Recharting the Remap Referendum

As sure as 2014 comes after 2013, every person in Lake County will be writing down their New Year's resolutions. And if every person in Lake County is anything like your LakeCountyEye, they are resolving to enact an Illinois Constitutional Amendment to change how legislative maps get re-drawn every 10 years.

According to a Daily Herald editorial that your LakeCountyEye just read ...

The voters in the area around Buffalo Grove always seemed to think Sidney Mathias was a likable guy and a responsive legislator. So every two years, they elected him by fairly comfortable margins to the Illinois House. Mathias had a built-in advantage in those races. He once had been village president of Buffalo Grove, and most of the community provided the core of the old square-shaped 53rd House District he represented. Then last year, Mathias got trounced.
A Remap Referendum: It's time to tell party bosses, 'Enough'

Sad but true: former State Representative Sid Mathias was an election-day casualty of the redistricting process. After his hand-drawn legislative district was re-drawn again in 2010, Mathias was handed his lunch at the voting booths in 2012.  And if someone who has a train station named after him ...

cannot win a election on home turf, then either they are just totally sleepwalkin' it or the system is seriously broken.

Which is why your LakeCountyEye is fightin' mad, just like the Daily Herald. Mad enough, in fact, that your LakeCountyEye sat down and wrote an opinion-laden editorial. Just like the Daily Herald:

The voters in the area around Wauconda & Island Lake seemed to think Joe Walsh was a charismatic guy and a promising legislator. So for two years, they elected him -- against nearly impossible odds -- to the US House of Representatives.

Walsh had a built-in advantage in that race. He loudly professed the Tea-Party gospel to the low-information voters of Lake and McHenry Counties, and most of that community provided the core of the old tea-cozy-shaped 8th Congressional District he would represent.

Then last year, Walsh got trounced.

Had there been a scandal? Had the voters tired of him? Had he suddenly become unlikable and unresponsive?

None of the above.

When Congressional districts were redrawn after the 2010 census, the Eighth District was sent through a cartographic wood chipper and Walsh, a Republican, was given the bum's rush into a flounder-shaped new district that pitched down to Villa Park & Lombard and then yawed in a narrow band all the way up the tollway into Schaumburg and to the edge of Wheeling. That geography provided welcome turf for a popular Democrat, Tammy Duckworth of Hoffman Estates, and she used it to full advantage.

You might say ol' Joe never knew what hit him, except he knew it full well: the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Your LakeCountyEye's point here isn't to defend or lionize Walsh. For these purposes, he's simply an example, and there are many, many others.

But the reality is, Walsh wasn't turned out by the voters. The reality is, under the legislative map-drawing process that Illinois now follows, the voters have very little say. The machine politicians have taken it out of the voters' hands.

Republicans knew the day after the 2010 election put Democrats firmly in charge of the remapping process in Illinois that they were eventually going to be free of Walsh -- who was becoming a state-wide and national GOP embarrassment -- in the 2012 elections.

And Walsh knew the day the new map was released that his time as a legislator was over.

This wasn't a map that would make Walsh's re-election chances tough. It was a map that made them impossible.

Note to ops: If you think Joe Walsh belongs in the US House of Representatives and needs to be sent back ASAP, then say yes to map reform. Work to get a constitutional amendment on next November's ballot!

County Board Remap Magic

Lake County Board's Remap Committee met yesterday. There was a fly on the wall. It sent us a report.

"The purpose of the committe, it was said, was to start creating a "fair" new map for county board districts. The committee consisted of five Republican board members (Chair Diana O'Kelly, Aaron Lawlor, Steve Mountsier, Linda Pedersen and Brent Paxson) and two Democratic members (Mary Ross Cunningham and Bill Durkin). Wait...five to two from a board almost evenly split between Republicans and Democrats? Ah, magic already!

Much discussion ensued about the state's requirement that districts be 1) equal in population, 2) represent the interests of minorities as far as possible and 3) be compact. Several members brought up that the County Board was sued last time around for failing to abide by the first two provisions. (And lost.)

Then the board moved on to the most important business on the minds of several members: reducing the size of the board. This is fairly obviously being done so that the Republican majority can reduce the number of pesky Democrats on the board. Redistrict them and get them to run against each other. Easy, peasy!

But the move had to be justified. State law says county boards need to be reduced to 18 if county population reaches 800,000. "We might get up to that number in the next ten years," said member Mountsier, "so we should start shrinking now." Huh? You start planning now for a hypothetical situation that might never occur? When do governments ever do that?

So the plan is to reduce the board to 21 members. Of course, since the population of Lake County increased dramatically since 2000, each district will be significantly bigger in the remap. Republican plan, apparently: fewer districts, less representation.

'And we'd save $75,000 if we cut two board members,' said Aaron Lawlor. 75K? That's pocket lint in a budget of more than $300 million.

Another member mentioned that two Republican county board members were retiring anyway. As if it is Republican seats that are going to be eliminated.

But the last word was had by Brent Paxson. 'I think we should do this because it's good government even though we probably won't hit 800,000 [population] in ten years.' He means there's no darned reason to limit the size of the board to 18 or 21 or 2, but they're going to do it anyway.

Exactly. The Board is going to do what it wants. Who needs any stinkin' legal justification? In the end, the vote to reduce the number of members to 21 was typical of the Lake County board.

O'KELLY: All in favor?

COMMITTEE: Aye.

O'KELLY: All opposed?

COMMITTEE: [crickets]

So get ready for a map that (like magic) pits two Democrats against each other (four Dems in all) in two of the new districts. Wouldn't it have been nice if the County Board had considered going non-partisan instead? Nah, that would be too much like voodoo."