A Repeat: Peg Breslin Last House Member Tossed Out in 1977, Appointed to Same Seat within Days

This article was run first about two months ago, however, considering that Derrick Smith is about to be kicked out of the Illinois House, it seems appropriate to remind folks the last one to be forced from the floor.

The biography Peg Breslin posted on the Appellate Court web site. Click to enlarge.

So far I haven’t seen former State Rep. and Appellate Court Justice Peg Breslin’s name in any of the stories about the “alleged” bribe-taking State Rep. Derrick Smith.

“The last Illinois House member expelled was in 1905, when representatives voted, 121-13, to oust Frank D. Comerford. According to the allegation at the time, Comerford besmirched the good name of his colleagues by saying publicly that corruption among lawmakers was rampant,” the Associated Press reported.

in 1977 she won a House seat where she grew up.

But, at the time she ran, she was living in Chicago.

A challenge was filed to her being in the Illinois House of Representatives.

She argued she was a resident in her district because she had her meat in the freezer.

She was kicked out of the House.

A lot of us took the challenge quite seriously and were astonished to see her quickly selected by her district’s State Representative Committeemen to replace, hold on, herself.

The whole process had been a waste of time and energy.

Breslin is known as the one who sponsored the passage of the Compensation Review Board. It is a way that legislators and other elected officials can get annual pay raises unless both houses specifically reject them in language which is exactly the same.

Indeed, in the 1990′s, when Breslin came back to lobby her former colleagues for a judicial pay raise, from the podium she pointedly reminded House members that she had sponsored the law that relieved them of the need to go on the public record with a vote to increase their own salaries.

She didn’t make the “expelled” story, because she was “excluded.”

Ah, lawyers.

And she got a good pension.


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