The Simon Review shows southern Illinois heavily benefits from state help wsiltv.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wsiltv.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Here s a roundup of key questions raised this week about redistricting.
Why is Illinois talking about redistricting now?
The U.S. Census Bureau released 2020 data on Monday telling each state how many of the 435 seats in Congress they will have.
Every state gets at least one House seat. The rest are apportioned based on a state s population. States that lose population, according to the Census, are at risk of losing seats, those that gain residents can add seats. The U.S. Supreme Court requires that all Congressional Districts be roughly equal in population.
Illinois will lose one of its 17 congressional districts and saw a decrease of more than 18,000 people since 2010, according to the bureau s calculations. That means when a new Congress is seated in 2023, the state will have one fewer representative in the House.
The immediate partisan reaction to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s reversal on whether legislators should be allowed to get vaccinated during Phase 1B was fairly predictable.
“Gov. Pritzker is prioritizing young healthy felons and Springfield politicians over high-risk adults,” the Illinois Republican Party seethed.
However, no such press release was issued the week before when U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, a 52-year-old Republican, cheerfully announced that he’d been vaccinated. And not a harsh word was uttered by the state GOP when federal prisoners received vaccinations during the Trump administration.
Senate Republican Leader Dan McConchie’s office first denounced Senate President Don Harmon’s decision to cancel floor sessions and hold committee hearings online this month, saying it was time to get back to work. The very next day, McConchie said that allowing legislators to be vaccinated was “ridiculous,” without any apparent sense of irony.
By Kelsey Landis | Belleville News-Democrat
• Feb 8, 2021
House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago) speaks with reporters in July 2017. Three former ComEd lobbyists, including a close Madigan confidante, and the former CEO of ComEd s parent company were indicted Wednesday, charged with orchestrating a bribery scheme that allegedly sought to influence Madigan. Brian Mackey / NPR Illinois
Editor’s note: This story was originally published by the Belleville News-Democrat, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
To southern Illinois Democratic lawmakers, Speaker Michael Madigan was the omnipresent benefactor the force behind nearly every successful piece of legislation or election.
To downstate Republicans, he embodied the worst of Chicago politics. He was the ruthless architect of the pension crisis, higher taxes and redistricting that pushed conservatives to the margins. He left the speakership as “Public Official A,” the unnamed figure in the f