Illinois Valley Times

On April 8, Rep. Ryan Spain (R-Peoria) spoke out against House Bill 716, which would create the ICJIA Violence Reduction Fund as a special fund in the state treasury. It also creates restrictions on fundraising for candidates for the judiciary.

“I spoke out against judicial hijinx on the House Floor last night. These last-minute election gimmicks by House Democrats further erode the public's faith in trying to restore good government in Illinois,” Spain posted on Facebook.

“In 2020, a sitting Supreme Court Justice was not retained for the first time in recent memory, perhaps under the current composition of the court for the last 60 to 70 years." Spain said from the House floor. "And so in response to that Democrat not being retained, what did the rest of the Democrat leaders do in this state? You went about redistricting the Supreme Court in the state of Illinois and now here you are making further changes to rig the rules of the game and cheat the system so that it can benefit you in the next election. I strongly urge a no vote.”

The Supreme Court justice he referred to in his speech is Justice Thomas Kilbride. According to a Nov. 10, 2020 report from WTTW, Kilbride failed to get 60% of the vote in his district. In a 6-0 vote, the Justices (without Kilbride) chose appellate Judge Robert Carter, 74, of Ottawa, to replace Kilbride, starting Dec. 8, 2020.

A Senate amendment of House Bill 0716 included the following: Creation of the Public Financing of Judicial Elections Task Force and the duties of the task force. One of those duties is to “study the feasibility of implementing a system of campaign finance that would allow public funds to be used to subsidize campaigns for candidates for judicial office in exchange for voluntary adherence by those campaigns to specified expenditure limitations.” It also limited the amount that independent committees to support or oppose candidates for the judiciary in Illinois can collect.