Chicago City Wire

Black Roots Alliance Public Policy Coordinator Victoria Stewart leaves no doubt about what she feels lawmakers in Springfield need to be doing to assure fair map redistricting.

“The redistricting process needs to be transparent and include community input,” Stewart said at a recent Chicago South Committee Senate Redistricting hearing.

Witness Steven Monroy joined Stewart in stressing the need for transparency.

“I can describe generally some of the feedback that we've been hearing in conversation since advocates from the Back of the Yards neighborhood expressed dissatisfaction from the 2011 redistricting process, which split the neighborhood into a few different representative districts and Senate districts,” Monroy said. “So, I believe that there would be consideration of keeping the community a little bit more. I defer to their specific recommendations in their own neighborhoods.”

One by one, witnesses lined up to share similar feelings, with a growing number of Republican lawmakers calling for legislators to ignore a June 30 deadline for map redistricting to be completed. Complete Census Bureau data won’t be available before then.

Early last year, a bipartisan group of lawmakers and policy watchdogs convened to stress the need for a fair process, with Republican state Sen. Dan McConchie (Lake Zurich) arguing that the first step to ending corruption in Springfield is by outlawing gerrymandering.

CHANGE Illinois Executive Director Madeline Dubeck said joint-resolution constitutional amendments being bandied about in both the House and Senate are needed to pass so that an independent commission could be formed to supervise redistricting.

"No one group can control the map-making process," Dubeck told the Prairie State Wire. "The overwhelming majority of people support fair maps."