Thanks to the many librarians who responded; surely Illinois must be a good place to be a law librarian with such generous and responsive colleagues.
Here's a summary of what I received, with duplicates removed:
Depending on the age of the bill, you may wish to try the Illinois General Assembly home page www.legis.state.il.us If my memory serves me right they have the Senate & House floor debates from the last several general assemlies. If the bill is older, you may call the State of Illinois to receive Floor debates: house: 217.782.4818 Senate: 217.782.6653 They may also be able to direct you further. The Illinois State Library may also be able to help http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/library/home.html Too, a little used trick is to call the sponsors of the bill and speak with their staff. They often can give insight into the language / intent of a bill. Of course, this only works if it's relatively recent or if it was highly constroversial.
The IL state law library has a nice piece on doing IL leg hist on its
website. If it's a recent provision, you can search the debate
transcripts via the IL General Assembly site. For older provisions, try
the IL Legislative Reference Bureau. Their ph# should be on the IL
General Assembly site.
The Illinois Secretary of State, Index Department will provide your
legislative history and certify the copy. The direct phone number in
Springfield is (217) 557-6088. The charge is $.50 per page.
This site gives contact information. The Index Department mentioned toward the bottom of the page only charges $.50 per page and I don't think they charge for their time.
http://www.state.il.us/court/SupremeCourt/Library_Research.htm
Have you tried this site first? It is a list of legislative history guides that document how to get the legislative history and there are several for Illinois. The best part of this site is that it refers you to legislative history guides prepared by experts from that state. I know you wanted a service, but thought it might help.
http://www.law.indiana.edu/library/services/sta_leg.shtml#IL
[Paraphrase of a telephone message:]
You can contact the IL legislature for transcripts of floor debates, which is mainly what comprises Legislative History in Illinois. that took place in October 1971 or later. You need the bill number which might be obtained from Laws of Illinois, which contains the session laws. The annotated code section on Westlaw should also have the bill number. For House transcripts, call 217-782-4818. For Senate transcripts call 217-782-6653. For audiotapes of Committee Hearings call 217-782-8223.
Dan Cunningham
Research Librarian
Reed Smith LLP
1999 Harrison St.
Oakland CA 94612
Ph: 510-466-6194
Fax: 510-273-8832
dcunningham@reedsmith.com
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