Republican Illinois State lawmakers are currently planning on pushing Chicago out of the state of Illinois, creating a 51st state.
House Resolution 101 was referred to the Rules Committee in February in an attempt to break free from the predominantly Democrat-dominated policies of the third biggest city in the nation. The bill is currently supported by eight Republican representatives in the state’s House and is supported by various conservative activists. However, it is unlikely it will ever make it past the committee.
“Our traditional family values seem to be under attack at every angle,” Illinois Republican Rep. Brad Halbrook, the initiator of the resolution, told The State Journal Register (SRJ). The resolution calls for a separation between rural, conservative districts in southern Illinois and urban, progressive districts in the Chicagoland area.
In an interview with Capitol Connection Television, Halbrook said, “The case for (House Resolution 101) is the continued onslaught of attacks on our traditional family values, the right to protect ourselves, the right to the way we want to educate our kids.”
“When you have a large population center that seems to control the agenda for the rest of the state, it just kind of creates some issues,” Halbrook said to SRJ. “The Constitution gives us a pathway, so we’ll see what happens.”
Another sponsor of the bill, Illinois Republican Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer, admitted he doesn’t believe the bill will make it passed the state legislature and the National Congress.
“I don’t believe that Chicago and the state of Illinois should be separated,” he told SJR. “It’s more of a frustration of the policies than the true belief that Chicago and Illinois would be better off as separate states.”
John Jackson, a visiting professor at The Simon Public Policy Institute and co-author of a paper, The Politics of Budgeting in Illinois, said the text of House Resolution 101 noted that a chasm has widened because Chicago is often thought to be “bailed out” by taxpayers in central and southern Illinois. Politicians in the rest of the state often “run against Chicago,” asserting to voters that they are being exploited by the city, Jackson noted.
Davidsmeyer signs onto separation resolution for Chicago, sparks debate https://t.co/h6CRnTtzDl
— StateJournalRegister (@SJRbreaking) April 6, 2019
The Institute, however, found that, opposite to that generally held conviction, downstate Illinois actually receives about 50 percent more in state spending than it contributes in tax revenue.
“There’s so much reinforcement of that perception by some parts of the leadership in this state,” Jackson said. “We did pretty much show when people get up and say downstate is supporting Chicago, they just don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Illinois is not alone in considering spinning off part of the state. Last year, California considered splitting into three separate states. Proposition 9 almost made it to the poll but it was torpedoed by the state’s Supreme Court.
Florida also saw city commissioners in South Miami pass a resolution calling for a new state to form in Southern Florida to address concerns that the wealthier South Florida was losing too many tax dollars to Tallahassee. But the move never gained any foothold beyond the state’s jurisdiction.
A 2013 referendum that would seen a split between North Colorado and Colorado State after dissent between rural and urban districts, but support was not greater than several counties.
There have also been ongoing tensions and separation sentiments in New York between New York City and “upstate” New York, and Atlanta versus the rest of Georgia.
The U.S. Constitution does provide a pathway for creating a new state from a portion of an existing state. Maine split from Massachusetts, and West Virginia split from Virginia in the nineteenth century, but they gained the approval of both the Congress and the state legislature—something unlikely to happen in any of these other cases.
