Bill Text: IL HR1305 | 2017-2018 | 100th General Assembly | Introduced

---

Bill Title: Thanks House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie for her 40 years of dedicated service to the people of Illinois.

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 2-0)

Status: (Passed) 2018-11-29 - Resolution Adopted [HR1305 Detail]

Download: Illinois-2017-HR1305-Introduced.html

---

HR1305 LRB100 24218 MST 43496 r
HOUSE RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, Few members of the Illinois General Assembly have
left as lasting and indelible a mark on state government,
fellow legislators, and the laws of Illinois as House Majority
Leader Barbara Flynn Currie; and
WHEREAS, Over the course of her 40 years in the Illinois
House of Representatives, Leader Currie has earned a reputation
as a respected, energetic, and trusted consensus builder with a
sharp mind and dazzling wit combined with grace and expertise,
as a relentlessly hard worker and beloved mentor, as an honest
broker who can always be counted on to level with interested
parties about their prospects for achieving their legislative
objectives, and as a skillful rhetorician whose mastery of
innumerable subjects and related arcana has repeatedly proved
her to be without peer in floor debate; and
WHEREAS, While Leader Currie is a staunch defender of
progressive causes and values, a fighter for the rights of
women, persons of color, and LGBTQ citizens, and a champion for
economic justice and equal opportunity for all, she has always
sought to find common ground and embraced opportunities to
build bipartisan agreement on the most contentious of issues;
and

HR1305 - 2 - LRB100 24218 MST 43496 r
WHEREAS, Born in La Crosse, Wisconsin on May 3, 1940, the
second of five children to Francis Thomas Flynn Jr. and Elsie
Rose Gobel Flynn, Leader Currie attended St. Thomas the Apostle
Grammar School and the University of Chicago High School after
her family moved to Hyde Park; and
WHEREAS, In 1959, Leader Currie married David P. Currie,
who was, for 45 years until his passing in October of 2007, a
constitutional scholar and professor at the University of
Chicago Law School; they raised two children, Stephen Francis
and Margaret Rose; and
WHEREAS, Leader Currie earned her bachelor's (cum laude)
and master's degrees in political science from the University
of Chicago in 1968 and 1973, respectively, while raising her
children and being active in local politics with groups such as
the Independent Voters of Illinois and the League of Women
Voters, and with community institutions such as the Hyde Park
Co-Op; and
WHEREAS, From 1965 to 1969, Leader Currie served as vice
president of the Chicago League of Women Voters; from 1973 to
1974, she taught government at DePaul University, and from 1974
to 1977, she was an assistant study director at the National
Opinion Research Center; and

HR1305 - 3 - LRB100 24218 MST 43496 r
WHEREAS, Following then-State Representative Robert Mann's
announcement in 1977 that he would not run for re-election,
Leader Currie was encouraged by family and independent-minded
local residents to run for state representative; she won her
first election as state representative in 1978, one of two
women, along with future United States Senator Carol Moseley
Braun, to win the multi-member 26th Representative District; it
would be the first and last time two women from the same
political party were elected to simultaneously represent the
same Representative District in Illinois; and
WHEREAS, Since 1979, the voters of the 24th, 25th, and 26th
Representative Districts have chosen Leader Currie to
represent them and their concerns in the Illinois House of
Representatives; today, her 25th Representative District,
which is nested within the 13th Legislative District once
represented by former President Barack Obama with whom she
served from 1997 to 2004, includes the neighborhoods of Hyde
Park, Kenwood, South Shore, Woodlawn, South Chicago, Calumet
Heights, South Deering, East Side and Hegewisch, and also
includes the University of Chicago, La Rabida Children's
Hospital, the Museum of Science and Industry, Frank Lloyd
Wright's Robie House, the Smart Museum of Art, numerous
theological seminaries, and the planned location of the Barack
Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park; and

HR1305 - 4 - LRB100 24218 MST 43496 r
WHEREAS, During the five different decades in which she has
served, Leader Currie has been a member or vice-chairperson of
more than a dozen House committees and commissions, including
Reapportionment, Appropriations, the Commission to Rewrite and
Revise the Public Aid Code, and the Legislative Advisory
Committee on Public Aid; she chaired committees on State
Government Administration, Revenue, and Rules, the Joint
Committee on Government Reform, Citizens Council on Women,
Illinois Citizens Assembly, the Commission on the Status of
Women, the House Education Task Force, the Sexual Harassment
and Discrimination Task Force, and the Special Investigative
Committee to investigate the conduct and possible impeachment
of then-Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice James Heiple; she
was one of the founding members of the Conference of Women
Legislators in 1979; and
WHEREAS, In 2009, Leader Currie chaired the Special House
Investigations Committee that recommended the impeachment of
former Governor Rod Blagojevich, the only Illinois chief
executive in the State's 200 years of existence to be removed
from office by the state legislature; and
WHEREAS, Leader Currie was first elected to House
Democratic leadership in 1993, serving as Assistant Majority
Leader from 1993 to 1995 and as Assistant Democratic Leader
from 1995 to 1997; and

HR1305 - 5 - LRB100 24218 MST 43496 r
WHEREAS, In January of 1997, Leader Currie made history
when she was named by Speaker Michael J. Madigan as the first
woman House Majority Leader in Illinois; from this position,
she has done her utmost to further the advancement of women in
state government; she was a co-founder of the Illinois Women's
Institute for Leadership, which prepares and trains Democratic
women to run for elected office, seek public appointments, and
govern effectively at all levels in Illinois; indeed, there may
be no more fitting tribute to her efforts across four decades
than the fact that when the 101st General Assembly takes its
oath of office on January 9, 2019, a majority of the members of
the Democratic caucus that she has led will be women; and
WHEREAS, According to the National Conference of State
Legislatures, Leader Currie is the longest-serving woman
majority leader in United States legislative history; and
WHEREAS, Leader Currie's career is marked by landmark
legislative achievements with a lasting beneficial legacy for
Illinoisans; a longtime advocate for open, transparent, and
accountable government, she sponsored Illinois' Freedom of
Information Act in 1983 and spearheaded later reforms to
strengthen the law and provide the public and press with fair
access to government records; and

HR1305 - 6 - LRB100 24218 MST 43496 r
WHEREAS, A passionate advocate for economic justice and
struggling families, Leader Currie was the lead negotiator of
the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program and the
State's first Earned Income Tax Credit law, which incentivized
work by allowing low-income families to keep more of their
income; and
WHEREAS, Leader Currie has passed legislation expanding
protections under the Equal Pay Act, prohibiting pay-to-play
for government contractors, allowing online voter
registration, creating an individual retirement savings
account for private sector workers, reforming the State's
juvenile justice system, prohibiting sexual harassment in the
workplace, requiring free mammograms for low-income women,
strengthening minority and female business access to State
contracts, improving child support enforcement, and
establishing the Nursing Home Reform Act; and
WHEREAS, From an early age, with public policy
conversations a frequent occurrence in her house while growing
up, Leader Currie was drawn to civic involvement; while living
in Washington, D.C., where David clerked for United States
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, she first joined the
League of Women Voters; she would later serve as a member of
the Harriet M. Harris Center YWCA Advisory Board, the American
Civil Liberties Union of Illinois Board of Directors, the

HR1305 - 7 - LRB100 24218 MST 43496 r
Chicago League of Women Voters, the Midwest Women's Center, the
Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference, the South Shore
Commission, the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club, the American
Association of University Women, and the Sierra Club; and
WHEREAS, The arts have always been an important part of
Leader Currie's life and a refuge from the hurly-burly of
politics; she is a regular attendee of performances of the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago and
at theaters throughout the city of Chicago, including the Court
Theater to which she is a benefactor; for more than 50 years,
the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company of Chicago has held a
special place in her heart; in addition to being a past
performer in a variety of "G & S" productions, showcasing voice
and dramatic talents familiar to ticket holders at biennial
COWL springtime fundraising benefits in which her numbers were
guaranteed to bring down the house, she is a Sustaining Life
Member of the company, a generous patron of its productions,
and has many treasured memories of David Currie's work as a
director, producer, and performer who brought the joys of the
topsy-turvy worlds imagined by the Victorian-era Englishmen to
modern audiences; and
WHEREAS, Our farewell to Leader Currie is bittersweet; the
body is losing invaluable wisdom and institutional knowledge, a
wonderful mentor, fierce advocate, and a member of

HR1305 - 8 - LRB100 24218 MST 43496 r
uncompromising integrity and unquestioned honor, but we share
in her joy of being able to devote more of her time to
traveling the world and to her children, Stephen and Margaret,
her grandchildren, Irene, Nicholas, Katherine, and David, her
great-grandson, Zachary, her brothers, Michael and Terry, her
sister, Patricia, her adoring nieces and nephews, her
sister-in-law, Carolyn, and many, many dear friends;
therefore, be it
RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE
HUNDREDTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we
offer our profound thanks to House Majority Leader Barbara
Flynn Currie for her 40 years of dedicated service to the
people of Illinois and congratulate her on her retirement from
the Illinois House of Representatives; and be it further
RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
presented to Leader Currie as an expression of our gratitude,
appreciation, and best wishes.