Annazette Collins
Encyclopedia
Annazette Collins is a Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 member of the Illinois State Senate, representing the 5th district since 2011, She previously served in the Illinois House of Representatives
Illinois House of Representatives
The Illinois House of Representatives is the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Illinois. The body was created by the first Illinois Constitution adopted in 1818. The state House of Representatives is made of 118 representatives elected from...

 representing the 10th District from 2001 to 2011.

Early life

Collins earned her undergraduate degree in sociology and her master’s in Criminal Justice from Chicago State University
Chicago State University
Chicago State University is a state university of the U.S. state of Illinois, located in Chicago.-History:Cook County Normal School was founded in 1867, largely through the initiative of John F. Eberhart, the Commissioner of Schools for Cook County...

.

Public service

Prior to her election as state representative, Collins held various positions in social services and criminal justice agencies. Collins worked as an Administrator of the Chicago Board of Education, a Public Service Administrator for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Cook County
Cook County, Illinois
Cook County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois, with its county seat in Chicago. It is the second most populous county in the United States after Los Angeles County. The county has 5,194,675 residents, which is 40.5 percent of all Illinois residents. Cook County's population is larger than...

 Social Services, Probation Department, and a Correctional Officer with the Bureau of Prisons.

State Representative

Collins lists her legislative priorities as improving education, expanding access to quality health care, raising the age of majority for juveniles and reforming juvenile justice system.

Ms. Collins co-sponsored FamilyCare, which allows working parents of KidCare-eligible children, to have access to state subsidized heath care. Collins worked on legislation to allow patients to sue HMO’s for harmful and delayed medical procedures.

Collins worked to move children out of state custody into family environments whenever possible. She was the chief sponsor of adoption reform legislation allowing godparents and second cousins to adopt children in the custody of DCFS.

Controversy

In July 2008, the Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

 State Board of Elections
Board of elections
A board of elections is a body of officials designated to administer elections. U.S. states often have boards of elections, as do some municipalities, such as New York City....

 fined Collins' campaign
Political campaign
A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, wherein representatives are chosen or referendums are decided...

 committee
Committee
A committee is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole"...

 $20,000 and ordered her to issue an apology for filing political finance reports from 2005 to 2007 that reflected the raising, but not spending, of campaign money. The board's orders stemmed from a complaint filed by the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform indicating a lack of contributions or expenditures on her state-mandated campaign disclosure. Collins' campaign committee has corrected 18 of its previously filed reports after the complaint was filed.

Personal life

Representative Collins is married to Keith Langston and they have two daughters, Angelique Nicole and Taylor Kourtnie.

She was robbed at gunpoint by a masked man on Chicago's South Side on November 15, 2001 while walking to her mother's home.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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