Introduction

Today, Illinois stands at a crossroads. Our state faces mounting debt and troublesome unemployment. Significant budget challenges have been caused and are now intensified by destructive overspending habits and a job-killing regulatory approach.

In the midst of this crisis, Illinois citizens and their leaders must turn the state’s affairs around and put Illinois back on the path to prosperity.

Policy changes lives—and at the Illinois Policy Institute, we’re working to promote policies that change lives for the better. Voters elect and influence policymakers; in turn, lawmakers set the policies that affect our day-to-day lives. Illinois citizens have great power to shape policy, yet few have the time to follow General Assembly votes from the House and Senate galleries in Springfield—or even from media reports and Internet accounts.

In an attempt to shed more light on state policy, the Illinois Policy Institute has put together its first annual Legislative Vote Card. The Vote Card highlights some of the most important pieces of legislation affecting fiscal, transparency, regulatory, and education policy deliberated in the 96th session of the Illinois General Assembly.

In 2010, the bicameral General Assembly discussed and voted on multiple key measures that either advanced or detracted from positive change in Illinois. Of the many bills voted on by Illinois lawmakers in this year’s regular session, the Vote Card highlights nineteen measures brought before the House of Representatives and eleven bills considered by the State Senate. These measures were deemed to have a particularly important impact on free market principles and liberty-based public policy. The Vote Card indicates the position of every legislator on each particular bill, offering a snapshot of members’ positions on key legislation.

Bill Selection

This Vote Card assesses roll call votes on key bills that have an identifiable impact on the free market in one of the following areas: budget and taxes, government regulation, transparency and accountability, and education. Bills not related to the Institute’s mission were not included.

The 2010 Legislative Vote Card includes roll call votes on bills that received a recorded floor vote in at least one chamber. The Vote Card does not account for bill sponsorship or bills that did not receive a related floor vote. All bills were chosen for consideration based on their policy merits.