Glen Carbon, IL - In an effort to make Illinois appear unanimously in support of a Presidential Library for Barack Obama, House Democrats violated their own Illinois General Assembly rules today by pushing the yes button and voting on behalf of five legislators not in attendance at today's subject matter only hearing. The subject matter only hearing was to simply discuss a funding mechanism for the Obama Presidential Library and no vote was to be permitted under House Rules.

"I'm not a member of the Executive Committee and the Democrats chose to vote on my behalf, which is illegal," said Rep. Dwight Kay. "What happened today is criminal and someone should be held accountable. This is typical Chicago style politics at work. My constituents elected me to vote for them, my constituents didn't elect the Chicago politician(s) who stole my vote by voting on my behalf."

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On Wednesday, March 16th Illinois State Representative Dwight Kay (R-Glen Carbon) substituted for Representative Joe Sosnowski (R-Rockford) to serve on the House Executive Committee hearing in Chicago to discuss gaming expansion in Illinois. Rep. Kay participated in the hearing to express his opposition to an amendment which would exclude Fairmont Race Track from the gaming bill discussed in committee Wednesday. After the hearing in Chicago, Rep. Kay traveled back to his legislative district nearly 300 miles south of Chicago and no longer was a substituted member on the Executive Committee nor could he possibly be present to vote on the legislation to spend $100 million taxpayer dollars on the Presidential Library.

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Rep. Kay added, "The Chicago Democrats knew I wouldn't support spending $100 million that we don't have on a Presidential Library so they decided to break the law by casting a vote on my behalf. It was illegal to vote on legislation because the committee told the public that today's hearing was subject matter only, meaning a vote would not be taken. We need to pay our unpaid bills owed to schools, doctors, hospitals and pay Illinois residents' tax returns before we spend $100 million on a library that can easily be built with private funds."

Today Illinois House Democrats broke the public's trust. They broke their own crafted House Rules. Today's vote on House Bill 6010 to build Obama's Presidential Library and voting on behalf of the legislators is viewed to be illegal.

 Disclaimer: The opinions in this article in no way represent the opinions of Riverbender.com.

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