The Indiana House of Representatives passed a bill 69-25 today that, if Illinois takes action, would create a commission to study the possibility of a relocation of the Illinois/Indiana state line. The bill, HB 1008 “Indiana-Illinois Boundary Adjustment Commission,” now goes to the Indiana Senate.
Illinois Representative Brad Halbrook has introduced HB 1500, a bill that would complement HB 1008 by supplying Illinois representatives to the bi-state commission. HB 1500 is languishing in the Rules Committee of the Illinois House.
So far, since early 2020, 33 counties of Illinois have passed non-binding referendums calling for separation from Illinois. The election results in those referendums average 74%, and none has failed to pass. The counties are in central and southern Illinois, and most are rural. Central and southern Illinois, with a population of 2.8 million, gave 1.7 votes to President Trump for every 1 vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, which is even more than Indiana did. Illinois currently has 102 counties.
Illinois’ state budget is primarily dependent on personal income tax, and so would benefit from the loss of rural southern and central Illinois, according to an analysis published at RedStateSecession.org. However, the analysis shows that certain groups of counties would be a financial benefit to Indiana, such as the eastern half of central Illinois with 1.1 million people, because they have a higher average income than Indiana does. The analysis also proposes that, if Indiana wanted to take a larger group of counties, then Indiana might want to design legislation that would require the whole group of counties to pay their share of Indiana’s state’s taxes.
Speaker Todd Huston, who authored HB 1008, has repeatedly said that the economy of downstate Illinois would flourish under Indiana’s “low taxes, low regulatory environment, a ton of economic development already taking place.”
Moving a state line might be more palatable to Congress and to Illinois than creating a new state, which would add two Republicans to the US Senate. Although Illinois leaders dismissed the idea last month, a debt crisis could force Illinois to consider the option.
