A clear winner has yet to emerge in the race for Illinois state treasurer, and the margin is so close that the candidates are already preparing for a possible recount.

Here’s the link in the Arlington Daily Herald.

Former U.S. Rep. Lane Evans of Illinois died late Wednesday after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, said his legal guardian, Mike Malmstrom. Evans was 63.

Malmstrom, who served on the Rock Island Democrat’s staff, said Evans  died at a nursing home in East Moline, where he had been living for nearly two years.

Evans was a partner in a private legal aid service in Rock Island when he was elected to the House in 1982. He served in Congress until 2006.

Evans served in the Marines from 1969 to 1971 and then got a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington.

Rep. Cheri Bustos said Evans “represented everything that is right about public service. He was a champion for our region in the halls of Congress and a strong advocate for veterans and working families across the country. Lane will be sorely missed by all who he touched, but his legacy of service will never be forgotten.”

Sen. Dick Durbin said Illinois “lost one of its kindest, most caring public servants.”

“Lane told me years later that it was during a joint appearance in 1996 at a Labor Day parade in Galesburg that he first felt the numbing in his hand, which led to his Parkinson’s diagnosis: a disease that trapped his body but never restrained his great spirit,” Durbin said. “Thank heavens for Lane Evans.”

INA, Ill.  – Time is running short to prepare for your Illinois Concealed Carry license before the end of the year. Rend Lake College has two classes open on Nov. 8-9 and Dec. 6-7 on the Ina campus.

The two-day sessions last from 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. both days at RLC. The first day is lecture-based, focusing on safety, marksmanship, cleaning, and loading and unloading. Firearms are not allowed during day one of the training course. On day two, attendees will practice shooting while learning about weapon handling and state and federal laws at the RLC Shooting Range. Everyone is asked to bring two boxes of unopened factory ammunition to Sunday’s class.

To qualify for licensure, attendees must achieve 70 percent accuracy in a live fire qualification of 30 rounds at five, seven, and 10 yards. A qualifying shot consists of a shot placed inside the seven ring of a B-27 target. You must be at least 21 years old to qualify. Also required for licensure is a valid FOID card and driver’s license.

Concealed Carry courses at Rend Lake College cost $150 for in-state students and $200 for out-of-state students. For more information, contact the RLC Community and Corporate Education Division at 618-437-5321, Ext. 1714, or smithst@rlc.edu.

From the Chicago Tribune.

An obscure arm of state government cleared the way Thursday for oil and gas drillers to apply for permits to begin fracking in Illinois.

The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules moved forward without comment regulations that govern hydraulic fracturing, a controversial drilling process that injects water, chemicals and sand at high pressure into shale rock to unleash oil and gas.

The final rules remain secret. They aren’t expected to be made public until they are published in the Illinois Register. That is expected to occur by Nov. 15.

The process of writing the regulations governing fracking has been controversial. The first draft rules proposed by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources were criticized by environmentalists as being too loose in dealing with issues ranging from waste water and safety A second draft of rules was attacked by oil and gas representatives as being too restrictive; some energy companies suggested that fracking might not occur in Illinois if the rules weren’t relaxed.

Some environmentalists from Southern Illinois, where fracking most likely would occur and attended Thursday’s meeting, were not pleased the rules have been approved..

“We will resist this with our bodies, our hearts and our minds. We will block this, we will chain ourselves to trucks,” said Braze Smith, an organic farmer who traveled six hours from Union County to be at the hearing.

People downstate have been pushing for fracking because they believe it will bring tax dollars to counties, create jobs and bring money to cash-strapped landowners.

In fact, landowners in Wayne County recently filed suit against Marc Miller, director of the state Department of Natural Resources, and Gov. Pat Quinn, claiming the state’s delay in issuing fracking permits is akin to an illegal land grab.

The road to finish the fracking rules has been long and tortured.

After the law passed and the Department of Natural Resources submitted its first proposed draft rules a year ago, environmentalists were outraged. Hundreds packed hearings; some 30,000 comments were filed about the rules, many of them critical.

Afterward, the Department of Natural Resources submitted a second draft of proposed rules, which oil and gas companies said were so restrictive that they doubted companies would go forward with fracking.

“Our hope is that (the rules committee) rolled back on some of the changes made on the second draft that we think went above and beyond the statute,” said Mark Denzler, vice president of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association and spokesman for a broad coalition of businesses that support fracking.”Their mode is questioning,” Denzler said of the committee’s role. “They push, they prod, they poke.”