Blog #2

Although I am technically living in Normal right now, I still call Rolling Meadows my home, which means I am a resident of Cook County.  Honestly, I feel like Chicago should have its own county because it is so different from the suburbs.  Cook County feels so big to me and I have no idea what is going on politically in it (at least most of the time).  Really, the only thing I knew about it government wise was that Carolyn H. Krause was the 66th District State Representative. The General Assembly Scholarship has paid for my tuition for the last two years thanks to her office.  

According to the 2005 census statistics, Cook County has a population of approximately 5.3 million people, making it the second most populous county in the country.  As a resident of Rolling Meadows, within Cook County, that would make Dan Kotowski of the 33rd district my state senator, and Mark Walker of the 66th district my state representative.

Senator Dan Kotowski is a Democrat that has been serving since 2007.  He has supported at least 40 bills, which included hospice care for veterans and Child-Safe Chemicals Act.  Recently, Senator Kotowski has been in the news for trying to pass a measure that would change the pensions for lawmakers.  Currently, lawmakers receive pensions bases on their last day's salary.  This means they are getting higher paying jobs and then retiring.  Rather, he wants it more like the state workers' pensions which are based on the average of the last four years of pay.

Representative Mark Walker is a Democrat and has been serving since 2009.  I was all excited when he went into office because I was afraid my luck had run out with winning the scholarship twice with Carolyn Krause.  Turns out he was no longer choosing to have the General Assembly Scholarship because of budget cuts.  So, I am not the biggest fan of him so far.  Although he has only been in office for a few months, he has already supported over 20 bills, most of them involving businesses.  Also, when I Googled him, there was more information on other Mark Walkers than the representative.  I guess he is still pretty new to the system!