Pity our lawmakers. Public officials are underpaid and overworked.
The House and Senate are practically sweatshops. Given the paltry
paychecks politicians receive, citizens should be worried that
qualified folks won’t run for public office. And the problem
goes way beyond the Legislature: The governor, prosecutors and more
than 100 other officeholders and bureaucrats also are getting
shortchanged. It’s just not fair. So says the state Compensation Review Board in
a report issued last week. The board says that high-ranking state
officials have actually seen double-digit pay cuts since 2002 as a
result of the rising cost of living. Not a single state official
under its purview is overpaid, according to the board, which
recommends pay adjustments for public officials. The board
unanimously recommended raises for 113 offices while saying that
salaries should remain the same for seven jobs. Aside from four
judicial posts, the director of the newly created Department of
Juvenile Justice, and the secretary of the Department of Financial
and Professional Regulation, directors of ethics commissions for
the legislative and executive branches shouldn’t get raises,
the board says. “The present state of affairs is
unacceptable,” says the report, which was published on April
Fool’s eve. Not so, says Chad Fornoff, executive director
of the Executive Ethics Commission and one of the few who
wouldn’t get a bump under the board’s recommendations.
“I have no complaints about my salary,” says Fornoff,
who makes $90,000 a year. Tie votes, apparently, are not envisioned on
the 12-member compensation board, which is made up of unpaid
members selected by legislative leaders. Although the board is subject to
open-meetings and open-records statutes, getting someone to comment or
provide agendas or meeting minutes isn’t easy. Board chairman
Kevin Forde, a Chicago attorney, didn’t return two phone calls
last week from Illinois Times. David Ellis, the board’s lawyer, also did not
return a phone call. After numerous attempts, Illinois Times found someone
in the House clerk’s office who had a copy of the board’s
report. It was available at a counter in an office on the fourth floor
of the Capitol building, behind a door bearing a sign reading
“House Employees Only.” House Speaker Michael
Madigan’s office also faxed a copy after the paper requested one. In the case of elected officials, the board
recommended raises of 9.3 percent, still not enough to keep up with
inflation since 1999, when lawmakers last got a raise, according to
the report. This being an election year, lawmakers can’t
distance themselves fast enough. Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Treasurer
Judy Baar Topinka, the Republican nominee for governor, have both
said that they do not want, nor will they accept, a raise. On
Tuesday, a half-dozen House members sponsored a resolution
rejecting the raises. If the Senate does the same and both
resolutions pass, the proposed pay hikes will die. Since 2000, legislators have rejected three raises
proposed by the Compensation Review Board, which makes recommendations
every even-numbered year, when elections are held. Still, lawmakers, at
a base salary of $57,619 (plus a $102 per diem during sessions),
aren’t doing too badly compared with their counterparts in other
states. State legislators in Illinois, where sessions typically last
four months each year, are the fifth highest paid in the nation,
according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Legislative paychecks go far enough that a
dozen senators and 26 representatives describe themselves as
full-time legislators in biographies published on the General
Assembly’s Web site. The number may be higher: Twenty-eight
senators, for instance, don’t list any job or other source of
income aside from their legislative posts. Just 15 senators and 43
representatives clearly state that they have jobs outside the
Legislature, which has 177 members. Until she closed her law office last year, Sen.
Adeline Jay Geo-Karis, R-Zion, worked as a lawyer when she
wasn’t attending to state business. At 88, she’s
entitled to slow down a bit. When she first ran for the
Legislature, in 1972, not a single lawmaker put down
“full-time legislator” in his or her official state
biography. Geo-Karis says it’s now a full-time job —
she works 40 hours a week throughout the year as a legislator
— but still had time to practice law. “First of all, I
work fast — I don’t waste time,” she says.
“Between the law office and the Legislature, I worked at
least 80 hours a week.” In its report, the Compensation Review Board
practically begs lawmakers to accept raises for themselves and
appointed bureaucrats, saying that the lack of salary increases is
“cause for serious concern” as the gap between
public- and private-sector salaries grows. “It will become
increasingly more difficult to attract the best and the brightest
candidates as the difference grows between what a state official earns
and what that person could earn in the private sector,” board
members write. “The Board’s recommendations run to the
office, not the officeholder. Nothing prevents the officeholder from
refusing the salary increase.” Recognizing the political difficulty of
accepting raises in an election year, the board suggests that the
Legislature change state law so that future board recommendations
are made in odd-numbered years. However, if Springfield-area elections are any
indication, there is no shortage of folks willing to make deep
financial sacrifices so that they can work for what the board
considers peanuts. In the 99th District, for instance, Springfield
Ald. Chuck Redpath quit a state job that paid $71,292 a year to run
for the Legislature. He lost the Democratic primary last month to
Sangamon County Board member Sam Cahnman, a lawyer who spent more
than $70,000 of his own money in the campaign. The Illinois Legislature long ago crossed the
bridge from part-time to full-time, says Charlie Wheeler, director
of public-affairs reporting at the University of Illinois at
Springfield. And until 1967, the Legislature met every other
year, according to the state archives office. The move to annual
sessions helped spell the end of a part-time legislature composed
of citizens instead of true politicians, Wheeler says. “I think we’re better off with a
professional legislature,” he says. “It’s a
complex state. It’s a diverse state. It has serious problems.
It’s better than having amateurs every other year for a few
months.”
This article appears in Apr 6-12, 2006.
