Peter Hancock / Capitol News Illinois
Peter Hancock joined the Capitol News Illinois team as a reporter in January 2019.
Before that, Hancock covered Kansas state government for much of the past two decades. For the previous 4 years, Hancock had been the statehouse reporter for the Lawrence Journal-World. He provided year-round daily coverage of the Kansas Statehouse, state government, appellate courts, elections and Kansas’ congressional delegation. He previously worked for 8 years as a statehouse reporter for Kansas Public Radio, and with the Kansas Health Policy Authority and the Kansas Education Policy Report.
“As a longtime veteran of statehouse reporting in Kansas, I know how challenging it is for individual newspapers to make that kind of commitment,” Hancock said. “Capitol News Illinois offers a unique opportunity for newspapers throughout the state to pool their resources and enable a small team of reporters to deliver critical news and information about state government to communities throughout the state.
“ I covered state politics and government in Kansas for the better part of the past 20 years, working in both print and broadcast journalism. I graduated from the University of Kansas with bachelor’s degrees in political science and secondary education. Although I was born and raised in the Kansas City area, I have deep family roots in central and southern Illinois, and so coming to Springfield is a bit like coming back home.”
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Members of the public got their first chance to speak directly to state lawmakers Wednesday about a proposed set of new congressional district maps, and most of those who did were critical of the plan. -
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Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration on Thursday announced the awarding of the first $24 million in “Back to Business” grants, a program funded with federal relief aid to help businesses recover and reopen from the pandemic.
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Expressing concern that the Illinois State Board of Education might have overstepped its bounds by threatening to withhold funding from school districts that do not enforce its mask mandate, a legislative panel on Tuesday urged the agency to put its policies into formal rules.
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Democrats in the General Assembly pushed through a new set of legislative maps during a one-day special session Tuesday, although the process they used sparked the ire of Republicans and voting rights advocates alike.
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A capacity crowd packed into the Illinois State Board of Education room on Wednesday as many more stood outside the building to protest the state’s new indoor mask mandate in all public and nonpublic schools.
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