EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

It's the year of the remap
and we're in for a heck of a show

by Peggy Boyer Long

A once-in-a-decade legislative session. That's what Statehouse insiders are calling it, and they're not blowing smoke. A lot is riding on what happens over the next few months. For those insiders, yes. For the rest of us too.

Why? The short of it is this: It's the year of the remap and we're in for a heck of a show. The process amounts to political gamesmanship in its purest form — fun to watch, fun to report. Yet the results add up to something more.

Legislative careers are on the line, certainly. Partisan control is at stake, surely. And representative government will come down to whether the border of an Illinois House or Senate district is drawn on this side of town or the other, this side of the block or the other.

We'll be hearing a lot about that in the coming months — in fact, we'll be writing a lot about that in this magazine. But let's be clear at the outset: There are other stakeholders in this decennial rite. Citizens' claims to fair representation in their government also will be at issue in the coming partisan battle at the state Capitol.

And that's what will matter most in the long run.

How did we come to this pass? The states are required to redraw legislative and congressional district boundaries every 10 years to reflect population changes. So as soon as the new General Assembly is sworn and seated, as soon as the U.S. Census Bureau delivers those long-awaited numbers, state officials will begin to do the political math.

Legislative careers are on the line, certainly. Partisan control is at stake, surely. And representational government will come down to whether the border of an Illinois House or Senate district is drawn on this side of town or the other.

That's not as easy as it would seem. For more than 30 years, the courts have required that representational districts be compact and contiguous and that they comprise close to the same number of people, adhering to the principle of one-person-one-vote, meaning that they must be drawn with a nod to the civic whole as well as the partisan particulars. Before that, raw political power in the Statehouse was all that mattered. It's no accident that in the first half of the 20th century, a rural-dominated legislature didn't bother to redistrict, though the population was growing in the city of Chicago.

Of course, in a world devoid of party politics and, now, minority group rights, drawing representative maps would be an easy matter: Divide the total population of the state by the number of representational districts and align boundaries within given geographic limits.

In reality, even in the ideal, remap is far more complicated. And that's what makes it so fascinating.

As Dave McKinney writes in this month's edition, no issue will matter as much to the powerbrokers in the 92nd General Assembly as remap, and no issue will be harder to resolve.

McKinney, the Statehouse bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times, lays out the parameters of "what is shaping up to be one of the busier legislative sessions in recent memory," and introduces us to the new legislative players. His report, which also examines other key issues facing lawmakers this spring, begins on page 12.

Meanwhile, Charles N. Wheeler III delivers an "ought to do" list to lawmakers in his column beginning on page 38. And in his guest State of the State column beginning on page 6, Christopher Wills outlines some of the challenges that will face a mid-term Gov. George Ryan during this legislative session. Wills is Statehouse bureau chief for The Associated Press.

So ready, set. The action gets underway this month.

4 | January 2001 Illinois Issues http://illinoisissues.uis.edu