“We don’t want nobody that nobody sent” is the most famous phrase on Chicago-style corruption.
But a lesser-known saying from the Daley machine explains the ongoing drama about whether state lawmakers just gave themselves an $1,800 pay raise in the middle of a pandemic.
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“We don’t want nobody that nobody sent” is the most famous phrase on Chicago-style corruption.
But a lesser-known saying from the Daley machine explains the ongoing drama about whether state lawmakers just gave themselves an $1,800 pay raise in the middle of a pandemic.
“Don’t make no waves, don’t back no losers.”
Illinois lawmakers are still likely to receive a $1,800 pay raise. But some have tried their best to make no waves by giving themselves cover from backlash.
It didn’t work.
Average Illinoisans – 1.1 million of whom are jobless – were outraged to the point where Comptroller Susana Mendoza released a video this week assuring the public that lawmakers would be getting $0 in pay raises this year.
Kudos to Mendoza for standing up against political pay raises.
There’s just one problem: It’s not her choice to make. The state comptroller does not create a budget and decide who gets paid and who doesn’t, she simply pays the bills for the state. Members of the General Assembly and the governor are the ones who create a budget and make it law.
And by refusing to reform the law, Statehouse Democrats decided to make $1,800 political pay raises more likely than not.
Follow along closely to understand how.
At the tail end of his term, former Gov. Pat Quinn tried to withhold lawmaker paychecks to pressure them into passing pension reform. House Speaker Mike Madigan didn’t take kindly to a governor wielding this kind of power over his members. So, along with then-Senate President John Cullerton, he passed a new law defining lawmaker pay and pay raises as a “continuing appropriation.” A continuing appropriation is like a bill that automatically gets paid each month, with or without a budget.
That means it doesn’t matter whether the governor uses his veto power to zero out appropriations for lawmaker raises. And it doesn’t matter if lawmakers pass a budget appropriating $0 to raises.
The Illinois law says the money shall be paid even if “aggregate appropriations made available are insufficient to meet the levels required” and “for any reason.”