Posted by Barton Lorimor

Population numbers to be used across the country for state-level redistricting were officially completed Thursday, according to U.S. Census Bureau director Robert Groves.

This link will take you to an interactive map that allows you to see a population breakdown by county.

Subscribers have known for a few weeks that officials in Illinois have had most of the numbers available to them and have been able to determine which districts gained or lost population. Without getting too specific, many legislative districts in Cook County suffered big losses according to last year’s decadal headcount.

The Senate Redistricting Committee, chaired by Sen. Kwame Raoul, will host it’s first of at least four public input hearings at noon in Room C600 of the Bilandic Building in Chicago. Other hearings include…

April 6, 2011 in Springfield
April 16, 2011 in Kankakee
April 16, 2011 in Peoria
April 19, 2011 in Cicero

* The Daily Herald’s editorial board went off on the Senate Democrats today for not scheduling any public hearings in their circulation area…

Census figures show most of the population growth in Illinois has been in the Northwest and West suburbs, but there will be no hearings here. Senate Republicans complained about that.

“I hope that is not a precursor for how the Democrats treat suburbia in drawing the map,” state Sen. Kirk Dillard, a Hinsdale Republican, told Daily Herald staff writer Jeff Englehardt.

We’ve watched these processes many times over the decades. Let’s quit kidding around. The process is a charade and openness is not a byproduct. We’d be surprised if several versions of maps designed to do whatever is legally possible to preserve Democratic majority power weren’t already drawn. And again, no fooling. If Republicans were in the majority, we’re confident they’d be doing the same thing. This is all about raw political power, controlling and preserving it at any cost.

Raoul has said he plans to schedule additional hearings, so the suburbs might be part of the to-be-announced gatherings. Areas south of Interstate 72, including Metro east, which saw population growth since 2000, are also not on this round of hearings. The 96th General Assembly version of the committee met as far south as Carbondale when it was considering amendments to the redistricting process.

*** 5:12 p.m. ***
I just spoke to a few sources in the Senate Democrats. They said the Committee still intends to schedule future hearings, though specifics are unknown at this time. In response to the DH’s editorial, one of them reminded us that a lot of growth took place in the southern suburbs, such as Aurora. It sounds like there is definitely more to come.

On a related note…

While still the country’s third largest city, Chicago was the only one among the top 10 cities in 2010 to have lost population over the previous decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Likewise, Cook County, the nation’s second most populous county after Los Angeles, is the only one of 2010’s 10 largest counties to have lost population since the 2000 census. Chicago lost about 200,000 residents in the past 10 years and Cook County was down by 182,000. […]

But Kendall County was the fastest-growing county in the country, more than doubling its population to 114,736 during the past decade, a 110 percent boost. And Plainfield was the sixth fastest-growing town with a population of more than 10,000, tripling its population to 39,581.