The Illinois Centennial Memorial Column, located in the Logan Square community, was built in 1918 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Illinois’ statehood. The monument was designed by Henry Bacon, the famous architect of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. (Photo taken by a Logan Square resident)

A search party may soon be needed to find planners for the state’s bicentennial celebration.

Twenty-one months from a party 200 years in the making and the state has yet to even start the planning process. To say the milestone is not on the state’s radar at this point is an understatement.

The Illinois Bicentennial Commission’s Facebook page has not had a new post since Feb. 3, 2015 and has a whopping 350 likes at this point.

Not only has the Bicentennial Commission failed to even meet yet, but also almost half of the panel’s 44 positions are still unfilled. Twenty of the commission’s seats are vacant. Appointments allocated to everyone from the Speaker of the Illinois House to the mayors of Springfield and Chicago to Illinois Arts Council have not been filled.

Commission activity has been so dormant that one individual on the panel didn’t even know she had been appointed a member.

Tracy Baim, publisher and executive editor of the Windy City Media Group in Chicago, said she had no knowledge of being named to the panel, when contacted by Chronicle Media.

“I did not agree to it. I have not been contacted. I have never received any information,” said Baim, who is a member of the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame for her journalism work on behalf of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

Baim said the only other person with the same name she has heard of lives in Connecticut so she assumes that she is the Tracy Baim on the panel.

“I wonder if they were throwing names around and it somehow got to be appointments,” a surprised Baim said.

Jim Nowlan, a retired senior fellow at the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs, said the lack of movement in mapping out plans for the state’s bicentennial is disconcerting.

“Nothing is happening and that frustrates a lot of us who have affection for the state of Illinois,” Nowlan said. “Several of us have tried to arrange a meeting with the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, where the Bicentennial Commission resides.”

Former Gov. Pat Quinn appointed 23 people to the commission in January 2015. The only other appointment was one by House Minority Leader Jim Durkin.

Nowlan, a former state representative and running mate with Gov. Richard Ogilvie in his unsuccessful bid for re-election in 1972, said with the commission not meeting and any state funding for bicentennial activities in question, private efforts might be launched.

“Some on the outside have begun a grassroots effort to create a privately financed group to organize and publicize the bicentennial,” Nowlan said

Indiana is in the middle of its bicentennial celebration. Perry Hammock, executive director of the 2016 Indiana Bicentennial Commission, said that commission has met every six weeks since January 2012.

He said there is no right amount of time for planning bicentennial events.

“It is hard to answer ‘How long does it take?’” Hammock said. “If you have less lead time, you need more intensity.”

He said he recently got a call from a representative for Texas’s 200^th birthday celebration who was wondering how Indiana set up its legacy projects. Texas’ bicentennial is not for 20 years.

Hammock noted Indiana is conducting 1,200 projects all around the state to commemorate its bicentennial.

“A big decision we made is that the celebration would be grassroots, not from the state capital,” Hammock said. “We wanted to make sure our 6.5 million Hoosiers were offered activities close to where they live, close to where they work.”

He said with the tough economic times, states are looking for private support in bicentennial efforts. When you talk about sponsors, that gets into funding cycles and that all takes time, Hammock said.

He said the horse is not out of the barn yet by any means for Illinois’ bicentennial celebration.

“When the time is right, people will rise up,” Hammock said.

— State’s bicentennial planning nowhere to be seen —