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 Putting things on “automatic” just makes life so much easier in
Illinois, at least for the state’s leaders.
No need to make politically unpopular decisions, because that state gasoline tax
automatically goes up on July 1. Same for lawmakers giving themselves $1,800
raises while being able to claim: “We didn’t vote for those. They were
automatic.”
And so it is for Gov. J.B. Pritzker. He doesn’t need any courage to face the
state’s biggest government worker union and speak the truth about COVID-19
shutdowns blowing a $6 billion hole in the state’s revenues. On July 1 there
will be $261 million in raises going to members of the American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, automatically.
Nearly 1 in 4 Illinoisans is out of a job. Many are still fighting the state’s
Rube Goldberg machine of an unemployment system to get the federal money they
were promised.
So how fair is it that some of the highest-paid state employees in the nation
are getting a raise that must be funded by an economically wounded bunch of
taxpayers?
Pritzker dismissed the idea of delaying the state worker raises: “That’s not
something that we’re currently having discussions about,” he said in late April.
But other governors, and specifically other Democratic governors, have taken
action to preserve scarce cash as they deal with extra costs and crumbling tax
bases thanks to the pandemic.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is canceling a 3% pay hike for some state employees
and forcing one-day-a-week furloughs on 40,000 others to handle a nearly $9
billion shortfall.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo delayed raises for 80,000 state workers for 90 days,
and is now considering employee buyouts. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam pushed back
state worker raises, and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf stopped paying 9,000 state
workers on April 11.
Yet Illinois won’t even talk about public workers sharing some of the public’s
pain. Instead, unemployed Illinoisans get put on hold for hours by the state and
then cut off by a recorded message.
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The Illinois Department of Employment Security has
been an embarrassment throughout the COVID-19 shutdown. After weeks
of excuses, Pritzker cobbled together fixes that included a $22
million, no-bid contract that took almost two months just to get
federal money provided in late March into the hands of self-employed
workers. The new system promptly exposed Social Security numbers of
32,483 applicants, and led to identity theft according to a federal
lawsuit in St. Clair County.
Meanwhile, millions of dollars in state worker pay raises flow like
water.
Illinois was a financial pit before COVID-19, driven mainly by
overly generous public employee salaries and public pension spending
handed out by the public servants whose campaigns were so generously
supported by those public employees.
Illinois state workers in 2017 were the second-highest paid in the
U.S. after adjusting for cost of living, averaging $61,207. More
than half of them will become retirement millionaires as Illinois
spends nearly double the national average, or more than 25% of the
state’s operating budget, on pension costs.
The state’s pension crisis is driven in part by 3% compounded annual
pension raises, which are – you guessed it – automatic.
Amending the Illinois Constitution could control those costs, and
save the state’s five pension systems from either failing retirees
or continuing to cost taxpayers ever more for fewer services. To get
there Pritzker and state lawmakers need to take action, but that’s
not something that they’re currently having discussions about.
Illinoisans cannot expect solutions if leaders automatically respond
to the same old problems with the same unthinking behaviors.
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