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.”
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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.