Nearly four weeks after Gov. Bruce Rauner lost his re-election bid to Democrat JB Pritzker, the two men appeared at the state’s Bicentennial celebration in Chicago, not side-by-side but acknowledging each other and agreeing on the need for bipartisanship fo move Illinois forward into the next 200 years.

State Police officials testified Monday that more forensic scientists are coming to its backlogged crime lab, but acknowledged it could take five years to get caught up, in part, because of a national shortage of experts to process crime scene evidence.

The officials faced questions at a state Public Health Committee hearing called by State Senator Patricia Van Pelt (D-Chicago), who chairs the panel. Family members of murder victims with cases stuck in the backlog also testified, putting human faces on the stack of unsolved cases.

Gov.-elect JB Pritzker may forgo giving a State of the State address next year, which would align him with other newly elected governors who have combined the traditional early-year addresses.

The grounds of the Bolingbrook Golf Club melted from white with five-day-old snow back to its former green as day wore on Saturday during the Illinois Republican Party State Central Committeeman meeting, as those inside the Taylor ballroom pondered what went wrong for their party on Nov. 6.

The 18 committeemen, plus dozens more GOP devotees, began what would become a marathon five-plus hour meeting with a remembrance of former Republican President George H.W. Bush, whose death had been announced 11 hours earlier.

But after the opening invocation and Pledge of Allegiance, the first sign the meeting might run much longer than it expected was the miniature speeches those in attendance began to give as one by one they stood up and introduced themselves. Much of the criticism was directed at state party chair and outgoing Cook County Comm. Tim Schneider.

“Tim Schneider has been a grossly ineffective state party leader,” said one woman as she alleged the Illinois GOP had withheld party support from viable Republican candidates.

The Daily Line agreed not to name speakers at the meeting unless those individuals agreed.

“There are just so many instances where there were great plans discussed and they were not implemented,” one GOP collar county chair said. “We need to stop bickering at the central committee and state level because, frankly when everybody else looks at the kind of things we fight about, I wonder that they aren’t all laughing at us.”

“I hope to hear that the Illinois GOP has now realized the error of its ways, and trying to be Democrat-lite to lure voters isn’t a winning strategy because when given the choice, Democrats will always vote for a real Democrat,” another woman said, who identified herself as a precinct committeeman.

A few who got up and spoke also complained that they had to hear about the meeting second-hand, as it was not posted on the state GOP’s website.

All the while, Schneider sat at the head of the room, taking in the criticism.

“We no longer have a governor to lead us, so it’s up to us and it’s up to me to lead this party forward,” Schneider said. “You’re never going to have to fire me. Because if I can’t do this job, I’m going to quit. But I’m not going to quit because we can win and we can achieve victory and we can do great things as an Illinois Republican Party.”

It was about then that outgoing State Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton), who narrowly lost to incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner in the March primary running far to the right of the governor, picked up her belongings and exited the room.

“I’ve got better things to do with my time to listen to that,” Ives told The Daily Line when asked why she was leaving the meeting only an hour in.

Ives has amassed support from the conservative wing of the Illinois GOP — a contingent of voters who felt betrayed by Rauner and see President Donald Trump as a better model for the Illinois Republican Party than more moderate Republicans like Schneider.

More than a few people present Saturday invoked Trump; one accused Illinois GOP leadership of not being a strong voice for Trump, while another said Trump has shown the party a path forward in electing someone who throws out the traditional election rulebook.

In May, conservatives staged a near-coup on Schneider, attempting to install Lake County GOP Chairman Mark Shaw to lead the party.

Instead, the sides reached a compromise, in which Shaw is now co-chair and in charge of “conservative and grassroots outreach” along with the Republican county chairmen’s association.

But for now, Schneider is still the head of the party, and knows it’s his job to put the two sides back together again after a major schism and even bigger loss. Schneider himself was swept up in the “Blue Wave,” he admits, as he lost his own re-election bid for Cook County Board last month in a seat he’s held since 2006.

Schneider said he did not mind the criticism.

“I thought it was an opportunity for folks to open up and let their feelings out,” Schneider told The Daily Line after the five-plus hour meeting Saturday. “I wasn’t offended by anything anyone said to me. As the chair of the Illinois Republican Party, I am the person they look to when someone goes wrong. I will take that responsibility.”

Schneider said he appreciated comments about “rebuilding” the party instead of “tearing it down,” but he knows it’s going to be a tough road, especially without Rauner’s money propping the party up anymore. But he said he believes a message can outwork money — specifically the money currently financing the Democratic Party from billionaire Gov.-elect JB Pritzker.

“There isn’t going to be that kind of money right now so what we’re going to be looking to do is have a better presence on our Facebook, more emails,” Schneider said. “We’re going to need to create a singular message…we need to speak from a singular songbook whether we’re a township trustee or a supervisor or a House member or a Senate member — all the way up and down the ticket. Speaking about the same bullet points that we are the party of families, fiscal responsibility and freedom.”

Schneider also acknowledged that Ives and her supporters aren’t going to go quietly. What will happen in two years if Schneider doesn’t follow through on plans to unite the party?

“First of all, we won’t win any seats if we don’t stop the in-fighting now,” Schneider said. “Somebody said we should just declare ourselves united. And I said, ‘that’s a smokescreen.’ Until you are united, you can’t declare that you’re united.”

Much has been said of the party’s future in the weeks following Election Day, including a post-mortem event at the City Club of Chicago midway through last month. One woman who stood up Saturday to give short remarks wondered aloud why Schneider was not there to represent the party; instead former Illinois GOP Chair Pat Brady sat on a panel with conservative talk radio host Dan Proft and Chicago Tribune editorial board member Kristen McQueary. Schneider said he wondered that, too.

Related: Illinois GOP autopsy after Blue Wave continues as focus shifts to Chicago mayoral race; After Rauner’s crushing defeat, what’s next for the Illinois Republican Party?; The Daily Line’s Aldercast: House GOP Deputy Floor Leader Tom Demmer on the Illinois Republican Party’s priorities and future

Those present sat through a numbers-heavy presentation on Republican wins and losses in 2018 — one that only certain people in the room seemed receptive to, especially in the hour before a buffet lunch. The main takeaway from the presentation was that Republicans actually did quite well bringing out their own voters. The problem for the GOP, the presenters said, was that the Democrats did much better.

Precisely 912,979 more Illinoisans voted on Nov. 6 than did when Rauner was first elected in 2014, the presenters said. Rauner only lost 61,232 votes compared with his vote total in 2014, but Pritzker gained 794,763 more votes than Gov. Pat Quinn received in 2014. It’s this gap, the presenters said, that the GOP should focus on.

One Republican complained to The Daily Line that the numbers were useless, as the person theorized the 2018 election had far more to do with the Democratic reaction to Trump in the White House than it did with Rauner’s four years in office.

After a lengthy executive session Saturday afternoon, one actionable step the party made public after the conclusion of meeting was to launch a Vision 2020 project, in which state central committeemen will travel their districts to speak with constituents in order to come up with party platform. The first phase of that vision has a late January deadline.

One issue that may not feature as prominently on that platform as in years past is longtime House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago). Though Rauner had made the alleged “corruption” of Madigan and other Democrats central to his message, Schneider admitted it’s a line that may have played itself out.

“We realize that in 2014 and 2016, the anti-Madigan message did extremely well,” he said. “It lost its luster in 2018. It clearly was overplayed. People have heard enough. They agree with the Republican Party that Madigan is the party, but give me something else now.”

In his first news conference since losing his re-election bid to Democrat JB Pritzker, Gov. Bruce Rauner on Thursday said he is “very scared for the people of Illinois” who are facing a future with total Democratic rule in state government.

A day before the clock runs out to complete an override on a bill regulating car-sharing in Illinois, the sponsors of the bill agreed to renegotiate the measure that’s quickly become a hot topic in Springfield. Meanwhile, proponents of a bill that would make Illinois the seventh state to raise the smoking age from 18 to 21 say they will try the bill for the fifth year in a row beginning in January. Also on Wednesday, lawmakers overrode Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto on legislation that would speed up the process for undocumented immigrants who’ve been victims of violent crimes to begin filing for visas.

One day after a Democratic House member said she “would like to make” a Republican member “a broth of Legionella and pump it into the water system of [his] loved one so that they can be infected,” the House GOP on Wednesday used two obscure parliamentary rules to protest the comments.

The Illinois House on Tuesday overrode Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of a bill that lifted the caps on awards from the state’s court of claims from $100,000 to $2 million in a move designed to help the families of those who died from Legionnaires’ at the Quincy Veterans’ Home.

State Rep. Marty Moylan (D-Des Plaines) told Gov.-elect JB Pritzker Tuesday to slow down with his push to legalize recreational marijuana in Illinois, making him the first Democrat to publicly throw up a roadblock. Meanwhile, the Illinois Senate on Tuesday approved a bill that would allow for the dissolution by referendum of road districts in Lake and McHenry counties.

• Moylan: marijuana won’t ‘solve all of Illinois’ problems’ — Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they’re eager to decriminalize marijuana with the support of pro-recreational pot Gov.-elect JB Pritzker, but the new governor won’t be able to count on everyone in his party. State Rep. Marty Moylan (D-Des Plaines) told The Daily Line that he’s far from the only Democrat who is opposed to the idea altogether — or against the fast track that Pritzker and other lawmakers have indicated they want to take to legalize marijuana. Moylan called for more studies on the issue, and in a statement Tuesday said the legislature should be “cautious” and that the state needs to “understand the repercussions our community will have to face.” The Democrat alleged that studies from Colorado show traffic accidents and homelessness have increased in the state since officials legalized pot in 2014. Moylan and said he is “worried that the benefits [of legalizing marijuana] will not outweigh the societal cost. Experts debate the validity and significance of those findings. On the campaign trail, Pritzker promised a boost in state revenues from legalizing the drug. A new Illinois Economic Policy Institute study estimated that decriminalizing the drug would create some 2,600 businesses and 24,000 jobs, plus tax revenue of $525 million annually, but other estimates are much lower. Moylan isn’t alone in opposing legalizing marijuana; House Republican Leader Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) has also come out against it. Moylan on Tuesday said legalizing recreational marijuana “to generate more tax money is just irresponsible. Marijuana isn’t this miracle product that will solve all of Illinois’ problems; it is a drug that has consequences.”
  
  


• Local government consolidation bill OK’d — Democrats in the Illinois Senate on Tuesday pushed through a bill that would allow residents of Lake and McHenry counties to vote to dissolve road districts in an effort to bring down Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation units of local government. The bill, HB 4637, passed over Republicans’ objections that the bill might unfairly burden other municipalities after a district was dissolved. The measure passed the House with 80 votes in April, but didn’t get a hearing in a Senate committee until the first part of veto session earlier this month. Republicans on Tuesday criticized the bill as being short-sighted, questioning what would happen if residents voted to dismantle a road district that was in debt. But State Sen. Terry Link (D-Waukegan) said he promised to work with Republican opponents on a trailer bill to fix any shortcomings. Link told The Daily Line after the vote that he wasn’t sure how many road districts in Lake and McHenry counties were indebted versus ones with assets, but said that one local road district in Lake County only had six miles of roads, and employed “umpteen” people, which wastes tax money. “This is ridiculous the amounts of local government we have in this state,” Link said. “We’re only touching the tip of the iceberg with the amount we have. I’m tired of everybody talking about it and not doing something about it…this is a step forward and I think people want consolidation.”

Gov.-elect JB Pritzker is set to announce yet another committee to advise him during his transition, while the early onslaught of winter won’t stall the end of construction projects, transportation agencies say.