Rock Island Today

State Rep. Tony McCombie (R-Rock Falls) stands by her call for what she sees as much-needed ethics reform in Springfield.

“I had no intention to speak today until my name was brought up in debate being accused of something that is absolutely completely false and disgusting," McCombie said, referring to a blog post she said had misquoted her. “I'm going to read for the record for my colleagues here what exactly I said.”

McCombie said she called the maps politically-driven, while adding "if you don't think that in my district, you can certainly see it across the state when you have two or four Republican House seats drawn in together and then empty seats right next to them. I think the courts will tear them apart for two reasons: not using the U.S. Census, and for how blatantly politically they are drawn.”

McCombie pointed out that Democrats relied on American Community Survey information when drawing the legislative maps instead of data provided by the U.S. Census, which is expected to be delayed this year past the state's end-of-June deadline.

"I go on further to say it was blatantly political, not transparent and completely unethical how the Democrats went about this,” McCombie said, pointing out how the ACS has a history of undercounting cities with populations lower than 60,000.

“We have to do something about ethics reform,” she said. “If we had ethics reform and people were punished for behaving this way, we wouldn’t have these issues.”