cannot replace.”

He also said the Trump administration could shrink crucial programs that support students from low-income families and students with special needs.

“When Donald Trump and the people that he appoints tear down the Department of Education, when they take away funding … from kids across this nation who deserve to be able to get a good public education … they are damaging what we can do for our people here in the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said.

That’s why, Pritzker told the state’s largest teachers’ union, Illinois is joining 20 Democratic-led states and Washington D.C. in a federal lawsuit challenging the sweeping layoffs. The lawsuit argues that the cuts amount to an illegal dismantling of an agency created by Congress.

The layoffs announced Tuesday are part of a dramatic downsizing of the department directed by President Trump. He has pushed for a full shutdown of the Education Department, calling it a “con job” and saying its power should be turned over to states. On Wednesday he told reporters many agency employees “don’t work at all.”

The cuts resulted in the departure of dozens of Department of Education employees from its Chicago offices. The Office for Civil Rights, which enforces anti-discrimination laws in schools, was entirely eliminated. It handled cases involving families trying to get school services for students with disabilities, allegations of bias related to race and religion and complaints over sexual violence at schools and college campuses.

Chicago’s office overseeing Federal Student Aid also saw the departure of 12 staff members. That’s left laid-off workers like Sheria Smith, the president of the union representing Education Department employees, worried that high school seniors won’t get the information they need this spring from the department to decide which colleges they can afford to attend.

“I just don’t know how that’s possible because this administration has eliminated hundreds of people who do that work without any plan to continue the work, to continue those services,” Smith said.

At her confirmation hearing, Education Secretary Linda McMahon told lawmakers that her aim is not to defund key programs, but to make them operate more efficiently.

Pritzker said he is all for efficiency, “but the question is, can they deliver those services without the people actually running them and operating them? There needs to be some effectuation of justice in our schools across the country.”

Anna Savchenko is a reporter for WBEZ. You can reach her at asavchenko@wbez.org.