HR1305 100TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

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

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

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

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

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

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 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 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.