News Clips

Government reform advocates in Illinois are urging state lawmakers to impose stricter rules on lobbying activity at the Statehouse, including a ban on lawmakers themselves working as lobbyists with other levels of government.

As Illinois prepares for the 2020 census count, leaders of the state census office said they're focusing on getting correct information out to communities, in particular clearing up confusion about job qualifications for census enumerators, the use of online forms and the timeline for the decennial count.

Jay Young celebrated in 2017 when then-Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the automatic voter registration bill into law. Young, among several other nonprofit and voting rights advocates, thought Springfield’s approval signaled the end of a long, painstaking process that had required months of political appeasing and redrafting legislation.

“There are a lot of advocates and community members who thought the bill was signed, a switch was flipped. That we won. In fact, that’s not the case,” said Jay Young of Common Cause Illinois, which backed automatic voter registration. “This is exceptionally frustrating.” Illinois gained national attention in 2017 when then-Gov. Bruce Rauner was among the first Republican governors to support automatic voter registration. The law set a July 2018 deadline for the secretary of state’s office to offer automatic voter registration.

"It feels wrong," said Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois, who noted the use of private money for public purposes concerns him.

Illinois could lose up to two congressional seats after 2020, going from 18 to 16. Billions of dollars in federal funding are given out based on population for healthcare, education and other services.