Peoria Standard

State Rep. Ryan Spain (R-Peoria) is imploring lawmakers in Springfield to stand against the state’s new map redistricting plan.

“There's a couple of things that I'm proud about in serving in this chamber, one of them is the census,” Spain said. “We worked as a body and I took it upon myself as someone that had worked on the Census 10 years before in local government that we needed to go all in on the census and I'm glad we did.”

Spain frets at the thought of Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Democrats now throwing all that away by officially making House Bill 2777 the law of the land. Effective immediately, the General Assembly Redistricting Act of 2021 redistricts the legislative districts (for Senators) and the representative districts (for representatives).  

Republicans in Springfield are blasting the measure as one designed to disenfranchise voters and keep Democrats in power.

Spain said fighting for a fairer process comes as nothing new to him.

“Year after year after year, I stood as the sponsor for amending the Constitution of the state of Illinois so that we could deliver independent redistricting reform,” he said. “So that we would never again put ourselves in this situation where we're dividing people and creating maps based on partisan identity. It's wrong in the state of Illinois; it's wrong when it's done in other states.”

With Spain charging Democrats of using the same tactics they did under former House Speaker Mike Madigan to get what they want, Republican legislators are calling for an independent map commission.

“There is no state in as bad of shape as Illinois and I'm glad when we do things to help working people in the state of Illinois and generate economic growth, but I can tell you folks it isn't working. We're not living up to the expectations that a state as grand as the state of Illinois should be able to deliver,” he said. “For the first time in all of our lifetimes, we're navigating a redistricting process where our state has literally lost population over the last ten years and thank God for our investment in the census it wasn't as bad as we thought.”

Democrats continue to defend their actions, arguing that HB 2777 took into account "robust public input" and intensely weighed population data from the American Community Survey.