Will County Gazette

Gov. J.B. Pritzker's signature on the state's new legislative, judicial and board of review maps marked defeat of the fairly drawn maps that most everyone else in Illinois wants, State Senate Republican Deputy Leader Sue Rezin (R-Morris) said in a recent social media post.

Fair and transparent maps in Illinois didn't happen this year, despite efforts and great support for it to happen, Rezin said in her Friday, June 4 Facebook post.

Illinios State Senate Republican Deputy Leader Sue Rezin (R-Morris) on the Senate floor in a pre-COVID photo | senatorrezin.com/

"For years we have been fighting to have legislative maps drawn by an independent commission instead of politicians," Rezin said in the Facebook post. "Around 75 percent of Illinois voters support this concept. However, today, the Governor officially signed partisan maps drawn by Illinois politicians into law."

Rezin sponsored Senate Bill 1325, also called the People's Independent Maps Act, this session. SB 1325 would have removed politicians from making decisions about redistricting and place that power in the hands of Illinoisans. The bipartisan SB 1325, 18 Senate Democrats and all of that chamber's Republicans as co-sponsors, missed an April 30 deadline for third reading. Instead, the bill was referred to the Assignments Committee, where it died.

Rezin has represented the 38th District since her appointment to the Illinois Senate in December 2010. She'd been elected to the elected to the Illinois House of Representatives the previous month and was appointed to the Senate to fill the seat of Gary G. Dahl, who had resigned. She was appointed Senate GOP Caucus leader in 2015 and was chosen as deputy leader this past January.

Illinois Senate District 38 includes Bureau, Grundy, Kendall, LaSalle, Livingston, Putnam and Will counties.

Rezin's Facebook post came the same day Pritzker enacted the partisan-drawn political maps. WBEZ offered the same day that the door now is open "to a likely wave of Republican litigation over how the boundaries were composed."

Those boundaries were composed by state Democrats meeting behind a closed and locked door to determine how their new district lines would be drawn. House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch (D-Hillside) staff met with House Democrats behind that locked door on the Capitol Complex grounds. Cameras were rolling.

There was nothing to see there, Welch told WCIA.

"Meeting with members is nothing new," Welch’s spokeswoman, Jaclyn Driscoll, said in the WCIA news report. "In fact, the room we're talking to members in is actually the same we met in 10 years ago. This is and will remain a transparent process."

This year is already was complicated for the redistricting in Illinois because U.S. Census data doesn't expect to issue data upon which the new maps were supposed to be based until September, delayed by COVID, but under Illinois' constitution, state lawmakers must pass a new legislative map by June 30. If that hadn't happened, an eight-person bipartisan panel would be created and, should that group be locked in a tie, Illinois' secretary of state would randomly choose a ninth member to break the tie.

In an earlier statement issued May 29, shortly after Democrat lawmakers pushed their partisan legislative maps through the Illinois Senate, Rezin referred to the more than 50 individuals and groups, including "leading government reform and minority advocacy groups," who called for fair maps.

The voices of those 50, "along with the 75 percent of people in this state who have begged for an independent map-drawing process," were ignored, Rezin said.

"What we witnessed today was a desperate attempt by those in power to hold on to that power at all costs," Rezin said in her May 29 statement. "Even when it costs them the trust of their constituents. The people of Illinois deserve better than this. They deserve the chance to pick their politicians instead of once again, letting politicians pick their voters."