An advocacy group with ties to Washington, D.C., is working to bring a national cruise line to the Illinois River that would make a stop in Peoria.

The Illinois River Cities and Towns Initiative, a group that advocates politically for cities and towns on the Illinois River, is in talks with American Cruise Lines to set up a cruise route that would travel the Illinois River and make a stop in Peoria.

Representatives from the IRCTI told the Peoria City Council on Tuesday night that if the city agreed to spend $22,600 on a membership fee and join its group, it could become part of an initiative that, among other things, is trying to bring a cruise line to the Illinois River.

While the proposed cruise line wouldn’t be permanently stationed in Peoria, like the bygone Spirit of Peoria riverboat that left the city in 2022, members of the Peoria City Council said a cruise line stop in Peoria could bring back some of the energy and money the riverboat once provided to the city’s riverfront.

The proposed cruise line route — which is notably just an idea the IRCTI has kicked to American Cruise Lines — would fly guests to Chicago and then have them board a boat in Ottawa, Illinois. The boat would travel down the Illinois River and travel through Peoria on its way to the Mississippi River where it would then turn south to St. Louis or north to Minneapolis.

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Bringing a cruise line to the Illinois River was just a small piece of the pitch the IRCTI delivered to the City Council on Tuesday. Ultimately, what the IRCTI said it would advocate for is making the Illinois River part of federal discussions around funding for environmental and business development programs that could tap Peoria into millions of dollars.

To join the coalition Peoria, has to pay a $22,600 joining fee and then an annual fee every year it stays part of the group. The coalition includes cities such as Pekin, East Peoria, Ottawa, La Salle, Peru and Beardstown.

The City Council voted 9-2 on Tuesday to pay the $22,630 membership fee to join the IRCTI.

Councilmember Denis Cyr said he hopes the program is successful and does bring the millions of dollars to Peoria that was mentioned in the group’s sales pitch, but he voted against the measure because Peoria is the only city on the Illinois River that has a mandate from the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce its pollution into the river.

Councilmember Alex Carmona voted against the measure because he wants Peoria to find ways to be more “business friendly” that do not cost the city money.

While he voted for the measure, councilmember John Kelly expressed skepticism that the advocacy group would succeed in its pitched endeavors to bring millions of federal dollars to Peoria. Kelly said he was not skeptical of the group’s “intentions” but rather “what it can actually do.”

Mayor Rita Ali was joined by eight other councilmembers, including Kelly, in supporting the city’s membership into the IRCTI.

Ali said the initiative will “attract millions of dollars to Peoria.”

Councilmember Denise Jackson was excited at the idea of bringing a passenger boat back to Peoria. She said $22,000 was a “drop in the bucket” compared to the earning potential that having a cruise line stop in Peoria could bring to the city.

More: Low inventory, high interest: The challenges of buying a home in the Peoria market

Illinois joined 15 other states Monday in suing the Trump administration over plans to return forced-reset triggers that were confiscated by federal law enforcement and once again allow them to be sold. The devices are used to make semiautomatic rifles fire faster.

The suit, filed in Maryland, argues the administration’s action violates federal law and poses a threat to residents and law enforcement because of the capacity of the devices to worsen gun violence.

There had been several legal battles over forced-reset triggers, which replace standard triggers on AR-15-style rifles. The government for years had argued that they were illegal machine gun conversion devices because constant finger pressure on the triggers could keep a rifle firing essentially like an automatic.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said he would continue to enforce the ban on the devices through state law that bars owning them and other devices — such as bump stocks — that can also make semiautomatic rifles fire more rapidly.

“The Trump administration’s decision to redistribute devices that convert firearms into machine guns is extreme and would have a devastating effect on the safety of communities across our country,” Raoul said. “ Federal law bans these devices, and this settlement does not change the law. Illinois law is also clear: Forced reset triggers are unlawful. I will continue to enforce the ban on forced reset triggers under Illinois law.”

Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington joined Illinois in the suit.

Forced-reset triggers were previously considered illegal machine guns by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Forearms and Explosives, but the Justice Department reached a settlement with Rare Breed Triggers last month to allow their sale. The company was previously represented by David Warrington, who is now Trump’s White House counsel.

As part of the settlement, Rare Breed Triggers alone agreed not to make equivalent triggers for handguns, but would require the ATF to return triggers that it had seized or that owners had voluntarily surrendered to the government and stop enforcing federal law banning them.

Trump banned bump stocks — similar devices that allow rifles to fire faster — shortly after a gunman fired more than 1,000 rounds in 11 minutes into an outdoor country music festival in 2017 on the Las Vegas Strip, killing 58 people and wounding more than 850 among the crowd of 22,000. Last year the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on bump stocks and similar devices, though Illinois’ ban remained in place.

This story was produced by Injustice Watch, a nonprofit newsroom in Chicago that investigates issues of equity and justice in the Cook County court system. Sign up here to get their weekly newsletter.”

In their end-of-session dash to pass a state budget, Illinois lawmakers put off consideration of proposed reforms to property tax sales and foreclosures.

That leaves Illinois the only remaining state where homeowners can face losing not just their homes but also all of the equity in them they’ve accumulated if their homes are foreclosed on for falling far behind on paying their property taxes.

Experts say it also means Illinois is out of step with a 2-year-old Supreme Court ruling that mandated that local governments give homeowners any money that’s left over after their homes are sold to pay off their tax debt and related fees and penalties.

More than 1,000 owner-occupied homes in Cook County have been taken in tax foreclosures since 2019, mostly in majority-Black communities, an investigation by Injustice Watch and the Investigative Project on Race and Equity published in May by the Chicago Sun-Times found.

Those homes had a fair-market value totaling $108 million, according to county assessments. The homeowners lost them over tax debts that collectively amounted to just a fraction of that — $2.3 million.

All of that equity went into the pockets of private investors, known as tax buyers, who paid the delinquent taxes at a government auction, then took ownership of the properties when homeowners didn’t repay them in time. The taxes owed often were several times less than what investors made selling the homes. 

And hundreds more homeowners in Cook County are in the final stages of tax foreclosure and could end up losing all of their equity under the current system, court records show.

Legal experts and homeowner advocates say the system hits Black homeowners especially hard.

For decades, efforts to win reforms in Springfield have failed. Supporters have hoped they’d have better luck this year thanks largely to the Supreme Court’s ruling and several lawsuits filed in its wake by former homeowners seeking their lost equity.

The proposals this year — pushed by lawmakers including state Sen. Celina Villanueva, D-Chicago, and state Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago — would have put homes in tax foreclosure up for sale at a public auction instead of immediately transferring ownership to tax buyers. And then any proceeds exceeding the taxes owed would go back to homeowners.

“I’m frustrated that we weren’t able to resolve this problem this legislative session, but we made a lot of headway,” Guzzardi said.

Legislators did send Gov. JB Pritzker a stopgap measure that would pause interest charges on delinquent taxes starting in September and allow Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas to postpone the tax sale this year.

More than 12,000 owner-occupied homes with delinquent property taxes had been set to go to auction this year, including nearly 3,000 homes owned by people 65 and older.

Pappas said her office will push for legislators to pass reform legislation when they return for their fall veto session. 

Pappas wouldn’t would provide details about that legislation. 

Advocates have long called for lawmakers to give homeowners more time to pay their delinquent property taxes, to let them pay in installments and to cut out private investors from the process altogether.

The temporary measures passed last week were to “give the state more time to find consensus,” a spokesperson for state Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, said. 

Lawyers and lobbyists representing the biggest tax buyers didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“It boggles the mind that the state legislature would just keep kicking the can down the road, and you have a crisis on your hands,” said Rita Jefferson, an analyst with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit that advocates for more equitable tax policies.

This article first appeared on Injustice Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.