After a vote in the Illinois House on a key part of then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pension relief plan in 2016, Barbara Flynn Currie did something not often seen in these times of divided, dysfunctional government. She crossed the aisle and shook hands with the three Republican lawmakers who broke ranks with the GOP and voted to override Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of a measure deferring police and fire pension payments.

That was Currie, 85, who died Thursday. She not only represented her Hyde Park district in Springfield for 40 years — 20 as majority leader and the first woman to hold that role in the Illinois General Assembly — she was a tireless promoter of active, engaged, effective government.

“Last night we lost a giant,” House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, posted on his Facebook page Friday. “Barbara Flynn Currie was more than a leader — she was a trailblazer who opened doors for generations of women in the Illinois House, many of whom continue her legacy today. … She set the standard for what it means to serve with purpose. Her impact will be felt for generations.”

Her district encompassed Hyde Park, Woodlawn, South Shore and Kenwood, and she was a vigorous proponent of liberal causes, such as prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace, reforming school funding and offering all-day kindergarten. She spearheaded a compromise on welfare reform and helped extend state contracts to minority- and female-owned businesses.

In 2009, she chaired the special 21-member bipartisan committee that recommended the impeachment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

”We stand here today because of the perfidy of one man: Rod Blagojevich,” said Currie. “To overturn the results of an election is not something that should be undertaken lightly.”

Every member of the Illinois House and Senate, save one, voted to impeach.

With women making up a record 32% of state legislatures across the country, it might be difficult to remember the male world that Currie entered. When she was elected in 1978, fewer than 11% of Springfield lawmakers were women. When she announced her retirement in 2017, that figure was more than a third, and in 2025 the Illinois Legislature was 42% female.

Then-House Speaker Michael Madigan’s decision to name her as majority leader in 1997 was unexpected: Downstate Democrats felt they had a hereditary right to the position, didn’t like the powerful post to pass to a Chicagoan, a woman, and perhaps worst of all, a liberal. Women across the spectrum saw it as a milestone.

”Republican women gave me flowers,” Currie later recalled. “Secretaries and staff in the Capitol were thrilled. One of my girlfriends nearly ran her car off the road. The depth of excitement was really quite thrilling.”

Still, some of Currie’s supporters looked askance at her playing ball with Madigan.

”To them, Currie was a sellout for taking the appointment from the hated machine politician Madigan,” Rich Miller of Capitol Fax wrote. “It never occurred to most of them that Currie’s new position would give their viewpoints an important new seat at the grown-ups table.”

Among the causes she promoted were gun control and abolishing the death penalty.

Barbara Flynn was born in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, the daughter of Francis and Elsie Flynn. When she was 7, her family moved to the South Side, where she attended St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic School and the University of Chicago Lab High School. Her mother was a schoolteacher, and her father taught social work at the University of Chicago, where she studied before dropping out to marry David Park Currie in 1960. Eventually she returned and received her bachelor’s degree in 1968 and master’s degree in 1973, both in political science.

She worked as vice president for the Chicago League of Women Voters from 1965 to 1969. Later, she taught government at DePaul University and was an assistant study director at the National Opinion Research Center.

Currie was elected to the Illinois General Assembly’s 24th District in 1978; her district changed to the 26th District in 1983 and the 25th in 1993.

“Barbara Currie has tackled many, many complex issues with a keen intellect, fairness and balance,” Madigan said when she announced her retirement in 2017, opting to not seek reelection in 2018.

Her husband, a revered legal scholar and teacher, died in 2007.

Survivors include two children, Stephen and Margaret, and four grandchildren.

For the skinny British musician, it was an unassuming trip to visit his sister’s family in September 1963 in Benton, Illinois.

He went camping. He jammed with local musicians. He drank root beer delivered on roller skates. He shopped for records. He bought a guitar. Then he went home.

The next time people in Benton saw George Harrison, it was with 73 million others who tuned in to watch his band, the Beatles, make their U.S. debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show” about four months later. The British Invasion, which changed popular music and American culture, was underway.

Now, the house where Harrison and his brother Peter stayed in Benton, 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of St. Louis, is for sale.

You’ll forgive Beatles fans if they’re worried about its future. In 1995, the house at 113 McCann Street had a date with the wrecking ball. Activists, including Harrison’s sister, Louise Harrison Caldwell, who had moved away in the late 1960s, stepped in to save it.

Coal mining brought the family of Harrison’s sister to Benton

Previously known for hosting the state’s last public hanging in 1928, Benton, population 6,700, was built on Southern Illinois’ rich veins of coal. Louise Caldwell moved to town when her husband, a mining engineer, got a job in what was then a thriving industry.

The house they chose is a five-bedroom bungalow built in 1935 with a brick facade across its wide front porch.

In the mid-1990s, a state agency bought the house from a subsequent owner with plans to flatten it for parking. Mega-fan Robert Bartel of Springfield, a Beatles author and documentarian, alerted the media and Fab Four loyalists.

Local investors repurchased it from the state and opened the Hard Day’s Nite Bed and Breakfast, featuring the couch Harrison traded guitar licks on and stacks of other loaned Beatles memorabilia, including a bevy from Bartel.

The bed-and-breakfast closed in 2010. Benton resident Grady Adams has since operated it as regular bed-and-bath apartments but now wants to sell, listing it for $105,000. Brian Calcaterra, Benton’s director of economic development, suggested the city draft an ordinance to protect the house from demolition by a new owner, but Benton Mayor Lee Messersmith said the city council has not discussed the matter.

“Of course, if it doesn’t get demo’d, I would prefer that,” Adams said.

Interest in reviving the bed-and-breakfast is unclear

Whether there’s interest — or energy — to return the McCann Street house to its Beatles glory is up for debate.

Jim Kirkpatrick of Creal Springs, author of “Before He Was Fab,” a recollection of Harrison’s visit which has been optioned for a movie, has had at least one encouraging conversation with someone considering purchase.

Benton business owner Robert Rea, a historian who helped save the Beatles house three decades ago, said the obsession has faded.

“When we did this (in 1995), the world went crazy because they thought, ‘George is going to come, he’s going to save the house,’” Rea said. “And I’m just being honest with you, maybe I’m missing it or something, but that momentum is not here.”

Harrison’s last chance to walk the streets in anonymity

Harrison’s trip was perhaps the last time the musician could enjoy obscurity. He camped in Shawnee National Forest. He sat in with a popular local group when they played a nearby Veterans of Foreign Wars hall. The band’s leader took him to a drive-in restaurant with carhops on skates, where he guzzled root beer for the first time.

At a record store on Benton’s downtown square, Harrison bought a pile of vinyl. Included was James Ray’s R&B single, “I’ve Got My Mind Set on You,” Harrison’s 1987 cover of which went to No. 1.

He also bought a Rickenbacker 425 guitar like the one bandmate John Lennon had. Harrison played the guitar a month later when the Beatles recorded “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” It sold at auction in 2014 for $675,000.

One day during Harrison’s visit, he and Caldwell dropped by WFRX radio, where then-17-year-old Marcia Schafer Raubach had a Saturday afternoon teen program. Harrison gave her a copy of “She Loves You,” which he told her had just hit the top of the British charts.

Raubach interviewed Harrison on the air, the first for a Beatle in America, and played the 45, which she still has. She said it sounded different than the songs American teens were then punching up on jukeboxes. But it didn’t make an impression on her audience.

Despite his longish hair in a land of crew cuts, Raubach found Harrison, dressed in a crisp white shirt, jeans and sandals, “very clean cut, he was personable and mannerly and they call him the ‘quiet Beatle’ — well, he was.”

“If I had known what they were going to become, I would have handled that differently,” Raubach, now 79, said. “It’s still amazing that he even came here and that I met him. I think he really liked Southern Illinois.”

Harrison never returned to Benton, though, dying in 2001 at 58. Caldwell was 91 when she died in 2023.

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• Key insight: The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is moving to preempt Illinois’ tax-and-tip swipe fee ban before it takes effect July 1, 2026.
• Supporting data: The draft interim final rule was sent to the Office of Management and Budget for approval and would take effect immediately once OMB has greenlighted the rule.
• Forward look: The rule could be issued within weeks and could potentially add a new wrinkle into ongoing litigation over the state law.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency this week sent a draft rule to the Office of Management and Budget that would preempt an Illinois state law banning the collection of interchange fees on taxes and tips.
A notice announcing the rule‘s consideration appeared on OMB’s website, though the contents of the draft rule were not disclosed. Because it is an interim final rule, the rule would immediately go into effect at the outset of the public comment period, but could be updated to incorporate feedback. 

Jaret Seiberg, policy analyst at TD Cowen said the rule’s consideration could take time. 

“OMB reviews can vary significantly with some taking days and others months,” Seiberg wrote. “In this case, we expect an expedited review with the agency able to issue the interim final rule within a few weeks.”

Banks charge interchange fees — also known as swipe fees — every time a credit card is used, and those fees are justified as necessary to pay for fraud prevention, the cost of processing the transaction and offsetting the costs of credit card rewards. The fees are set by the card networks like Visa or Mastercard and often are around 2-3% of a transaction. Merchants paid nearly $200 billion in such fees last year.

Critics of interchange fees, such as Eric Cohen, founder & CEO of Merchant Advocate, say payment systems are opaque, making it impossible to know what interchange fees they’re charged on any given transaction. He argued in a recent piece for American Banker that interchange fees no longer fit the system they were originally designed for.

The Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, signed into law by Governor J.B. Pritzker in 2024, would bar banks and their affiliated card networks from levying such fees on the state sales tax and gratuity portions of transactions, with state officials saying merchants should not be charged for processing non-revenue. 

Shortly after the law’s passage in 2024, the American Bankers Association, America’s Credit Unions, Illinois Bankers Association and Illinois Credit Union League sued Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to block the measure, saying the rule is technically unworkable, acts as a price control and could cost issuers millions. The state has subsequently moved to delay the law’s implementation for a year. A federal judge ruled in February to uphold the law; plaintiffs have appealed the district court’s ruling, and a ruling on that appeal is expected by mid-June. 

The OCC has also filed amicus briefs backing the plaintiffs’ case, arguing the law should be blocked because it conflicts with federal banking law and would significantly interfere with national banks’ ability to earn money from card transactions. Ten former OCC officials also filed a brief supporting the plaintiffs.

The Illinois Retail Merchants Association responded to the OCC’s notice of the draft interim final rule with concern, saying the move prioritizes banks’ bottom lines over bringing down costs from merchants and consumers.

“This rushed announcement by the federal government to usurp Illinois law is unprecedented, prioritizing the bottom line of banks and credit card companies over meaningful relief for businesses and consumers. While the office has failed to explain their reasoning or allow public review, it’s clear the goal is an end-run around the legal process after a judge recently upheld the law,” said Rob Karr, president and CEO of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association. “Banks, credit card companies and credit card processors are doing all they can to preserve an uncompetitive and unfair system, including spending millions of dollars on ads spreading falsehoods and threatening to cause chaos for consumers. It’s time to end their reign over our pocketbooks.”

Seiberg says he expects more litigation in the future, but that preemption cases often go the agency’s way. The entrance of the OCC rulemaking could lead the appeals court currently reviewing banks’ challenge to the Illinois law to send the case back to the lower court to reconsider the impact of the rule on the overall case. 

“We expect Illinois will challenge the OCC’s preemption order in court,” Seiberg wrote in a research note. “If the Illinois law survives legal challenge, then it is only a matter of time before most other states adopt similar policies. It also likely encourages states to seek other limits on interchange fees using the same legal reasoning that these fees are set by networks rather than banks.”