Editorial: Governor's veto of unsettling arbitration law should stand

Not unusually, there is more hyperbole coming out of Springfield these days than reasoned discourse. So, when evaluating the actions of government, it's important to work past the snarls and accusations.

Even so, Gov. Bruce Rauner was right to veto a law that would establish a system of so-called "interest arbitration" to resolve contract disputes between the state and public employee groups. Not that arbitration in principle is so objectionable. If properly fashioned, it can be an appealing process for settling disputes when two parties simply cannot compromise on their own.

But there is not much to commend SB 1229 as properly fashioned.

Its ultimately fatal flaw is a design that - even assuming a truly impartial arbitration panel could be produced - severely restricts the options available to arbitrators assigned to break an impasse. Under the bill's provisions, arbitrators may be able to mix and match various proposals from the competing sides, but they cannot modify them. They are required to assess only the final offers from each side and to choose between them.

They could, presumably, declare the state's approach to pensions to be superior and the union's salary demands the winning proposal, but they could not order a modified version of either side's pension proposal or pick a salary figure somewhere between the state's and the union's offers.

The Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, which is pushing SB 1229, says this approach serves to temper the demands of both sides, since if their offer is deemed unreasonable, they'll be saddled with that which they find so unsatisfactory from the opposition.

But we're not convinced of that logic, finding it more distasteful to place the fate of a substantial portion of the state's budget into the hands of nonelected individuals who have no personal accountability. True, that would also be the case if arbitrators had more flexibility, but with the limitations set in SB 1229, it is an even graver concern.

Another discomfiting provision of this bill is its sunset provision. AFSCME all but admits that the four-year life span of the legislation was set to coincide with Rauner's term because of his repeated strong anti-union pronouncements. It's enticing to see a fixed ending for a bad idea, but here it actually seems more like a political gambit to attract support. If this were a good idea, one would want it to last and ought to be confident it could sell.

AFSCME also emphasizes that the bill is not unprecedented, being built on the model of an arbitration process that has been in place for years for public safety employees such as police and firefighters.

But we are not that enamored of how well the process has worked for local municipalities, and even disregarding that observation, the nature of the job for police and firefighters is such that taxpayers - on whom, of course, all of this ultimately falls - can justify some higher financial risk in exchange for a no-strike guarantee. Lives and property face serious risk if public safety employees strike; as important as they are for the conduct of state business, that's not the case for the white collar office employees who make up the bulk of workers covered by this bill.

The rhetoric surrounding the relationship between the state and its union employees has been acrimonious and exaggerated on both sides, and that has not served the process well. But SB 1229 serves it no better and actually promises more ill.

If arbitration truly has to become a feature of state government negotiations, this is not the bill to make it so. And, in any case, it is far preferable for both sides to cool the rhetoric and approach the negotiations with the kind of realistic expectations and mutual respect that will make any talk of arbitration unnecessary.