Email addresses and the Illinois General Assembly

Why is it that not one of the 59 Illinois Senators has a published email address?

Recently, I began building a database of the 59 Illinois Senators. As I viewed their profiles on www.ilga.gov, I found District and Capitol addresses and phone numbers. I found NO email addresses.

Actually, I did not find District addresses and phone numbers for all of them. For some, some portion of the information was missing.

For one of them, there was no address, telephone or email contact information. Illinois Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D-4) publishes NO contact information. Nice, huh? I guess she just sucks up her pay and never has to worry about constituent service.

If you think Illinois Senators should publish complete contact information including an email address, call your Senator today and say so.

Email communication is nice, because you can send it when you want to and you know they can read it when they want to. If yours is about normal State business ("normal" may not be the right word in Illinois) and not urgent, then you can hope your elected representative will read it (or his staff will) and respond in a timely manner.

If you want a reply, I suggest requesting it. But that doesn't mean you'll get it. Ask for a reply by a certain date. Allow enough time for any research and reply. If you don't get a reply by that date, then follow up the next day and ask why you didn't get a reply. And set a new date by which you expect a reply.