33 IL Counties Could Join IN: 'We Welcome Our Neighbors,' Hoosier Speaker Says

SPRINGFIELD, IL — The 33 Illinois counties that have expressed interest in leaving the state could be absorbed by Indiana after The Hoosier State’s legislature voted last week to establish a commission to evaluate redrawing state lines.

"We welcome our neighbors in Illinois seeking lower taxes and more opportunity to join us in the Hoosier state,” said Indiana House of Representatives Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, who wrote the act, in a news release. “House Enrolled Act 1008 starts that conversation and I'm eager to see it become law."

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, plans to sign the measure, spokesman Griffin Reid said Friday. Braun will then face a Sept. 1 deadline to schedule the commission's initial meeting.

In the last five years, voters in 33 Illinois counties have approved ballot measures asking if they want to consider separating from Cook County to form a new state.

A change in state boundaries would need approval from Illinois and the U.S. Congress. A bill in Illinois directing Gov. JB Pritzker to appoint five members to the boundary adjustment commission is sponsored by state Rep. Brad Halbrook, R-Shelbyville, but has not yet left the Rules Committee, to which is was referred in late January.

"It's a stunt, it's not going to happen,” Pritzker, a Democrat, said of a possible change in state lines, according to a video posted on social media in January by Heartland Signal.

“But I'll just say that Indiana is a low-wage state that doesn't protect workers, a state that does not provide health care for people when they're in need. And so I don't think that it's very attractive for anybody in Illinois, where wages are higher, where the standard of living is higher and where we do provide health care for people who are in need.”

Organizers behind the effort for some counties to leave Illinois seem to agree their plans don’t involve joining Indiana, with The State Journal-Register reporting that G.H. Merritt of the nonprofit New Illinois and Loret Newlin of the Illinois Separation Movement both said the undertaking was about forming a new state.

There have been no major state boundary changes since the Civil War era, when some Virginia counties broke away to form West Virginia.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.