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Busy spring predicted for Illinois lawmakers
The Illinois legislature is set to begin its work for 2022 in early January. The House and Senate begin the first week of the new year with a session that will keep them busy through the spring.
After a historic year that began with the retirement of longtime House Speaker Mike Madigan, the leg- islature will work through this session as they begin their campaigns for reelection in new districts as their new maps are drawn. Those maps should be finalized by the time this article goes to print. There is a court case pending as of this writing that may tweak some
of the boundaries of the maps drawn by the superma- jority Democrats over the objections of the Republicans.
We will continue to work with legislators and other interested parties to improve the policing reform bill that passed last January. One trailer bill has been passed to fix some of the issues with that new law, and another one is currently pending in the House after Senate passage. We hope that there will be at least one more after this. We have many allies in the legislature on both sides of the aisle to help.
This will again be a busy spring session as we navigate many complicated issues.
There have been a couple of new retirements announced in the legislature. Lake County Democratic Senator Melinda Bush has an- nounced she will not seek reelection, as has Central Illinois Repub- lican Representative Keith Sommer. Springfield area Republican Representative Mike Murphy has resigned his seat, and Chicago Democratic Representative Delia Ramirez has announced that she is running for Congress.
DAVE SULLIVAN
22 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JANUARY 2022
LEGISLATIVE Report