 Only in Illinois.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan is shaking up Springfield with her own political
play after sitting on the sidelines throughout most of Illinois’ 18-month long
budget battle. Her office filed court papers Jan. 26 demanding the state stop
cutting paychecks to tens of thousands of state workers.
The precedent
In the absence of a state budget, state-worker salaries have been funded under a
2015 court order from a St. Clair County judge.
But in March 2016, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that
thousands of state government workers were not entitled to back-pay raises owed
to them because the General Assembly never appropriated those funds. That ruling
set the precedent to allow Madigan to say that the 2015 court order should be
removed. But the attorney general hasn’t exercised the Illinois Supreme Court’s
precedent until now.
“While initially intended to avoid the risk of a state government shutdown as
the Governor and General Assembly continued to negotiate a budget, the court’s
order has removed any imperative for the executive and legislative branches to
fulfill their basic constitutional obligations and resolve their budget
impasse,” Madigan’s office told the court,” Madigan’s office said.
“Indeed, the partial appropriations legislation that was enacted to fund state
government operations for the first half of Fiscal Year 2017 did not include
authorization for payment of state employee wages. Instead, it rested on the
explicit assumption that this court’s temporary order would continue to require
the payment of state employees’ wages.”
What happens next
The 2016 court ruling puts the attorney general in a position to force the state
to stop paying workers, since lawmakers haven’t passed a bill funding
state-worker salaries. If the attorney general gets her way, state workers will
go without pay until the General Assembly passes an appropriations bill. This
could put pressure on state lawmakers to pass another unsustainable state budget
like the proposal gaining traction in the Senate, which would subject
Illinoisans to massive tax hikes with no real reform, long the priority of Lisa
Madigan’s father, House Speaker Mike Madigan.
But the push to force through the Senate’s budget plan is based on a false
choice: Lawmakers don’t have to pass this proposal to ensure state workers get
paid.
Instead, the General Assembly could pass a clean appropriations bill for
state-worker pay, rather than a deal as part of an increasingly complex and
unwieldy budget package now taking form in the Illinois Senate.
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 Politicians get paid
While state workers could go without pay, lawmakers would still take
home their paychecks (albeit delayed by the comptroller’s office).
That’s because of a law rammed through the General Assembly in 2014
under the watchful eye of the speaker.
Speaker Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton shepherded a law
through the General Assembly exempting lawmaker salaries, operating
expenses and pay increases from the annual appropriations process.
In other words, these payments became “continuing appropriations,”
meaning they must be specifically prohibited to stop their flowing
to politicians’ pockets, and the lack of a state budget does not
affect them.
The average salary for a state lawmaker in Illinois is more than
$80,000, according to the Commission on Government Forecasting and
Accountability. And that’s for what is legally considered a
part-time job.
Should lawmakers choose to pass a budget, Speaker Madigan and
Cullerton’s law prohibits year-to-year cuts to lawmaker salaries and
operating expenses. No other office or agency of state government
has this sort of privilege.
With the foresight to pass these protections under former Gov. Pat
Quinn, why didn’t the House and Senate leaders extend these
privileges to groups now trying to survive the budget impasse? State
politicians knew their own bottom lines might soon be on the
chopping block, so they took them off the bargaining table
altogether.
Notably, Rauner called on the General Assembly in July 2015 to pass
a continuing appropriation to fund state worker salaries during the
budget impasse.
Political power play
From a legal perspective, the attorney general’s main point in
seeking to stop state-worker pay is that branches of government have
failed to act in accordance with mandates under the state
constitution. On its face, her petition is trying to get branches of
state government to operate within the bounds of the Illinois
Constitution.
But the move’s political consequences and timing cannot be ignored.
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