No budget, huge deficit just the beginning for Illinois' fiscal year

SPRINGFIELD - Illinois government by the numbers: 27 days into a new fiscal year, the state has no budget, a deficit of up to $4 billion and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner insisting that Democrats in the legislature embrace his five pro-business and anti-corruption initiatives.

And in the face of those recalcitrant lawmakers, Rauner has brought some new figures into the equation: A 2 percent automatic cost-of-living increase, set to take effect this month to boost the $68,000 base legislative salary by nearly $1,400.

"They've taken a pay hike for themselves without any budget and without any real reforms," Rauner said last week.

It's also the first pay hike in seven years for salaries that have not kept pace with inflation.

The time lapse, the way this year's pay hike played out and the defense Democrats have assumed this year after having rejected a pay bump in 2014 all represent a new chapter in what's been a sordid compensation history for the General Assembly's 177 members - a number that used to be higher until taxpayers voted to reduce it because of a pay hike.

The plot twists have Democrats cornered. House Speaker Michael Madigan won't answer questions about it. After years of well-intended, politically popular votes to reject raises, Chicago Senate President John Cullerton now says it would violate the Illinois Constitution not to take the pay. The charter prohibits "changes in salary" during a legislator's term.

The Democratic-controlled Legislature has been locked in a weekslong battle with Rauner over a state budget that was supposed to be in place by July 1. The Democrats proposed a spending plan they said that protected "vital" services but was short on cash by up to $4 billion.

Rauner vetoed it and won't settle the fiscal matter until Democrats embrace his agenda, which includes tighter restrictions on injured-worker compensation, property-tax curbs and political term limits.

Pay for state representatives and senators has been Kryptonite for decades, as witnessed by a 1978 raise provoking such vitriol that voters sliced the size of the House of Representatives by one-third; an oft-ridiculed and eventually dropped third-party review process, and court cases in the last 15 years that prompted lawmakers to make annual inflation bumps automatic.

"There's no good way to deal with legislative compensation," said Kent Redfield, a longtime statehouse observer as a legislative staffer and political scientist.

Former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, at the time a political activist who decades later would play another key role in the legislative-pay saga, led a protest over the 40 percent pay hike in 1978 that culminated in a constitutional amendment to reduce House membership to 118. The dispute motivated lawmakers to create an independent Compensation Review Board to objectively determine salary hikes and cost-of-living increases, but that scorned system was abandoned in 2009.

In its demise, lawmakers retained one 1990 board-created provision - an automatic, annual cost-of-living increase based on a federal inflation index.

Then, in 2013, Quinn, as Democratic governor, vetoed money for legislative pay to force an agreement on a still-elusive pension debt-reduction plan. Cullerton and Madigan won a judge's order that Quinn had violated the constitutional "changes in salary" dictum.

House Democrats then voted in 2014 to make annual increases part of a "continuing appropriation," meaning the money is paid regardless of whether lawmakers provide spending authority - like this year.

Madigan has refused for weeks to answer questions about it. Cullerton broke his silence last week, holding the Constitution up as a shield.

"You can't have a situation where the executive branch, like Gov. Quinn, holds up people's salaries in order to force them to vote for a bill," Cullerton said in Chicago. "The judge ruled that you can't do that."

When asked later to reconcile repeated votes to reject increases - including in 2014, after the court ruling - Cullerton spokeswoman Rikeesha Phelon released a statement reiterating the constitutional proscription.

That hasn't stopped Republicans from trying to nix the money. Democrats refuse to call a vote on the GOP legislation.

"There's an argument that some could make that in other times, it is a fair increase," said House Republican floor leader Rep. Ron Sandack, of Downers Grove. "But when we're having a budget impasse and some people aren't being paid ... suspending the increase while we go through this budget process is a fair conversation, too."

Combining base salary and the stipend for serving as chairmen or minority-party leader on legislative committees, many lawmakers are paid $78,163. That's more than triple the 1979 rate of $25,000, but the federal Labor Department calculates that the cumulative rate of inflation during the interim period was 229 percent, or the equivalent of $82,175 today.

Lawmakers also get money for office expenses and typically $132 daily expense money, and mileage reimbursement - although since the official session ended May 31, they're paying their own freight when returning, at least once weekly, for summer in Springfield.

The No. 2 Democrat in the House, Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie of Chicago, was a rookie lawmaker in 1979, amid the Cutback Amendment turmoil. She sponsored the 2014 legislation for automatic annual inflation bumps. To Currie, it's a matter of luring talent. Without sufficient pay, many believe it's not worth the trouble.

"You don't want to say to people who have passion and ability to offer public service, 'It's too expensive for you to apply,'" she said.