Rockford Sun

The passage by the House and Senate of the bill that would reorganize the state's judicial subcircuits garnered a lot of attention ... and not the good kind.

Marcia Meis, the director of the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, vented about her frustrations to the Supreme Court justices in an email Jan. 7, two days after Democrats pushed the bill through both chambers without any Republican support.

In an internal email, she described the “legislation railroaded through earlier this week by the General Assembly" as an "unmitigated disaster.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the bill into law later that afternoon.

Rep. Jeff Keicher (R-Sycamore) responded on Meis' email on Twitter: “We tried to point this out…the majority party pressed forward.”

The State Journal-Register reported the bill had little input from the general public, Republican lawmakers or members of the judiciary.

Rep. Time Butler (R-Springfield) was also disappointed with the bill.

“This is the perfect example of why politicians shouldn't draw maps,” Butler said, according to the State Journal-Register. “This is the perfect example of why we need an independent, citizen-led commission to draw our maps, from the legislative to the congressional to the judicial, and even the Cook County Board of Review.”

Democratic lawmakers see the bill as an effort to bring more diversity to the courts. “It’s designed to bring diversity based on population shifts,” bill sponsor state Rep. Lisa Hernandez (D-Cicero) said, according to the State Journal-Register.