ISSUES
Human Rights
Senator Mike Simmons is the Chair of the Illinois Senate Human Rights Committee. In this role he advocates to protect and expand human rights in Illinois.
BOOK BANS
Senator Mike Simmons spearheaded efforts for a comprehensive book ban to protect all communities and ensure their history and existence aren’t erased. His sweeping book ban legislation would protect the kind of books that have been under attack in schools and libraries — books that explore race and ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity, sexual health and reproductive health, religion and faith background, biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs about rights and activism.
RETURNING CITIZENS
Senator Mike Simmons wants to alleviate financial pressures and ensure that all community members have access to affordable housing and job opportunities. That’s why he passed legislation to assist returning citizens as they reintegrate into their communities by pausing any outstanding fees, fines, or taxes for a year.
EMPOWERING YOUTH CITIZENS
Senator Mike Simmons secured passage of legislation that empowers 16 and 17 year olds to pre-register to vote, which he believes is key to giving young people a sense of their power and their role in securing our democracy.
Income Inequality
Our economy is stacked against people who are working in entry-level jobs, transient work, gig workers, and essential workers. Income inequality is inexcusable when big corporate entities are still able to take advantage of ridiculous loopholes and hoard profits while skimping out on providing health insurance for their workers. We need a new commitment to the people across the 7th district who are working two and three jobs in some cases and still are behind on bills. This will take bold leadership and a willingness to speak truth to power. As someone who has waited tables on top of a full time job to pay off debt and help take care of family members, I know how exhausting and demoralizing that is to too many people who simply work too hard not to see a better return on their labor. We need structural changes that more fairly distribute wealth across the state so that we have a more reliable safety net for people who are in between jobs and those barely holding on to work.
I will continue to stand with working people across our district and fight for a permanent state-level child tax credit, better pay and benefits for our frontline workers, universal childcare for our struggling parents, an economic bill of rights for single moms, and more policy changes that meet the moment and provide struggling people with dignity and a just economy.
Education & Schools
Our public schools have been intentionally disinvested in for decades. Our young people are nickel and dimed, losing access to support staff, mental health services, play time, and so many resources wealthier communities take for granted. I will speak up for our public schools and work with young people, teachers, school staff, and activists to fight for a massive reinvestment in our public schools.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a damaging toll on our young people and we must use this as the time to shift the focus. That means empowering young people by recognizing what they’ve been through and providing them the extra support they need to continue learning and thriving. That means hiring more social workers, mental health workers, providing trauma counseling around the clock for our young people, and supporting our teachers who are some of the most overworked and least appreciated professionals in our society. That means replacing police in schools with adults trained in conflict de-escalation, and fostering community-based partnerships that provide healing, safety, and protection for our young people and their families around the clock when they are not in school. That means replacing high-stakes, deficit-oriented testing with more authentic forms of evaluation that more truly and fully gauge the wonderful gifts that all young people bring into this world. That means ensuring that all people can attend college and trade schools that provide a real return on the time invested and don’t saddle graduates with student debt.
Our public schools are a lifeline for the health of our society and ground zero for all of our young people to be able to play, discover, learn, and be healthy and engaged. It’s time to repair decades of injustices and restore our public schools so that they can provide young people with the world class education they deserve and the healing that is required as our communities recover from chronic trauma.
Transportation and Pedestrian / Cyclist Safety
Senator Mike Simmons has worked tirelessly to ensure transportation equity by authoring and securing passage of a package of bills that will make streets safer to use, improve the CTA, and enhance statewide infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists. Part of his efforts include accelerating the timeline for electrification of buses.
He has authored and passed legislation to require bike and pedestrian safety infrastructure improvements at scale on all state routes, while also championing and passing a bill that provides farecard auto-renewals for people living with disabilities and seniors who rely on RTA systems including the CTA. He negotiated and passed two more bills that require warning vehicle crossing signage on all bike trails, and another that removes a requirement that municipalities must design roadways for large semi-trucks.
Senator Mike Simmons will continue fighting for legislation that respects the needs of communities that rely on public transportation and cycling to commute. That includes legislation to make CTA more affordable, sustainable, and accessible.
Mental Health Care
Senator Mike Simmons wants to ensure that children have access to mental health services, which is why he has authored and passed legislation that requires that Illinois provide assistance to K-12 schools that want to set up mental health services within schools.
Senator Mike Simmons wants to remove barriers to accessing mental health services. That is why he passed a law that requires schools to instruct students on where and how to access mental health resources.
Thanks to his work and passage of SB4028, legislation he authored which was inspired by his high school youth legislative council initiative in his district, there is now a statewide student mental health advisory council that includes representation of queer voices, youth of color, therapists of color, and others that have been marginalized in mental health spaces. He also supported legislation that will increase the rate of reimbursement through Medicaid to increase the pay for mental health workers and add badly needed capacity for those in our neighborhoods who need mental health care.
Access to Healthcare
Senator Mike Simmons will always champion and support legislation that increases access to healthcare services. He advocated for funding increases for safety-net hospitals and community clinics as part of the 2023 budget, all of which were included and will provide higher quality and more accessible health care for our struggling communities.
After a two year long fight, Mike secured passage of SB1282, a bill that removes co-pays and cost-sharing for populations at high risk of liver disease, which is a silent killer and the 9th leading cause of death. Many in our communities are struggling with addiction, which can precede and co-occur with liver damage. Mental health and physical health should be treated together, and passage of this legislation is an important structural improvement that ensures cost is never a reason someone doesn’t get screened for liver disease.
To ensure more of our lower-income communities have access to healthcare, Senator Mike Simmons is fighting to expand Medicaid so that anyone making up to 200% of the federal poverty level can qualify. He has also supported legislation to provide Medicaid coverage to undocumented immigrants.
Housing
GENTRIFICATION
Gentrification has pushed out long-time residents and made parts of the 7th district out of reach for too many. We live in one of the most diverse communities in the country. I am a product of that diversity, and will work to keep it a place that we all can call home.
Housing is a human right, and I will fight to preserve affordable housing, fight to set higher safety standards in affordable housing, fight to protect our mom and pop building owners, fight for stabilization of rent in large apartment buildings, and advocate for new ideas such as creating land trust and cooperatives where lower-income residents can co-own their homes. My work focuses on protecting small business owners who are leasing their spaces and who also need help.
SAFER LIVING CONDITIONS
State Senator Mike Simmons passed landmark legislation to protect tenants of state supported housing by requiring that all new buildings and any renovated buildings install air conditioning so that people can live comfortably and stay safe during heatwaves.
PREVENTING DISPLACEMENT
Preventing displacement has been one of Senator Mike Simmons top priorities since becoming a state Senator. During the Spring of 2021, he passed legislation to increase the income threshold for the state’s rental subsidy program so that renters receiving this aid were not penalized because of small increases in their income and they could keep more money in their pockets.
He also has championed and strongly supports legislation that would outlaw rent gouging and limit annual rent increases so that our unique communities on the far north side can remain home to so many diverse people from all over the world.
NEW HOUSING
Mike secured passage of the first ever Cooperative Housing Fund, which will provide a structure for community organizations, developers, and other stakeholders to go about creating new cooperative housing, a key and stable form of affordable and moderate income housing in diverse communities.
To beef up local efforts to address the shortage of housing for our unhoused neighbors, Mike championed and supported $85M in additional state funding for the new HOME program, which will provide 500 new units of permanent supportive housing while ensuring our neighbors experiencing housing insecurity can access humane, compassionate, and effective supports to help them thrive and stay housed.
Climate Change
We are seeing climate change play out everyday. Fires have raged for weeks and months in precious forests and nature areas across the country this year, while parts of Lake Michigan shorelines are eroding from stronger storms and waves right here in the 7th District in Rogers Park, Edgewater, and Uptown, and the planet is getting hotter as our carbon footprint expands. We are at a crisis point and must reduce our reliance on fossil fuels at a systemic level by incentivizing new solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources. That means adding electric vehicles to our roads and to our public transit systems, building up green infrastructure at every opportunity in housing and commercial buildings, and leading at an individual level to leave our planet better than we found it. Everyone has a role to play and government must lead. I am committed to speaking truth to power and pushing to tackle climate change on an aggressive timeline as the science is clear that we are nearly out of time.