Jill L Bergin for County Board 2022

Listen to Jill's interview on Youtube, from which most of this article is written.

If elected, this would be Jill's first term as a publicly elected official. Her current understanding of County Board duties involve reporting covid numbers, coordinating recycling efforts, addressing environmental issues, and setting policies throughout the county.

Platform & Priorities

Jill believes we need to do more at the local level to address environmental issues, since the U.S. Supreme Court limited the EPA's rulemaking power (pdf) at the federal level. She would like to improve composting and recycling programs and implement a burn ban.

Jill would like to improve transparency in reporting of public health data, but does not yet know the specific changes she'd like to make. She said that COVID reporting has been dialed back and talked about people needing to be informed, so they can make healthy choices.

Macon County is separated into 5 districts after the redistricting in 2021. Previously, there were 7 districts. From each district, 3 county board members are elected. Jill believes the redistricting leads to an unfair advantage for Republican County Board Candidates that is not representative of the actual voters of Macon County. She is concerned this could direct County concerns toward the needs of a few while disenfranchising and not representing minority voters. She believes the reduced representation could lead to minorities' needs not being addressed, as well as an increase in crime.

Jill believes the three biggest priorities of voters on the political left are: the environment, equal rights, and the economy. She believes the three biggest priorities of voters on the political right are: gun rights, banning abortion, and taking away the rights of minorities (including LBTQIA+).

Jill does not have specific policy proposals at this time, though she would like to pass policies to protect the environment, to protect minorities & LGBTQIA+ folks, and to protect voting rights. Specifically she would like to overturn the redistricting.

Political Ambitions

Jill has a lot of things she would like to see changed, a lot of things she is upset about, and believes it is hard to enact change if you're not an elected official. She would like to run again in the future, but is not sure what office she would run for.

Political Experience

Jill worked for Tate & Lyle. While she was there, the company formed an environmental committee which she joined, from roughly 2010 - 2015. The committee was not related to her job there. She worked with people throughout the organization to implement recycling efforts. They added paper and plastic recycling bins to all of the buildings at the plant. They also worked with a Clinton company (she could not remember their name) and Midwest Fiber Recycling to identify and recycle other materials.

Jill's volunteer work for the Macon County Democrats began in 2018, when she became a voter registrar. She ran voter registration events, including several at Richland, and worked at a few community events to register voters.

In 2020, she helped with ballot chasing - calling candidates who chose to vote by mail and helping them fill out their ballots. Jill says some people are unsure how to properly fill out the ballot and what envelopes to use, so she helped with those issues.

She also organized poll watchers for the 2020 election and helped election day run smoothly. She worked with people from the Democratic party to ensure the elections were going okay and to report votes back to the party.

Questions from Voters

How will you protect voting rights?

• I did not ask her this question, since it was already discussed. She primarily had talked about the redistricting and wanting to reverse it.

What are your budget goals?

• "I don't really know. I don't know enough right now about how their budget works or how they allocate their money to certain things"
• "Money should be allocated to things such as the environment and public health"

What are your goals regarding taxes?

• "I don't know what they're doing right now on a tax level"
• I offered to follow up later for better answers, but I have not followed up as of writing this (August 2nd, 2022)

How will you address crime?

• Jill believes the biggest driver of crime is someone's economic situation - their basic needs not being met. She would like to bring jobs here that pay more than minimum wage and include benefits.
• "Making sure you're not leaving people behind" - in regard to her concerns about the redistricting and under-representation of certain communities.
• She is concerned that restrictions on abortion access could increase crime as well. She says "It's been proven that when you take that [abortion access] away from people, and you are forcing people to have children when they can't even afford to sustain themselves or the people that they are already responsible for ... [and] people already don't have what they need, it increases [the crime rate] ... Protecting reproductive rights is important and I feel [protecting reproductive rights] would help with crime"

Where do you get most of your news?

• Majority from the New York Times.
• If it's not NYT, then it's NPR. Primarily, she goes to the npr website where they have audio and written articles.
• Jill does not regularly consume news from politically right-leaning outlets.