Metro East Sun

Senate Executive Appointments Minority Spokesperson Jason Plummer (R-Vandalia) expressed his gratitude to his colleagues during the appointment hearing of Inger Burnett-Zeigler as the commissioner of the Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board.

Plummer was among the 55 Illinois senators who voted for Burnett-Zeigler’s confirmation.   

“Thank you to everyone for joining here today and for the appointment process,” Plummer said. “I concur with the chairwoman. Impressive resume. I appreciate you willing to serve. I’m going to ask you a question and it is not a trick question, it’s just more committee homework since we’ve already talked to the governor’s office about this. Just for the record, do you mind telling the committee if you consider yourself as a Democrat or a Republican or an independent?”

Burnett-Zeigler confirmed she is a Democrat and the Committee Republican spokesperson accepted her response. He shared with her how everyone is swamped with phone calls concerning FOID cards and asked her thoughts on how to improve the process.

"So, clearly, the state is struggling to approve concealed carry licenses within the statutory timeline which I believe is 90 days," Plummer said. "The director of the state police has called that unacceptable. The state police estimated the average processing time to be somewhere around 145 to 150 days for licensing. Do you have any thoughts what we can do to improve this? What role does the board play in that approval process?”

She explained to Plummer that the board has been working very diligently to catch up on that backlog. The backlog, according to her, was “due to a number of factors but partly due to a period of time the board was not meeting as the composition of the board was turning over.” She said they have significantly cut down on the wait time and continuously work to reduce it.

“Now we are meeting four times a month and the standard was twice per month,” Burnett-Zeigler further told Plummer.

The committee went on to confirm Burnett-Zeigler’s appointment as commissioner of the Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board.

Burnett-Zeigler is a licensed clinical psychologist. She is also an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.