BREAKING – SB 108 Passes, Making the Current Cook County Specific Partial Traffic Fee Waiver Program Permanent
We are proud to be members of the Illinois Fines & Fees Coalition and celebrate alongside our partners the passage of SB 108, the Traffic Fee Waiver Sunset Elimination Bill, which makes the current Cook County-specific partial traffic fee waiver program permanent. The bill now moves to Governor Pritzker to sign.
Established as a pilot in the 2018 Criminal & Traffic Assessments Act (CTAA), the Cook County traffic case assessment waiver was intended to sunset July 1, 2025, after an initial extension. This bill makes the fee waiver permanent and furthers the intent of the original CTAA.
Assessments and fees are not fines or restitution; they are costs and other charges assessed to defendants in order to shift the responsibility for paying for courts onto communities. Modeled off of the civil court fee waiver in Illinois, the CTAA was a critical step toward changing how we think about funding our courts and toward interrupting the debt cycle initiated in court-involvement. The Cook County traffic fee waiver has been running successfully and we are excited that it will now be a permanent feature of the law once SB 108 is signed by the Governor before the July 1 sunset date.
