The last time an Illinois governor interfered with pay for members of the General Assembly, House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton sued and won.
That was in the summer of 2013, when then-Gov. Pat Quinn suspended all pay for lawmakers until they delivered him a pension reform bill to sign. Quinn lost in court when the judge ruled, to no one's surprise, that Illinois law requires any changes to lawmakers' pay to be executed by statute. The law is a good one and is designed to prevent the kind of retaliatory pay action that Quinn attempted.
On Wednesday, as thousands of state employees wondered when they'd see their next paycheck, Gov. Bruce Rauner used his amendatory veto power to cancel Illinois lawmaker pay raises that were scheduled to begin with the new fiscal year. The raises were included in a bill passed in 2014 that ensured that lawmaker paychecks would continue to be issued regardless of whether there is a budget in place at the start of a new fiscal year.
Rauner's action was far more nuanced than Quinn's 2013 outright halt of lawmakers' paychecks. He removed only the pay raise provision from the bill that authorized implementation of the 2014 law.
"Illinois legislators are already among the highest paid in the United States, earning $68,000 to $95,000 per year for part-time service, plus per diem payments and mileage reimbursement," Rauner wrote in his veto message. "Without the change recommended below, legislators would receive raises ranging from $1,356 to $1,905 for Fiscal Year 2016 and increases in both the per diem amount and mileage reimbursement rate."
Arriving at the height of a budget standoff that has state employees continuing to work knowing they may not be paid for the foreseeable future, Rauner's move was a brilliant political move. It not only gave him an official platform to complain about financial disarray that followed 12 years of governance by Democrats but gave him a valuable score in the fight for public opinion he's been waging with Madigan for more than a month.
The fact that the law may not be on his side here is irrelevant.
The bigger question: What lawmaker right now will be willing to be a plaintiff in the lawsuit that seeks restoration of those statutorily guaranteed raises? Precedent says it will be a slam-dunk victory in a court of law. But the jury in the court of public opinion won't be so kind.
(Read Rauner's full veto message at Reboot Illinois.)
Even though Rauner's actions mean no Illinois lawmaker will see his or her pay go up during the budget impasse, a few lawmakers have gone even further, choosing to skip their paychecks during the shutdown. Other state employees will not be getting paid, so Republican state Rep. David Harris says he thinks he shouldn't get paid either. Rep. David McSweeney followed his lead and also asked Comptroller Leslie Munger to hold his checks until a budget is agreed on.
(Check out Reboot Illinois to see which other legislators have floated the idea of forgoing their pay.)
