Biss won the Woodstock Institute's Community Investment Award, which recognizes the accomplishments of community members who "exemplify what it means to work locally with a national impact," said Katie Buitrago, a spokesperson for the Institute, a research and policy group that works on lending and financial reform.
"The award is meant to honor individuals and organizations that have contributed to the community investment movement in Chicago," Buitrago said. "Sen. Biss has been championing a policy for a secure choice retirement saving program … (that) the Woodstock Institute has supported."
The bill Biss is sponsoring, the Illinois Secure Choice Savings Program Act, would establish "a retirement savings program in the form of an automatic enrollment payroll deduction IRA with the intent of promoting greater retirement savings for private-sector employees in a convenient, low-cost, and portable manner," according to the General Assembly's website.
"The goal is to have more people in retirement savings accounts so that they don't retire into destitution," Buitrago said. "Over half of employees in the Illinois public sector lack retirement savings accounts."