Historical Apoplexy · State Legislative Adaptations · Illinois
Illinois Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act
A state legislative adaptation of the Historical Apoplexy framework
The Illinois Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act is a state legislative adaptation of Imran Cooper's Historical Apoplexy framework — a five-division proposal establishing at-cost food and commodity distribution centers (modeled on the U.S. Defense Commissary Agency, operational since 1867 under 10 U.S.C. § 2484), a public-health-equity framework grounded in the Marmot/Sapolsky/Shively/Blackburn hierarchy-kills evidence, a K-20 developmental pipeline incorporating the Vitruvian Quotient assessment and structured-adversity protocol from Paper X (the Maturity Void), a structured public-service requirement, and general provisions. Benchmarked to the Colorado proposal originally drafted in 2016 through the Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation. Constitutional path: Legislative path only.
104TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS
2025-2026 Regular Session
HOUSE BILL ____
BY __________ (Introduced by request)
CONCERNING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF STATE PROGRAMS FOR FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE, PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE, AND EDUCATION MODERNIZATION TO ENSURE THE MATERIAL SECURITY, PHYSIOLOGICAL WELL-BEING, AND DEVELOPMENTAL MATURITY OF ALL ILLINOIS RESIDENTS, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, ADDING SECTIONS TO CHAPTERS 20, 105, 110, 305, AND 505 OF THE ILLINOIS COMPILED STATUTES, MAKING APPROPRIATIONS, AND PROVIDING EFFECTIVE DATES.
A BILL FOR AN ACT
LONG TITLE
AN ACT CONCERNING THE CREATION OF THE ILLINOIS FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, ESTABLISHING THE ILLINOIS FOOD ASSURANCE PROGRAM BY ADDING ARTICLE 47 TO CHAPTER 505 OF THE ILLINOIS COMPILED STATUTES; CREATING THE ILLINOIS ESSENTIAL GOODS PROGRAM BY ADDING ARTICLE 3.5 TO CHAPTER 20 OF THE ILLINOIS COMPILED STATUTES; ESTABLISHING THE ILLINOIS PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE FINDINGS BY AMENDING CHAPTER 305 OF THE ILLINOIS COMPILED STATUTES; ENACTING THE ILLINOIS EDUCATION MODERNIZATION ACT BY AMENDING CHAPTER 105 AND ADDING ARTICLE 22 TO CHAPTER 110 OF THE ILLINOIS COMPILED STATUTES; ESTABLISHING THE ILLINOIS PUBLIC SERVICE AND RESOURCE LIBRARY PROGRAM BY ADDING ARTICLE 3.6 TO CHAPTER 20 OF THE ILLINOIS COMPILED STATUTES; MAKING APPROPRIATIONS; AND PROVIDING FOR EFFECTIVE DATES AND IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULES.
LEGISLATIVE ROUTING NOTE
Illinois does not have a citizen ballot initiative process for statutes. The Illinois Constitution, Article XIV, Section 3, provides an extremely limited constitutional amendment initiative restricted to "structural and procedural subjects" of the Legislative Article — one of the most restrictive initiative provisions in the country. Legislative proposals must therefore proceed through the General Assembly.
ENACTING CLAUSE: The Illinois Constitution, Article IV, Section 8, prescribes the enacting clause: "Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly."
INTRODUCTION: This bill may be introduced as a House Bill (HB) by any member of the House of Representatives or as a Senate Bill (SB) by any member of the Senate. Bills may originate in either house and may be amended or rejected by the other.
COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENT: Upon introduction, this bill would likely be assigned to: - House Agriculture & Conservation Committee or Senate Agriculture
Committee (Division I — Food and Commodity Assurance)
- House Human Services Committee or Senate Health and Human Services
Committee (Division II — Public Health and Welfare)
- House Elementary & Secondary Education Committee and House Higher
Education Committee, or Senate Education Committee
(Division III — Education Modernization)
Because the bill spans multiple committees' jurisdictions, it may be assigned to an Appropriations Committee or referred jointly under House or Senate Rules.
FISCAL NOTE: The Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability (CGFA) and the Governor's Office of Management and Budget (GOMB) prepare fiscal impact analyses for all bills with budgetary implications.
FLOOR VOTE: Simple majority in each chamber (60 of 118 Representatives; 30 of 59 Senators). Governor's signature or veto override (three-fifths of each chamber, per Article IV, Section 9).
SESSION: The 104th General Assembly (2025-2026). The Illinois General Assembly convenes on the second Wednesday of January. Regular sessions have no constitutional time limit but traditionally adjourn by May 31.
FISCAL YEAR: Illinois operates on a July 1 through June 30 fiscal year.
HISTORY: A version of this proposal was first developed in 2016 through the Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation (SMRF), the first non-partisan political trade school in the United States, registered with the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Division of Private Occupational Schools (DPOS). The original proposal was sidelined during the 2016-2017 legislative cycle. The present version incorporates updated research from the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026), a ten-paper academic work providing the evidentiary foundation for this legislation.
THE FISCAL CONTEXT — ILLINOIS'S DEFINING POLITICAL WOUND:
Illinois carries approximately $143.5 billion in unfunded pension liabilities across five state retirement systems (CGFA, May 2025): the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS), the State Employees' Retirement System (SERS, $31.0 billion), the State Universities Retirement System (SURS, $28.5 billion), the General Assembly Retirement System (GARS), and the Judges' Retirement System (JRS).
From July 1, 2015, through July 6, 2017 — 736 days — Illinois operated without a fully appropriated budget, the longest budget impasse in United States history (Illinois Comptroller; Harvard Program on Negotiation). During the impasse, Moody's and Standard & Poor's lowered the state's credit rating to one level above junk-bond status — the lowest credit rating on record for any United States state (Illinois Comptroller; Illinois Policy Institute, June 2017).
Every proposal in Illinois faces "how do you pay for it?" as the first and often terminal question. This bill answers it directly: the commissary model COSTS LESS than the current system. The state currently pays the 75.7 percent markup on food through SNAP benefits distributed via commercial retailers ($4.47 billion in federal SNAP funds flowed through Illinois in fiscal year 2024, per FRAC), Medicaid expenditures for diet-related illness, emergency department visits for conditions caused by food insecurity, and lost economic productivity from a food-insecure workforce. The commissary model eliminates the markup. The state does not add a new line item — it replaces an expensive system with a cheaper one. Illinois cannot afford NOT to do this. The state with the worst fiscal crisis in America literally cannot afford to keep paying the 75.7 percent markup on survival.
LEGISLATIVE DECLARATION
Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly:
SECTION 1. Legislative findings and declaration.
(1) The General Assembly hereby finds, determines, and declares
that:
FINDINGS RELATING TO THE STRUCTURAL IMPERATIVE FOR STATE
ACTION:
(a0) Twenty-two federal government shutdowns since 1976,
including a forty-three-day shutdown in 2025. The House frozen
at 435 since 1929; 762,000 constituents per representative —
worst in the OECD. Federal H.R. 1 (2025) shifted SNAP
administrative costs from fifty percent to seventy-five percent
state share. The federal machine is structurally overloaded
(Cooper, Paper VII, 2026). This state has the authority to act
under its own legislative power rather than await federal
action that structural overload prevents;
(a1) DENIAL IS NO LONGER NEUTRAL. Inaction by a legislature
possessing the authority, capacity, and documented need to act
constitutes active harm. The burden rests on denial;
FINDINGS RELATING TO FOOD AND COMMODITY INSECURITY:
(a) According to the United States Department of Agriculture
Economic Research Service, 13.5 percent of United States
households experienced food insecurity in 2023, and 5.1 percent
experienced very low food security. According to the Food
Research and Action Center (FRAC), twelve (12) percent of Illinois
households experience food insecurity. Nearly two (2) million
Illinoisans — more than one in seven residents — received
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in
July 2024 (Illinois Policy Institute, November 2024). In fiscal
year 2024, SNAP brought $4,469,341,818 in federal funds to the
state (FRAC, February 2025);
(b) Illinois is the number one (1) soybean producing state in the
United States, producing fifteen (15) percent of the national
soybean supply, and the number two (2) corn producing state,
producing thirteen (13) percent of the national corn supply.
Cropland comprises seventy-six (76) percent of Illinois land area
(Illinois Farm Bureau). Central and southern Illinois contain some
of the most productive agricultural land on Earth. Food insecurity
in Illinois is a distribution failure, not a production failure;
(c) The United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research
Service Food Dollar Series establishes that the farm share of the
United States food dollar is 24.3 cents, with the remaining 75.7
cents allocated to processing, transportation, wholesale, retail,
and food service markup. Total United States food-at-home spending
is approximately $1.09 trillion; production cost is approximately
$213 to $327 billion. The difference of approximately $496 billion
represents markup above production cost;
(d) The cost to close the food insecurity gap for all 47.9 million
food-insecure Americans is approximately $32 billion, which
represents 6.5 percent of the $496 billion markup between
production cost and retail price (Cooper, "The Mathematics of
Abundance," 2025);
(e) The United States military commissary system, established by
the Military Commissary Act of 1867 and now codified at 10 U.S.C.
Section 2484, has operated at-cost food distribution continuously
for one hundred fifty-seven (157) years through 236 commissary
stores worldwide (U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-22-
104728), delivering savings of 17 to 25 percent below civilian
retail prices in the continental United States — and an average
discount of 23.7 percent (GAO, 2022) — to approximately 2.8
million authorized users. This program is funded by all federal
taxpayers but available only to military families and retirees,
establishing a proven precedent for government-operated at-cost
food distribution;
(f) The geographer Albrecht Penck calculated in 1925 that Earth's
carrying capacity was eight billion people using 1920s agricultural
technology. The current world population is approximately eight
billion. Since agricultural technology has advanced substantially
beyond 1920s capacity, scarcity of food is not a physical
constraint but a distribution and policy constraint (Penck, 1925;
Cohen, "How Many People Can the Earth Support?," 1995);
(g) The United States has approximately 293,000 manufacturing
facilities. Studies indicate that 10,000 to 15,000 facilities
would suffice for universal material abundance, representing 19.5
to 29.3 times overcapacity, with United States manufacturing
currently operating at approximately 77 percent capacity
utilization (Federal Reserve, Cooper, "The Mathematics of
Abundance," 2025);
(h) In 2024 alone, 7,325 retail grocery store locations closed
in the United States (Cooper, "Stolen Futures," 2025), while
54 million Americans live in food deserts. The commercial retail
grocery model is collapsing as a distribution system;
(i) The economist John Kenneth Galbraith described in "The
Affluent Society" (1958) the condition of "private opulence and
public squalor" — the coexistence of enormous private productive
capacity with inadequate public provision of basic needs. This
condition persists in Illinois, where the state's agricultural
and manufacturing output vastly exceeds its population's material
requirements;
(j) The economist Thorstein Veblen documented in "The Engineers
and the Price System" (1921) the deliberate restriction of
production capacity by business interests to maintain prices above
production cost, a practice he termed the "conscious withdrawal
of efficiency." The gap between Illinois's productive capacity
and its residents' material security reflects this structural
dynamic;
FINDINGS SPECIFIC TO THE STATE OF ILLINOIS:
(k) THE COMMODITY EXCHANGE: The CME Group, located at 20 South
Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago, is the world's leading and most
diverse derivatives marketplace (CME Group). Founded in 1898 as
the Chicago Butter and Egg Board, it sets the global price of
corn, soybeans, wheat, cattle, and hogs — the financial
instruments that determine what food costs worldwide are
calculated in a building in downtown Chicago. Nine (9) miles
south, in the Englewood community, residents cannot afford to eat.
Illinois does not merely suffer from the 75.7 percent markup. It
HOSTS the machinery that calculates it. The state where commodity
futures were invented should be the state that decouples food
access from commodity speculation;
(l) Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), headquartered in Chicago with
its North American headquarters and largest employee base of more
than 4,000 workers in Decatur, Illinois, has processed Illinois
soybeans and corn since 1939 (ADM). A corporation that once
branded itself "Supermarket to the World" applies the markup to
Illinois-grown commodities and sells them globally, while Decatur
itself struggles with poverty and food insecurity. The production-
consumption gap is measured within the state, not across borders;
(m) The General Assembly observes that thirty-two (32) Fortune 500
companies maintain headquarters in Illinois as of 2024 (Axios
Chicago, June 2025), including the global institutions that price,
process, and distribute commodities. The wealth generated by
Illinois's agricultural and financial sectors does not flow to the
communities that produce the raw inputs. Downstate Illinois grows
the food. Chicago prices it. Downstate never sees the benefit;
(n) The Whole Foods Market location in Chicago's Englewood
community, opened in 2016 to national attention, closed on
November 13, 2022, after just six (6) years of operation (NBC
Chicago; CBS Chicago). The closure confirmed what Englewood
residents already knew: the commercial retail model will not serve
neighborhoods the market deems unprofitable. Grocery store flight
from Black Chicago is documented and measurable;
(o) Three (3) military commissaries operate in Illinois — at
Naval Station Great Lakes (North Chicago), Scott Air Force Base
(near Belleville), and Rock Island Arsenal — providing at-cost
food to military families while East St. Louis (poverty rate
32.8 percent, DataUSA), Cairo (population 1,426, declining 3.26
percent annually, World Population Review, 2026), and Chicago's
South and West Sides go without. The commissary model operates
successfully within Illinois while the civilian population is
denied its benefits;
FINDINGS RELATING TO HISTORICAL AND BIOLOGICAL PRECEDENT:
(o1) Augustus Caesar formalized the annona civica — monthly grain
distribution to approximately 200,000 Roman citizens — as civic
infrastructure. Augustus was a documented tyrant: Suetonius
records him ordering a Roman knight stabbed on the spot for the
offense of taking notes at a public assembly. Even he understood
that hungry citizens are broken infrastructure. The annona
operated for over 400 years. Emperor Nerva expanded it with the
alimenta — child nutrition funded by government loans to farmers
— recorded on the Tabula Alimentaria from Veleia (CIL XI 1147),
a bronze inscription that still exists and can be visited. At
Mabu Co, Tibet, sedentary abundance was sustained 4,400 years
ago at 4,446 metres elevation with fishing hooks (Nature Ecology
& Evolution, 2024). The Azolla Event, 49 million years ago,
demonstrated that a single fern species replicating on freshwater
sequestered enough atmospheric CO2 to shift Earth's climate from
hothouse to icehouse over 800,000 years (Brinkhuis et al., Nature
441, 2006). Three independent records establish that feeding
populations is infrastructure, not charity: the commissary at
157 years, the annona at 400+ years, and biology across geologic
time;
(o2) This act is not government ownership of the means of
production. Division I contracts with private producers at
production cost plus five percent surcharge. Farms stay private.
Trucks stay private. Processing stays private. Currency survives
for luxury, custom, and specialty goods. The Defense Commissary
Agency has operated this model since 1867 without acquiring a
single farm. The bill provides a floor. It does not replace the
market;
(o3) The retail collapse and autonomous freight are already
eliminating distribution jobs. Aurora Innovation operates driverless
freight on the Dallas-Houston corridor today. Over 15,000 retail
store closures are projected for 2025. The bill does not cause this
displacement. The bill catches displaced workers: Division I feeds
them, Division II covers their health, Division III provides a
developmental pipeline. At-cost distribution eliminates the markup,
not the labor — the commissary has truckers;
FINDINGS RELATING TO PUBLIC HEALTH AND HIERARCHY:
(p) Sir Michael Marmot's Whitehall Studies, commencing in 1967
and continuing to the present with 10,308 subjects, established
that among British civil servants with universal healthcare, full
employment, and no absolute poverty, the lowest employment grade
experienced three times the mortality rate of the highest grade.
Standard risk factors — smoking, cholesterol, blood pressure —
explained less than forty percent of the mortality gradient. The
hierarchy itself, independent of absolute material deprivation,
produces lethal health outcomes;
(q) Dr. Robert Sapolsky's thirty-year study of wild baboon
populations in the Serengeti demonstrated that subordinate social
position produces chronically elevated cortisol, atherosclerosis,
immune suppression, and cognitive impairment. When a tuberculosis
outbreak eliminated the most aggressive males from a troop,
hierarchy collapsed, and subordinates' cortisol levels normalized,
demonstrating that the health damage was caused by the hierarchy,
not by inherent individual biology (Sapolsky, "Why Zebras Don't
Get Ulcers," 1994; "Behave," 2017);
(r) Dr. Carol Shively's thirty-year study of female macaques at
Wake Forest University demonstrated that subordinate social status
directly causes visceral fat accumulation, atherosclerosis, and
coronary artery disease, with cingulate cortex serotonin
identified as the neurological nexus linking depression to
cardiovascular disease (Shively, 2009; 2014);
(s) Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine, demonstrated that chronic psychological
stress shortens telomeres — the protective caps on chromosomal
DNA — accelerating cellular aging. Caregivers of chronically ill
children had measurably shorter telomeres proportional to years of
stress. Poverty and subordination age human beings at the
molecular level (Blackburn & Epel, "The Telomere Effect," 2017);
(t) These findings collectively establish that poverty and social
hierarchy are not merely economic conditions but medical conditions
with documented physiological pathways that produce measurable
morbidity and mortality. Food and commodity assurance programs
therefore constitute public health interventions with quantifiable
healthcare cost reduction potential;
FINDINGS SPECIFIC TO ILLINOIS PUBLIC HEALTH:
(u) THE NINE-MILE GRADIENT: Chicago has the largest life
expectancy gap of any major city in the United States. Residents
of the Streeterville neighborhood live to an average age of ninety
(90) years. Nine (9) miles south, residents of the Englewood
neighborhood live to an average age of sixty (60) years — a
thirty-year gap within the same city (NYU School of Medicine,
2019; Chicago Tribune, June 6, 2019; WTTW, June 6, 2019). This
is the most concentrated Marmot gradient in America. The hierarchy
kills in city blocks, not counties. The gradient is walkable;
(v) East St. Louis, Illinois, directly across the Mississippi
River from St. Louis, Missouri, once a major railroad hub and
industrial center, has a poverty rate of 32.8 percent — nearly
three (3) times the national average of 12.4 percent (DataUSA).
East St. Louis is what happens when the hierarchy completely
abandons a community — total withdrawal of investment, services,
and opportunity. It is the terminal endpoint of the Marmot
gradient;
(w) Cairo, Illinois (pronounced KAY-ro), at the confluence of the
Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, once a thriving river city of more
than 15,000 people, has collapsed to a population of 1,426 —
declining at 3.26 percent annually (World Population Review,
2026). Cairo is the physical manifestation of complete economic
abandonment within the borders of a state that hosts thirty-two
Fortune 500 headquarters;
(x) Deindustrialization has devastated the health of downstate
Illinois communities. Rockford, Decatur, Peoria, the Illinois
Valley, and East St. Louis suffered massive factory closures —
US Steel South Works (closed 1992), the Union Stock Yards
(closed 1971), Caterpillar (headquarters relocated from Peoria
to Deerfield, Illinois in 2017, then abandoned Illinois entirely
for Irving, Texas in June 2022) — producing
the same cortisol cascade documented by Sapolsky: job loss to
status loss to chronic stress to substance abuse, cardiovascular
disease, depression, and suicide. Cook County confirmed 1,026
opioid overdose deaths in 2024, with 87 percent involving
fentanyl (Cook County Medical Examiner, January 2025);
(y) RACIAL HEALTH DISPARITIES: Illinois is one of the most
racially segregated states in America. Chicago is frequently
cited as the most segregated major city in the nation. During
the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Chicagoans — twenty-nine (29)
percent of the city's population — accounted for more than
seventy (70) percent of early COVID-19 deaths as of April 2020
(CBS Chicago, April 6, 2020) and forty-two (42) percent of
cumulative deaths over the full pandemic (Chicago Crusader,
March 2025). The pandemic was a natural experiment in Marmot's
thesis: hierarchy determined who was exposed, who had healthcare
access, and who died;
(z) WATER AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: University Park, Illinois,
has been under a "Do Not Consume" advisory for lead contamination
in drinking water since Aqua Illinois switched its water source
in 2017. As of 2025, residents continue to rely on bottled water
and certified lead-removal filters (U.S. EPA; Illinois EPA; ABC7
Chicago, June 2023). The same infrastructure failure and
environmental injustice documented in Flint, Michigan, occurs
within Illinois — hierarchy determines who drinks clean water;
FINDINGS RELATING TO EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:
(aa) Neuroscientific research establishes that the human prefrontal
cortex — responsible for judgment, impulse control, long-term
planning, and executive function — does not fully mature until
approximately age twenty-five (25). The current compulsory
education system in Illinois, which requires attendance through
age seventeen (17) under 105 ILCS 5/26-1, terminates structured
developmental support during seven (7) to eight (8) years of
critical neurological maturation;
(bb) Erik Erikson's model of psychosocial development (1959)
identifies eight stages of human development, each requiring the
resolution of a core developmental crisis. The stages from birth
through age twenty-five encompass Trust vs. Mistrust (ages 0-1),
Autonomy vs. Shame (ages 1-3), Initiative vs. Guilt (ages 3-6),
Industry vs. Inferiority (ages 6-12), Identity vs. Role Confusion
(ages 12-18), and Intimacy vs. Isolation (ages 18-25). Failure to
provide structured developmental support through these stages
results in incomplete psychosocial maturation;
(cc) Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (1934) establishes
that learning occurs in the gap between what an individual can
accomplish independently and what the individual can accomplish
with structured guidance. This theoretical framework requires
calibrated challenge — neither too easy nor too difficult — as the
mechanism of cognitive growth, and provides the scientific basis
for structured learning trials as an assessment methodology;
(dd) Robert Bjork's research on "desirable difficulties" (1994)
demonstrates that learning conditions that feel harder produce
superior retention and transfer of knowledge. Struggle is not a
side effect of learning but its mechanism, establishing the
scientific basis for structured challenge as a core pedagogical
method rather than passive attendance;
(ee) Suniya Luthar's research on the culture of affluence (2003,
National Institutes of Health PMC1950124) demonstrates that
affluent children exhibit elevated rates of substance abuse,
anxiety, and depression compared to inner-city peers. The
mechanism is achievement pressure without genuine challenge,
isolation from consequence, and absence of meaningful struggle.
Material abundance without developmental infrastructure produces
pathology. Education reform is therefore a prerequisite — not a
supplement — to the food and commodity assurance programs
established in this act;
(ff) Arnold van Gennep (1909) and Victor Turner (1969) documented
that virtually every human society creates structured ordeals for
adolescents — physical trials, endurance tests, isolation periods,
community service — as developmental infrastructure. Societies
that abandoned these structures did not produce freer human
beings; they produced developmentally incomplete ones;
(gg) Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis demonstrated in "Schooling in
Capitalist America" (1976) that the education system reproduces
class structure. However, the appropriate diagnostic framework,
described in the Historical Apoplexy literature as the "targeting
error" (Cooper, Paper V, 2025), recognizes that teachers are not
responsible for society-wide stratification. The ocean is
stratified; the cup is not. Education reform must address the
structural conditions of the system, not blame individual
educators;
(hh) Philip Jackson's "Life in Classrooms" (1968) identified the
"hidden curriculum" — crowds, evaluation, and power asymmetry —
as inherent features of institutional education at scale. Ivan
Illich's "Deschooling Society" (1971) critiqued the institutional
form of education. E.D. Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy" (1987)
established that core knowledge must reside in the individual's
own mind, not merely be accessible through external references,
as the prerequisite for democratic participation. Benjamin
Bloom's "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" (1956) establishes
a sequential hierarchy of cognitive development — Knowledge,
Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation —
that must be honored in sequence. The K-20 pipeline structures
its five stages to traverse Bloom's full taxonomy, ensuring
students are not assessed at levels of cognition they have not
yet been prepared to reach;
(ii) PIAAC 2023 (OECD, December 2024): 28% of US adults at
the lowest literacy level (up from 19% in 2017). 34% lowest
numeracy. 32% lowest problem-solving. Declining in 19 of 26
OECD countries. Compound-competency: ~1 in 6,700 American
adults meet a basic standard (2 sports, 2 languages, 12th-grade
subjects, 2 instruments) the German Gymnasium certifies as
ordinary;
ADAM SMITH AND WHOLE-HUMAN EDUCATION. Smith
wrote in Wealth of Nations Book V Ch I Pt III Art II:
"The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few
simple operations... generally becomes as stupid and
ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to
become."
His remedy: compulsory state-funded education. Smith was a
polymath (Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759, seventeen years
before Wealth of Nations). To cite Smith for markets while
opposing what Smith demanded is to invoke an authority one
has not read;
(jj) The Vitruvian Quotient framework (Cooper, 2025-2026) models
human intelligence as eight measurable domains mapped to
neurological substrates: Knowledge Quotient (KQ, temporal and
parietal cortices), Reasoning Quotient (RQ, prefrontal and
parietal cortices), Emotional Quotient (EQ, limbic system and
amygdala), Language Quotient (LQ, Broca's and Wernicke's areas),
Creative Quotient (CQ, default mode network), Social Quotient (SQ,
mirror neuron system and temporoparietal junction), Motor Quotient
(MQ, motor cortex and cerebellum), and Biological Quotient (BQ,
autonomic and hormonal regulation). VQ = KQ + RQ + EQ + LQ + CQ +
SQ + MQ + BQ. A twenty-five-year curriculum calibrated to develop
all eight quotients to full human maturity, scored without ceiling
via a compensatory framework where strength in one domain offsets
deficit in another, provides the scientific foundation for the
education modernization program established in this act;
(ii1) The Meyerhoff Scholars Program at the University of Maryland,
Baltimore County (UMBC), founded by Freeman Hrabowski in 1988, has
produced over 1,400 alumni with approximately five times the STEM
PhD pursuit rate of matched comparison students. This is Division
III at one program's scale — a 38-year operational proof that
structured developmental infrastructure produces measurable results
at a public university. This act scales the demonstrated mechanism
statewide;
FINDINGS SPECIFIC TO ILLINOIS EDUCATION:
(kk) THE CHICAGO SCHOOL REBUTTAL: The University of Chicago's
economics department built the intellectual framework for market
supremacy — Milton Friedman's monetarism, George Stigler's
regulatory capture theory, Gary Becker's human capital theory.
This bill uses Chicago's own intellectual tradition — empirical
rigor, data-driven policy analysis, institutional economics — to
demonstrate that the market fails to develop humans. Becker's
"human capital" reduces people to economic inputs. The Vitruvian
Quotient's eight domains develop the full human. This legislation
is written in the language Chicago invented, applied to the
problem Chicago ignored. The irony is not lost on the General
Assembly that the intellectual tradition which argued markets
optimize human welfare was developed in a city where the market
abandoned half its residents;
(ll) THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS CRISIS: In 2013, Chicago Public
Schools closed fifty (50) public schools in a single year under
then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel — the largest mass school closure in
American history (NPR, June 2023; Block Club Chicago, August
2023). The promise was that students would go to better schools
and the district would save money. Ten years later, the affected
communities remain devastated. The 2012 Chicago Teachers Union
strike (seven days, September 2012) and the 2019 strike were
about more than wages — they were about school conditions, class
sizes, support staff, the gutting of public education in Black
and Brown neighborhoods (New Labor Forum, August 2022). The
teachers understood Division III before it was written;
(mm) UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS SYSTEM: The state's higher education
infrastructure includes the University of Illinois system — UIUC
(Urbana-Champaign, flagship land-grant institution, consistently
ranked among the top five nationally in engineering and computer
science), UIC (Chicago, the largest university in the Chicago
metropolitan area), and UIS (Springfield). Additionally, Illinois
has twelve (12) public universities, including Illinois State
University (Normal), Northern Illinois University (DeKalb),
Southern Illinois University (Carbondale and Edwardsville),
Western Illinois University (Macomb), and Eastern Illinois
University (Charleston). The Illinois Community College Board
oversees forty-eight (48) community colleges statewide, and the
City Colleges of Chicago operate seven (7) colleges serving the
Chicago metropolitan area. Illinois has MASSIVE higher education
infrastructure — more than almost any state. The K-20 pipeline
does not require building new institutions. It requires connecting
existing ones into a continuous developmental arc. The
infrastructure exists. The pipeline does not;
(nn) LINCOLN'S MORAL FRAMEWORK: Abraham Lincoln represented
Illinois. He launched his political career from Springfield. The
Lincoln-Douglas debates unfolded across Illinois in 1858. Lincoln
argued the nation could not endure half slave and half free.
Cooper argues Illinois cannot endure half abundant and half
starving. Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-Grant College Act of
1862, which created the land-grant university system — the
original public education infrastructure investment. The
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign exists because Lincoln
believed public higher education was a federal obligation.
Division III extends Lincoln's logic: if public education through
university was necessary in 1862, public education through the
full K-20 developmental arc is necessary in 2026. Lincoln built
the system. Division III completes it;
(oo) THE UNIVERSE 25 REBUTTAL: The General Assembly finds that
material provision without social, educational, and developmental
infrastructure does not constitute abundance for a social species.
John B. Calhoun's Universe 25 experiment (1968-1973) is frequently
cited as proof that abundance leads to societal collapse. The
General Assembly rejects this interpretation on the following
evidentiary grounds:
(I) Universe 25 provided exactly four things: food, water,
nesting material, and physical space. It provided no social
architecture, no education, no healthcare, no conflict
resolution, no intergenerational knowledge transfer, and no
governance. The mice never had abundance. They had inventory.
Abundance for humans includes education, healthcare, social
roles, conflict resolution, intergenerational knowledge
transfer, governance, and every tool the species has built
since the first sharpened rock;
(II) Humans are not mice. Homo sapiens co-evolved with
technology. A human infant with unlimited food but no social
contact does not thrive — it dies or develops permanent
cognitive damage, as documented in isolation studies, cases of
feral children, and survivors of extreme confinement. Even the
earliest human societies possessed fire, tools, clothing,
language, and tribal structure. Strip these away and the
organism is not "natural" — it is broken;
(III) The United States military commissary system has operated
for 157 years with no "behavioral sink" — because it pairs
material provision with the full social infrastructure:
healthcare, education, housing, family support, chaplains,
mental health services, peer groups, rank-based social
structure with clear roles, and retirement systems. The
military is Universe 25 with institutional infrastructure.
And it works;
(IV) Calhoun himself identified in his later work that the
collapse was caused by the breakdown of social roles, not by
material provision. He termed it the "behavioral sink." The
social structure failed because it was never designed;
(V) Luthar (2003, 2005) is the human version of Universe 25:
children given material abundance without developmental
structure show higher rates of substance abuse, anxiety, and
disconnection than children of poverty. This is precisely why
Division III — Education Modernization — is non-negotiable.
The K-20 pipeline IS the institutional infrastructure that
Calhoun's experiment lacked;
(VI) The affluent suburbs north of Chicago — Winnetka,
Wilmette, Lake Forest, Highland Park — are precisely the
communities Luthar studied. Children of extreme privilege
showing higher rates of substance abuse, anxiety, and
disconnection than children of poverty. This is Universe 25
in the North Shore: material abundance without developmental
structure produces pathology. Division III serves everyone —
not just the poor. The affluent need the developmental
pipeline too. Luthar proved it. Illinois has the proof
communities on both ends of the spectrum;
(VII) The experiment does not prove abundance fails. It proves
that reducing a complex social species to its caloric inputs
and calling it paradise is bad science. Illinois — home to the
University of Chicago, where modern social science was built —
should recognize bad experimental design when it sees it;
(pp) DOWNSTATE EDUCATIONAL ACCESS: Southern Illinois University
(Carbondale) serves a region with some of the poorest counties
in the state. Rural school districts are consolidating, teachers
are leaving, and distance to educational opportunity is growing.
The community college infrastructure — forty-eight colleges
statewide — provides the bridge between rural communities and the
K-20 pipeline. The pipeline is not exclusively academic: it
includes practical skills development, including the Vitruvian
Quotient's BQ — Body Quotient — encompassing physical competence,
trade skills, and kinesthetic intelligence. Caterpillar
technicians, precision machinists, healthcare workers, and
agricultural technologists are all developed through the same
pipeline, measured by the same VQ framework, and valued equally.
This counters the "not everyone needs college" objection: K-20 is
not college. It is development. And development includes hands-on
skill;
(qq) The Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation (SMRF), the first
non-partisan political trade school in the United States,
registered with the Colorado Department of Higher Education,
Division of Private Occupational Schools (DPOS), developed the
original version of this proposal for the State of Colorado in
2016. SMRF was founded by Imran Cooper with the express purpose
of training citizens in legislative drafting, policy analysis, and
democratic participation. The present legislation represents the
Illinois adaptation of that proposal, incorporating research
from the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026).
(2) The General Assembly further finds that the programs
established in this act — food and commodity assurance, public
health intervention, and education modernization — are
interdependent components of a single policy framework. Material
abundance without developmental infrastructure produces the
affluence pathology documented by Luthar. Education without
material security cannot function because students cannot learn
while food-insecure. And neither program can achieve its purpose
without addressing the physiological damage that hierarchy and
poverty inflict on the human body. These three divisions must be
enacted together, and each is necessary for the others to succeed.
This division is the largest because without education reform, the food assurance program becomes Universe 25: inventory without development. Without Division III, Divisions I and II fail by design. This is the non-negotiable gate.
Without education reform, you get Luthar's affluent pathology: abundance producing anxiety rather than flourishing. The K-20 pipeline is the difference between inventory and actual human abundance.
DIVISION I — ILLINOIS FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT
SECTION 2. Chapter 505 of the Illinois Compiled Statutes is amended by adding Article 47 to read as follows:
ARTICLE 47 Illinois Food Assurance Program
505 ILCS 47/1. Short title.
This Article shall be known and may be cited as the "Illinois Food
Assurance Act."
505 ILCS 47/5. Definitions.
As used in this Article, unless the context otherwise requires:
(1) "At-cost pricing" means the price of a food product calculated
as the sum of the direct production cost paid to the producer or
supplier plus a facility surcharge not to exceed five percent (5%)
of the production cost, with no additional profit margin, markup,
or marketing cost applied.
(2) "Department" means the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
(3) "Director" means the Director of Agriculture.
(4) "Food assurance center" means a state-operated facility
established under this Article for the purpose of distributing
food products to Illinois residents at at-cost pricing.
(5) "Facility surcharge" means a charge not to exceed five percent
(5%) of the production cost of a food product, applied to cover
the operational costs of a food assurance center, including but
not limited to facility maintenance, labor, utilities, and
transportation.
(6) "Production cost" means the cost of producing a food product
as determined by the Department based on wholesale acquisition
price from producers, cooperatives, or the most proximate point
in the supply chain to the point of original production.
(7) "Resource library" means the distribution system established
under Division IV of this act in which goods are distributed
according to need and tiered by permanence.
505 ILCS 47/10. Illinois food assurance program — creation — purpose.
(1) There is hereby created in the Department of Agriculture the
Illinois food assurance program.
(2) The purpose of the program is to establish state-operated food
distribution centers where all Illinois residents may purchase the
full range of grocery products at at-cost pricing, modeled on the
United States military commissary system as authorized by 10
U.S.C. Section 2484 and as operated by the Defense Commissary
Agency (DeCA) continuously since 1867.
(3) The program shall:
(a) Establish and operate food assurance centers throughout
the State of Illinois;
(b) Purchase food products directly from Illinois producers,
cooperatives, and wholesale suppliers at or near production
cost;
(c) Sell food products to Illinois residents at at-cost
pricing as defined in Section 505 ILCS 47/5;
(d) Prioritize procurement from Illinois farms and ranches
to the maximum extent practicable;
(e) Accept all forms of payment including but not limited to
cash, electronic benefit transfer (EBT), Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and Women,
Infants, and Children (WIC) vouchers;
(f) Operate without profit motive, with all revenue above
operational costs reinvested in program expansion.
505 ILCS 47/15. Pilot food assurance centers — locations — timeline.
(1) Within two (2) years of the effective date of this Article, the
Department shall establish not fewer than eight (8) pilot food
assurance centers in the following regions:
(a) Three (3) centers in the Chicago metropolitan area,
including at least one (1) center in a community designated
as a food desert on Chicago's South Side and at least one (1)
center on Chicago's West Side;
(b) One (1) center in the East St. Louis metropolitan area;
(c) One (1) center in the Peoria metropolitan area;
(d) One (1) center in the Rockford metropolitan area;
(e) One (1) center in the Springfield metropolitan area;
(f) One (1) center in the Southern Illinois region, including
but not limited to the Carbondale-Marion corridor.
(2) Within five (5) years of the effective date of this Article,
the Department shall expand the program to not fewer than
thirty-five (35) food assurance centers statewide, with at least
one center in each congressional district and at least five (5)
centers serving rural communities as defined by the Department.
(3) The Department shall prioritize locations with the highest
rates of food insecurity, the greatest distances to existing
grocery retail, and the largest populations residing in food
deserts. The Department shall specifically consider the grocery
access needs of communities that have experienced recent grocery
store closures, including but not limited to neighborhoods
affected by the closure of Whole Foods in Englewood (November
2022) and similar commercial withdrawals.
505 ILCS 47/20. Illinois food assurance fund — creation.
(1) There is hereby created in the State Treasury the Illinois
food assurance fund.
(2) The fund shall consist of:
(a) Appropriations made by the General Assembly;
(b) Revenue generated by the facility surcharge;
(c) Federal grants and matching funds;
(d) Gifts, donations, and bequests received by the Department
for purposes of this Article;
(e) Any other moneys as may be provided by law.
(3) All moneys in the fund shall be used exclusively for the
purposes of this Article.
505 ILCS 47/25. Pricing transparency — annual audit.
(1) The Department shall publish on its official website on a
quarterly basis a report listing:
(a) The production cost of each product category offered at
food assurance centers;
(b) The corresponding retail price of equivalent products at
commercial grocery retailers, based on USDA price surveys;
(c) The savings realized by consumers at food assurance
centers expressed as a percentage below retail;
(d) The total volume of food distributed and the number of
Illinois residents served.
(2) The Auditor General shall conduct an annual performance audit
of the food assurance program to verify that pricing complies
with the at-cost requirement of this Article.
505 ILCS 47/30. Existing food assistance programs — coordination.
(1) Nothing in this Article shall be construed to reduce, replace,
or diminish any existing food assistance program, including but
not limited to SNAP, WIC, the Emergency Food Assistance Program
(TEFAP), the National School Lunch Program, or the School
Breakfast Program.
(2) The Department shall coordinate with the Illinois Department of
Human Services to ensure that food assurance centers accept all
forms of public food assistance benefits and that participation in
the food assurance program does not affect eligibility for any
other state or federal benefit program.
DIVISION II — ILLINOIS PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE ACT
SECTION 3. Chapter 305 of the Illinois Compiled Statutes is amended to add the following findings and program provisions:
ARTICLE 1 Illinois Hierarchy and Health Equity Findings
305 ILCS 5/1-20. Findings relating to hierarchy and health.
(1) The General Assembly finds that the evidence cited in Section 1
of this act establishes that poverty and social hierarchy are
medical conditions, not merely economic conditions. The General
Assembly further finds that:
(a) THE NINE-MILE GRADIENT: Chicago's Streeterville-to-
Englewood life expectancy gap of thirty (30) years across nine
(9) miles is the largest such gap of any major city in the
United States (NYU School of Medicine, 2019). This is Marmot's
gradient measured in city blocks. The hierarchy is walkable;
(b) EAST ST. LOUIS: With a poverty rate of 32.8 percent
(World Population Review, 2026) and a population that has
collapsed from industrial-era levels, East St. Louis
represents the terminal endpoint of the Marmot gradient —
total withdrawal of investment, services, and opportunity.
East St. Louis is located directly across the Mississippi
River from the St. Louis metropolitan area — a city whose
residents rally fiercely for their local grocery brands
(Schnucks, Dierbergs, Straub's) and historically resisted
corporate consolidation of their food retail — yet East
St. Louis on the Illinois side functions as if it exists
in a different country. The market serves one bank of the
river and abandons the other;
(c) CAIRO: At the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers, Cairo's population has collapsed from more than 15,000
to 1,426. The physical infrastructure of a once-thriving river
city stands abandoned. Cairo is the physical manifestation of
what the hierarchy does when it fully withdraws;
(d) DEINDUSTRIALIZATION AND HEALTH: The closure of US Steel
South Works (1992), the Union Stock Yards (1971), and the
relocation of Caterpillar's headquarters from Peoria to
Deerfield (2017) and then out of Illinois entirely to Irving,
Texas (2022) produced community-wide cortisol cascades: job
loss to
status loss to chronic stress to substance abuse,
cardiovascular disease, depression, and suicide. The opioid
crisis in downstate Illinois is Sapolsky's cortisol cascade
manifested as self-medication;
(e) COVID-19 AS NATURAL EXPERIMENT: During the COVID-19
pandemic, Black Chicagoans — twenty-nine percent of the
population — accounted for more than seventy percent of early
COVID-19 deaths (CBS Chicago, April 2020) and forty-two
percent of cumulative deaths over the full pandemic (Chicago
Crusader, March 2025). The pandemic did not create health
disparities. It exposed the Marmot gradient that had been
operating for decades. Hierarchy determined exposure,
healthcare access, and survival;
(f) ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE: The ongoing lead contamination
crisis in University Park, Illinois, where residents have
relied on bottled water since 2017, demonstrates that the
hierarchy determines environmental exposure. The same pattern
documented in Flint, Michigan, operates in Illinois;
(g) RACIAL SEGREGATION AS HEALTH DETERMINANT: Illinois is
one of the most racially segregated states in the nation.
Chicago is frequently cited as the most segregated major city.
Segregation is not merely a housing pattern but a health
determinant — it concentrates the Marmot gradient geographically,
producing food deserts, healthcare deserts, and environmental
exposure zones in the same communities.
(2) The General Assembly declares that the programs established in
this act — food assurance, commodity assurance, and education
modernization — are public health interventions designed to
flatten the Marmot gradient within Illinois by providing universal
access to material resources, developmental infrastructure, and
environmental protections regardless of zip code, race, or
socioeconomic position.
305 ILCS 5/1-21. Hierarchy health impact assessment.
(1) The Illinois Department of Public Health shall, within one (1)
year of the effective date of this act, develop and publish a
Hierarchy Health Impact Assessment for the State of Illinois,
documenting:
(a) Life expectancy by zip code, county, and census tract;
(b) Mortality rates by employment grade, income quintile,
and educational attainment;
(c) Chronic disease prevalence correlated with socioeconomic
position;
(d) Healthcare utilization and cost differentials across the
socioeconomic gradient;
(e) Environmental exposure differentials by community,
including but not limited to lead, air quality, and proximity
to industrial pollution.
(2) The Assessment shall be updated biennially and submitted to
the General Assembly.
(3) The Assessment shall specifically document the health impact
of the Streeterville-Englewood gradient, the East St. Louis
health profile, and the health consequences of deindustrialization
in Rockford, Decatur, Peoria, and the Illinois Valley.
DIVISION III — ILLINOIS EDUCATION MODERNIZATION ACT
This division is the largest because without education reform, the food assurance program becomes Universe 25: inventory without development. Without Division III, Divisions I and II fail by design. This is the non-negotiable gate.
SECTION 4. Chapter 105 of the Illinois Compiled Statutes is amended, and Chapter 110 is amended by adding Article 22, to read as follows:
ARTICLE 1 K-20 Education Pipeline
105 ILCS 5/27-30. K-20 continuous developmental pipeline — creation.
(1) There is hereby created the Illinois K-20 Continuous
Developmental Pipeline, a structured educational program extending
from kindergarten (Grade 0) through approximately twenty (20)
grade levels, with typical completion at approximately age
twenty-five (25).
(2) The pipeline shall be organized into five developmental stages
aligned with neurological maturation, psychosocial development
(Erikson, 1959), and the eight domains of the Vitruvian Quotient
(Cooper, 2025-2026):
STAGE ONE: FOUNDATION (Grades K-5, approximately ages 5-11)
(a) Developmental focus: Trust, Autonomy, Initiative, and the
early development of Industry (Erikson Stages 1-4);
(b) Quotient emphasis: KQ (knowledge acquisition), LQ (language
and communication), SQ (social awareness and cooperation), and
MQ (motor development and physical coordination);
(c) Pedagogical method: Structured learning through play,
cooperative tasks, physical activity, early literacy and numeracy,
environmental exploration, and the hidden curriculum goods
identified by Jackson (1968) — sharing, patience, turn-taking,
conflict resolution;
(d) Assessment: Portfolio-based developmental assessment measuring
growth across all eight VQ domains. No standardized ranking. No
competitive grading. The measure is development, not comparison;
(e) The Analogue Knowledge Base (Hirsch, 1987): Core cultural
knowledge must reside in the student's own mind, not merely be
accessible via external reference. The Foundation stage establishes
the canonical knowledge base — history, science, literature,
mathematics, geography, civics — as shared vocabulary for
democratic participation.
STAGE TWO: DEVELOPMENT (Grades 6-8, approximately ages 11-14)
(a) Developmental focus: Industry vs. Inferiority and the
transition to Identity (Erikson Stages 4-5);
(b) Quotient emphasis: RQ (reasoning and logical analysis), CQ
(creative problem-solving), EQ (emotional self-regulation), and
expanded KQ (domain knowledge deepening);
(c) Pedagogical method: Introduction of structured challenge
(Bjork, "desirable difficulties"), project-based learning,
collaborative problem-solving, early exposure to vocational and
technical skills, physical fitness and body competence (BQ);
(d) Structured ordeals (van Gennep, 1909; Turner, 1969):
Community service projects, physical endurance activities, group
challenges that require cooperation under difficulty. These are
not punitive. They are developmental infrastructure — the rites
of passage that every human society has created and that modern
education has abandoned;
(e) Assessment: Growth-based measurement across all eight VQ
domains via structured learning trials (Vygotsky, ZPD). Students
assessed at the boundary of their current capability, not on
material they already know.
STAGE THREE: EXPLORATION (Grades 9-12, approximately ages 14-18)
(a) Developmental focus: Identity vs. Role Confusion (Erikson
Stage 5);
(b) Quotient emphasis: Full VQ profile development with increasing
student-directed specialization;
(c) Pedagogical method: Career exploration aligned with Holland's
RIASEC model (1997), advanced academic coursework, technical and
vocational training pathways (welding, machining, healthcare,
information technology, agriculture, construction), creative arts,
athletic development, and structured community engagement;
(d) The pipeline explicitly rejects the false binary between
"college track" and "vocational track." All students develop all
eight VQ domains. Specialization occurs within a framework of
comprehensive human development. A student who excels in BQ
(precision machining, athletic performance, agricultural
technology) is measured by the same VQ framework as a student
who excels in RQ (mathematics, engineering, scientific research).
Both are fully developed humans. The hierarchy that ranks
intellectual labor above physical labor is itself a Marmot
gradient;
(e) Assessment: VQ profile with compensatory scoring — strength
in one domain offsets relative deficit in another. No single
domain defines the student. No ceiling on any domain score.
STAGE FOUR: SPECIALIZATION (Grades 13-16, approximately ages 18-22)
(a) Developmental focus: Intimacy vs. Isolation (Erikson Stage 6)
and the beginning of Generativity;
(b) This stage corresponds to what is currently called
"undergraduate education" but is reconceived as the continuation
of the developmental pipeline, not a separate system;
(c) Quotient emphasis: Deep specialization in student-selected
domains while maintaining minimum competency across all eight VQ
domains;
(d) Delivery: Through the existing Illinois higher education
infrastructure — the University of Illinois system (UIUC, UIC,
UIS), twelve public universities, forty-eight community colleges,
City Colleges of Chicago, and approved private institutions. The
pipeline does not require building new institutions. It requires
connecting existing ones;
(e) Tuition: Covered by the state for all Illinois residents
enrolled in the K-20 pipeline at any public Illinois institution,
funded through the Illinois Education Modernization Fund
established in this act;
(f) Assessment: Continued VQ profile development with increasing
domain-specific depth.
STAGE FIVE: INTEGRATION (Grades 17-20, approximately ages 22-25)
(a) Developmental focus: Generativity vs. Stagnation (Erikson
Stage 7 — early onset);
(b) This stage encompasses what is currently fragmented across
graduate education, professional certification, apprenticeship,
and early career — reconceived as structured developmental
integration;
(c) Modalities: Graduate study, professional training,
apprenticeship, structured mentorship, community leadership
development, entrepreneurship incubation, advanced technical
certification, research participation;
(d) Public service component: Two (2) to four (4) years of
structured public service following pipeline completion, serving
as the transition from developmental recipient to developmental
contributor. Service areas include but are not limited to
education (teaching in the K-20 pipeline), healthcare, community
development, environmental stewardship, infrastructure
maintenance, emergency services, and agricultural support;
(e) Resource library access: Upon completion of the K-20 pipeline
and public service component, graduates access the full three-
tiered resource library system established under Division IV of
this act:
(I) Tier 1 — Consumable goods: Food, personal care items,
household supplies. Distributed at cost through food
assurance centers;
(II) Tier 2 — Durable goods: Furniture, appliances,
electronics, tools. Distributed through the resource library
on a checked-out basis with return/replacement cycle;
(III) Tier 3 — Housing and vehicles: Long-term allocation
based on need, family size, and geographic requirements.
Maintained by the state and allocated through the resource
library system.
105 ILCS 5/27-31. Illinois Education Modernization Fund — creation.
(1) There is hereby created in the State Treasury the Illinois
Education Modernization Fund.
(2) The fund shall consist of:
(a) Appropriations made by the General Assembly;
(b) Federal education grants and matching funds;
(c) Revenue redirected from existing educational funding
streams as determined by the General Assembly;
(d) Savings realized from the reduction in healthcare costs,
criminal justice costs, and social services costs attributable
to the programs established in this act, as quantified by the
Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability;
(e) Gifts, donations, and bequests;
(f) Any other moneys as may be provided by law.
(3) The fund shall be administered by the Illinois State Board of
Education in coordination with the Illinois Board of Higher
Education and the Illinois Community College Board.
110 ILCS 22/1. K-20 pipeline — higher education integration.
(1) The Illinois Board of Higher Education, in coordination with
the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Community
College Board, shall within two (2) years of the effective date
of this act develop and implement:
(a) Seamless transfer pathways between all stages of the K-20
pipeline, building on the Illinois Articulation Initiative
(IAI) and existing transfer agreements;
(b) A unified VQ assessment framework recognized across all
public Illinois institutions of higher education;
(c) Tuition coverage for all Illinois residents enrolled in
Stages 4 and 5 of the K-20 pipeline at public institutions,
replacing the current patchwork of financial aid, loans, and
out-of-pocket payment;
(d) Vocational and technical certification pathways fully
integrated into the K-20 pipeline, with VQ-equivalent credit
for apprenticeship, technical training, and demonstrated
competency.
110 ILCS 22/5. VQ assessment — development and validation.
(1) The Illinois State Board of Education, in collaboration with
the University of Illinois system and other qualified research
institutions, shall develop and validate a Vitruvian Quotient
assessment instrument measuring the eight domains specified in
Section 1 of this act.
(2) The assessment shall:
(a) Be scored without ceiling, using a compensatory framework
where strength in one domain offsets relative deficit in
another;
(b) Include contextual modifiers (XQ) that adjust scores for
environmental factors including but not limited to
socioeconomic position, disability, language background, and
geographic access;
(c) Measure growth over time rather than rank-ordering
students against one another;
(d) Be validated against neurological substrate research as
specified in the VQ framework;
(e) Incorporate Trustworthiness (TQ) as an emergent
cross-quotient measure reflecting the interdependency of
EQ + SQ + RQ.
(3) The VQ assessment shall replace standardized testing for
purposes of student placement, program eligibility, and
educational outcome measurement within the K-20 pipeline. This
provision takes effect five (5) years after the effective date
of this act to allow for development, validation, and pilot
implementation.
DIVISION IV — ILLINOIS RESOURCE LIBRARY AND PUBLIC SERVICE ACT
SECTION 5. Chapter 20 of the Illinois Compiled Statutes is amended by adding Articles 3.5 and 3.6 to read as follows:
ARTICLE 3.5 Illinois Essential Goods Program
20 ILCS 3.5/1. Short title.
This Article shall be known and may be cited as the "Illinois
Essential Goods Act."
20 ILCS 3.5/5. Essential goods program — creation.
(1) There is hereby created the Illinois Essential Goods Program,
administered by the Department of Commerce and Economic
Opportunity.
(2) The purpose of the program is to establish a state-operated
distribution system for essential non-food commodities — including
but not limited to personal hygiene products, household cleaning
supplies, over-the-counter medications, infant care supplies, and
basic clothing — at at-cost pricing, modeled on the military
exchange system (Army and Air Force Exchange Service, Navy
Exchange Service Command).
(3) Essential goods distribution points shall be co-located with
food assurance centers established under Division I wherever
practicable.
ARTICLE 3.6 Illinois Resource Library and Public Service Program
20 ILCS 3.6/1. Short title.
This Article shall be known and may be cited as the "Illinois
Resource Library Act."
20 ILCS 3.6/5. Resource library system — creation — three tiers.
(1) Upon full implementation of the K-20 pipeline and public
service component established in Division III, the Department of
Commerce and Economic Opportunity shall establish the Illinois
Resource Library system.
(2) The resource library shall operate on a three-tiered model:
(a) Tier 1 — Consumable goods: Food, personal care items,
household supplies. Distributed at cost through food
assurance centers and essential goods distribution points;
(b) Tier 2 — Durable goods: Furniture, appliances,
electronics, tools, and other durable consumer goods.
Distributed through designated resource library centers on a
checked-out basis with scheduled return and replacement cycle.
Items are maintained, refurbished, and recycled by the
resource library system;
(c) Tier 3 — Housing and vehicles: Long-term allocation
based on need, family size, work location, and geographic
requirements. Housing and vehicles are maintained by the
state and allocated through the resource library system.
(3) Access to Tier 2 and Tier 3 goods is contingent upon
completion of the K-20 developmental pipeline and the public
service component, or equivalent qualification as determined by
the Department.
(4) The resource library model is derived from Jacque Fresco's
resource-based economy framework (The Venus Project, 2007), which
proposed three tiers of material distribution organized by
permanence: constant-access goods (food and consumables),
semi-permanent goods (clothing, tools, and furnishings), and
permanent allocations (housing and transportation). The model
extends the public library concept — access to resources without
individual ownership — to the material requirements of daily
life. The library does not sell books. It provides access.
The resource library extends this model to all material needs.
20 ILCS 3.6/10. Public service program.
(1) Upon completion of the K-20 pipeline, each graduate shall be
eligible for two (2) to four (4) years of structured public
service.
(2) Public service assignments shall include but not be limited to:
(a) Teaching and mentorship in the K-20 pipeline;
(b) Healthcare delivery and public health services;
(c) Community development and infrastructure maintenance;
(d) Environmental stewardship and conservation;
(e) Emergency services and disaster response;
(f) Agricultural support and food assurance center operations;
(g) Technology and communications infrastructure;
(h) Arts, culture, and community programming.
(3) Public service participants shall receive:
(a) Full resource library access (all three tiers);
(b) Healthcare coverage;
(c) Housing allocation through the resource library system;
(d) Continued developmental assessment and mentorship.
(4) Public service is voluntary but incentivized: full resource
library access at all tiers requires completion of both the K-20
pipeline and the public service component.
GENERAL PROVISIONS
SECTION 6. Fiscal framework and cost analysis.
(1) The General Assembly finds that this act does not represent
net new spending but rather the replacement of an expensive
scarcity-management system with a less expensive abundance-
provision system. Specifically:
(a) The 75.7 percent markup on food currently borne by
Illinois consumers — including the State of Illinois through
SNAP benefits distributed via commercial retailers — is
eliminated under the commissary model. At-cost pricing reduces
the State's food distribution cost to approximately 24.3
percent of current retail expenditure plus the five percent
facility surcharge;
(b) Diet-related chronic disease — including diabetes,
cardiovascular disease, obesity, and hypertension — generates
billions of dollars in annual Medicaid expenditure. The
reduction of food insecurity through at-cost distribution is
projected to reduce these healthcare costs;
(c) The K-20 pipeline, by providing structured developmental
support through age twenty-five, is projected to reduce
criminal justice costs, substance abuse treatment costs, and
emergency social services costs attributable to incomplete
human development;
(d) THE PENSION CONTEXT: This act does not solve the $143.5
billion unfunded pension liability. But it stops adding to the
cost of poverty. The State cannot address its fiscal
obligations while simultaneously paying the hidden costs of
manufactured scarcity — healthcare for diet-related illness,
emergency services, criminal justice, and lost economic
productivity. Every dollar spent maintaining scarcity is a
dollar unavailable for pension obligations.
(2) The Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability
shall, within one (1) year of the effective date of this act,
produce a comprehensive fiscal impact analysis comparing:
(a) The total cost of the programs established in this act;
(b) The total cost currently borne by the State of Illinois
through SNAP administration, Medicaid for diet-related
illness, emergency department utilization, criminal justice,
foster care, substance abuse treatment, and lost economic
productivity attributable to food insecurity, poverty, and
incomplete human development;
(c) The net fiscal impact, which this act projects to be
positive — the programs established herein cost less than the
scarcity they replace.
DIVISION I FOOD PROGRAM TARGET. The at-cost food assurance program
established in Division I, serving Illinois's population of
approximately 12.7 million residents (Census Bureau, January 2026
— third consecutive year of population growth), requires
approximately $7.73 billion per year at production cost ($609 per
person per year for a full baseline of 37 staple food items at 30
percent of cheapest retail price per USDA Food Dollar Series
methodology). Against Illinois's general funds budget of
approximately $55.1 billion (FY2026 Budget Highlights), this
represents approximately 14 percent. Illinois's per-capita general
fund spend of approximately $4,339 per resident supports the full
baseline. Verified April 18, 2026 via SearXNG.
THE FEDERAL SNAP COST-SHIFT. Federal H.R. 1 (2025) increased
the state share of SNAP administrative costs from fifty percent
to seventy-five percent, effective October 1, 2026. Illinois
currently routes SNAP benefits through commercial retailers
where 75.7 cents of every food dollar pays for markup rather
than food. At at-cost routing through Division I, approximately
95 cents of every dollar reaches the recipient as food
(production cost plus five percent surcharge) — a 3.9-fold
increase in delivered food value per SNAP dollar that
independently offsets the federal cost-shift.
THE FISCAL LOCK. The argument that Illinois "cannot afford"
this act is refuted by the state's existing expenditure on the
less efficient version of the same programs while absorbing a
federal SNAP cost-shift the state did not request. The fiscal
question is not whether to spend, but whether to continue
spending four times as much as required to accomplish the same
objective.
CONSTITUTIONAL EDUCATION OBLIGATION. Article X Section 1
of the Illinois Constitution establishes that "the State
shall provide for an efficient system of high quality public
educational institutions and services." Division III
completes this mandate. Declining to enact Division III
preserves the gap between what the constitution requires and
what the state delivers.
SECTION 7. Severability.
If any provision of this act, or its application to any person or
circumstance, is held invalid, the invalidity does not affect
other provisions or applications of this act which can be given
effect without the invalid provision or application, and to this
end the provisions of this act are severable.
SECTION 8. Effective date.
This act takes effect upon becoming law. Implementation schedules
for individual programs are specified within each Division.
SECTION 9. Implementation schedule.
(1) Division I (Food Assurance): Pilot centers operational within
two (2) years. Statewide expansion within five (5) years.
(2) Division II (Public Health): Hierarchy Health Impact Assessment
published within one (1) year. Biennial updates thereafter.
(3) Division III (Education Modernization): K-20 pipeline framework
developed within two (2) years. VQ assessment instrument developed
and validated within five (5) years. Full pipeline implementation
phased over ten (10) years.
(4) Division IV (Resource Library): Implementation contingent on
full K-20 pipeline and public service program establishment.
Tier 1 co-located with food assurance centers from inception.
Tiers 2 and 3 phased following pipeline maturity.
REFERENCES
The research and citations supporting this legislation are drawn from the following sources, among others:
FOOD AND COMMODITY ECONOMICS: - USDA Economic Research Service, Food Dollar Series (2023) - Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA), Annual Report - 10 U.S.C. Section 2484 (Military Commissary Act) - Penck, A. (1925), Earth carrying capacity calculations - Cohen, J. (1995), "How Many People Can the Earth Support?" - Galbraith, J.K. (1958), "The Affluent Society" - Veblen, T. (1921), "The Engineers and the Price System" - Federal Reserve, Industrial Capacity Utilization - Fresco, J. (2007), The Venus Project, Resource-Based Economy
HIERARCHY AND HEALTH: - Marmot, M. (2004), "The Status Syndrome" - Marmot, M. (2015), "The Health Gap" - Marmot, M.G. et al. (1991), Whitehall II, The Lancet - Sapolsky, R.M. (1994/2004), "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" - Sapolsky, R.M. (2017), "Behave" - Shively, C.A. et al. (2009), Social Stress and Coronary Artery Atherosclerosis, Obesity - Blackburn, E. & Epel, E. (2017), "The Telomere Effect"
EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT: - Erikson, E.H. (1959), "Identity and the Life Cycle" - Vygotsky, L.S. (1934/1978), "Mind in Society" - Bjork, R.A. (1994), "Memory and Metamemory Considerations" - Luthar, S.S. (2003), "The Culture of Affluence" (NIH PMC1950124) - van Gennep, A. (1909), "The Rites of Passage" - Turner, V. (1969), "The Ritual Process" - Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (1976), "Schooling in Capitalist America" - Jackson, P.W. (1968), "Life in Classrooms" - Illich, I. (1971), "Deschooling Society" - Hirsch, E.D. (1987), "Cultural Literacy" - Bloom, B.S. (1956), "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" - Gardner, H. (1983), "Frames of Mind" - Holland, J.L. (1997), "Making Vocational Choices" - Goleman, D. (1995), "Emotional Intelligence" - Smith, A. (1776), "The Wealth of Nations," Book V
HISTORICAL APOPLEXY FRAMEWORK: - Cooper, I. (2025), "Historical Apoplexy (Cooper): Paper I" - Cooper, I. (2025), "The Mathematics of Abundance: Paper III" - Cooper, I. (2025), "Stolen Futures: Paper IV" - Cooper, I. (2026), "The Targeting Error: Paper V" - Cooper, I. (2026), "The Resuscitation Document: Paper VI" - Cooper, I. (2025-2026), "The Vitruvian Quotient" - Calhoun, J.B. (1973), "Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population"
ILLINOIS-SPECIFIC SOURCES: - Illinois Farm Bureau, "The Crops We Grow" - FRAC (2025), SNAP Fact Sheet — Illinois - Illinois Policy Institute (2024), SNAP Participation Data - CGFA (2025), Special Pension Briefing — $143.5B unfunded liability - Illinois Comptroller, Budget Impasse Consequences (736 days) - Illinois Policy Institute (2017), Lowest Credit Rating for US State - CME Group, corporate website and history - ADM, Decatur operations profile - NYU School of Medicine (2019), Urban Life Expectancy Study - Chicago Tribune (2019), Streeterville-Englewood Life Expectancy - NPR (2023), Chicago School Closings — 10 Years Later - NBC Chicago (2022), Whole Foods Englewood Closure - Cook County MEO (2025), Opioid Overdose Deaths 2024 - Chicago Urban League, COVID-19 Racial Disparities - U.S. EPA, University Park Drinking Water Advisory - World Population Review (2026), Cairo, Illinois - DataUSA, East St. Louis Community Profile - Naval Station Great Lakes, Commissary Operations - Axios Chicago (2025), Illinois Fortune 500 Companies - U.S. GAO (2022), GAO-22-104728, Defense Commissaries - CBS Chicago (2020), COVID-19 Racial Disparities in Chicago - Chicago Crusader (2025), Five Years Later: COVID-19 in Black Chicago
END OF BILL
Illinois Food, Resource, and Commodity
Assurance Act
104th General Assembly of the State of Illinois
2025-2026 Regular Session
Prepared pursuant to the Historical Apoplexy series
(Cooper, 2025-2026)
"The state where commodity futures were invented should be the
state that decouples food access from commodity speculation."
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