North Egypt News

State Sen. Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro) isn't surprised by Gov. J.B. Pritzker's decision to extend his emergency powers over state residents for another 30 days.

"Honestly, it didn’t surprise me, but it did make me angry," Bryant said during a recent interview with WLPF. "It appears that the governor just will not release the hold that he has on the people of this state. And, again, he has not invited the legislature to assist him in these decisions that he's making, so he's doing it unilaterally without consultation, with any of the legislators that I'm aware of and so we continue to be under his thumb."

Bryant said the governor needs to come to the Legislature to explain his reasonings and ask for its support, instead of cutting the governing body out of the equation.

"The fact is, as I’ve said before, we are a co-equal branch of government, the problem for many of us is ... we're sitting in a super minority," Bryant said. "We are at the mercy, because of the way Illinois government is run, of the leaders of the House and the Senate —  in this case, Sen. [Don] Harmon [(D-Oak Park)] is the president of the Senate and, of course, Chris Welch [(D-Hillside)] is the new speaker of the House." 

Bryant also spoke about legislative redistricting. She said recent legislation, Senate Bill 1325, would fix the partisanly-drawn maps in the state.

"It allows the Supreme Court to create a 16-member commission," Bryant said. "We believe that because of the wording of the bill — that is fully constitutional — it's only for this redistricting and, obviously, it is the exact language that the Democrats ran ... I believe it was a year-and-a-half ago and 18 Democrat Senators signed on to the bill, but, now, will not support this bill because they have total control of the map."

The People’s Independent Maps Act was introduced last month by several House and Senate Republicans. It would give the Supreme Court the ability to appoint the independent citizen commissioners to a commission within 30 days of the bill being signed into law.

The commission would be required to reflect the demographics of the state in gender, race and ethnicity. The members would be evenly split between party affiliation and those without a party affiliation.