Last week’s umpteenth special legislative
session had a lot more to do with giving the Senate an opportunity to kill
off the legislative pay raises than coming up with education funding reform
ideas or passing a capital construction plan.
The official reason the General Assembly was brought
back to town last Tuesday was to deal with education funding reform, but
that was a farce on its face. Gov. Rod Blagojevich offered up no plans of
his own. Blagojevich said he called the special session at the behest of
the Legislative Black Caucus, but didn’t bother to reach out to
African-Americans at all. The governor, who said this month that he
sometimes considers himself to be the state’s first African-American
governor, instead spent the day at the Illinois State Fair’s
“Auction of Champions.”
That failure to communicate and to show his face
brought harsh words from Rev. Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago), an education
funding reform advocate who is sounding more like a possible gubernatorial
candidate with each passing day.
“When the governor calls a special session, the
governor is supposed to have an agenda,” Meeks told reporters
yesterday. The senator also quipped that the governor had put “cows
before kids,” with his decision to attend the animal auction.
Blagojevich pledged to put $2 billion into education funding during his
2006 reelection campaign, which prompted Meeks to drop out of the race.
It’s now payback time.
But early last week, there was little talk about
education and much talk about the pay raise. It’s actually been that
way throughout the summer. Editorials have lambasted Senate President Emil
Jones for refusing to call a vote to reject the raises during the spring
session and for his… um… unfortunate choice of words regarding the
issue. Jones had joked with reporters that he needed a pay raise and food
stamps in the final days of the spring session, and those remarks have been
repeated ad nauseum for months.
The governor’s special session call was
immediately seized upon by most of the state’s news media as a prime
opportunity to reject the raises, especially since many believed that the
raises would kick in last week. Illinois law requires both chambers to
reject the raises within 30 session days or they automatically take effect.
It’s been assumed for weeks that Jones has wanted to quietly allow
the raises to take effect after the November elections, but it has become
clear that there would be nothing “quiet” about this tactic.
Instead, the pay raise issue managed to break through
all the clutter and resonate clearly with voters. One suburban Democratic
senator claimed he was receiving 10 calls an hour early last week from his
constituents about the raises. The raises had essentially become the chief
symbol in voters’ minds for all the intractable Statehouse problems.
Usually, the public tends not to notice much of what
goes on in Springfield, but the governor’s horrible poll numbers and
various state crises have made voters sit up and take notice. Last
year’s skyrocketing electric rates exploded Downstate voter anger,
and the mass transit meltdown caught Chicago-area voters’ attention,
and not in a good way. The intransigence on the capital construction plan
has prompted much voter disgust. But this pay raise thing was working
against the legislative Democrats throughout the state in a way that those
other hot-button issues didn’t even approach.
Democratic polling was apparently showing that the
raises were causing significant problems for some Senate incumbents. The
Democrats in both chambers believed earlier this year that they could do
just about anything they wanted and not be harmed at the polls because of
Barack Obama’s presence on the ballot. But that isn’t turning
out to be the case, mainly because the pay raise issue has become such a
potent and devastatingly simple rallying cry for critics of the current
system.
Freshman Sen. Linda Holmes (D-Aurora) was said to be
particularly vulnerable on this issue. Senate President Jones had hoped to
easily hold all his Democratic seats this year and even add to his super
majority, but the pay raises were apparently mucking up the works.
Clearly, something had to be done, so the raises were
voted down. No matter how much Jones and some of his members wanted those
raises, they weren’t going to be able to grab that cash.
Rich Miller
publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and
thecapitolfaxblog.com.
This article appears in Aug 14-20, 2008.
