HR0066 95TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0066 LRB095 05394 MST 25483 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the House of Representatives of the State of Illinois wish to honor John Bouman on being named president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law on January 1, 2007; and

WHEREAS, The Shriver Center was established in 1967 to champion law and policy for low-income people; John Bouman joined as the center's director of advocacy in May 1996 after 21 years at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago; and

WHEREAS, John Bouman has worked in several Chicago neighborhoods and has held a position as a specialist in the Foundation's Elderly Law project; he has won numerous awards for his career and accomplishments in antipoverty legal and advocacy work including the John Minor Wisdom Award from the Litigation Section of the American Bar Association in January of 1998 and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association's Kutak-Dodds award in May of 1998; he is recognized for being one of the most effective and thoughtful public benefits advocates in the country and is credited by many for his design and implementation of Illinois's new welfare law in 1997; and

WHEREAS, He recently has led the successful statewide effort to create the FamilyCare program to provide health insurance to up to 300,000 working poor parents of minor children; and

WHEREAS, He is a 1975 graduate of Valparaiso University School of Law; he is a founding and current member of the steering committee of the National Transitional Jobs Network and is a member of the Chicago Council of Lawyers and the Chicago Bar Association; and

WHEREAS, John Bouman is one of the nation's leading policy advocates on welfare and economic security, exhibiting a remarkable style that has won major victories for the poor in the era of dramatic welfare reform; his creative ideas on how government policy should assist people to reach their highest aspirations has allowed thousands of poor and low-income people to move into the workforce and escape poverty; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-FIFTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we congratulate John Bouman on being named president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to Mr. Bouman as an expression of our esteem.