Nothing special about special sessions

Gov. Rod Blagojevich has called the legislature back to work next week, for a special session.

Special?

A special session is a family get together. Or an awards banquet. Graduation celebrations.

Special is not the word to describe lawmakers being ordered back to Springfield by a governor who has no idea how to create an atmosphere in which things can get done, period, let alone on time. Same goes for the legislative leaders. Is there anyone in Springfield who stands out as a voice of compromise, a symbol of sanity at a time when rational debate has been deposed by maddeningly bitter, highly personal attacks between the governor and lawmakers?

If so, can we please anoint that person governor for a day?

But there will be another special session. And given the anger, negativity and the lack of will to work out differences in the interest of progress in governing, we can expect that there will just be more hooting and hollering, or legislators mindlessly whistling tunes to while away the hours in a special session they don't want to be at, just waiting to go back home.

They'll get something for their trouble, though. They'll collect $129 a day for each special session, for meals and housing. And mileage reimbursement.

All on the taxpayers. In 2007, several special sessions wound up costing taxpayers more than $1 million.

That's a shame. Maybe if legislators and the governor were forced to eat bologna sandwich box lunches and sleep in their cars, something would get done.

But they will get their special session subsidies on top of their paychecks. Which, incidentally, are about to get bigger. Legislators did manage to raise their pay, and that of the governor's, in this legislative session. Legislators could be making anywhere from $73,000 to $100,000 next year. The governor's pay would go up nearly $20,000 to $192,000 annually.

If the market bears this kind of increase for lawmakers and the state's chief executive, then it's enough to make you question free enterprise.

But of course, this hike in pay is in no conceivable way justified. And it can all be undone - in this special session.

The Illinois House rejected the raises in May. But they kick in automatically unless state senators vote them down, which they have a chance to do in overtime.

And that is exactly what the Illinois Senate should do.

People in the private sector aren't getting raises. They're lucky if their pay isn't being cut. Yet they continue to work hard at jobs that might go away tomorrow.

Illinois senators expect them to believe they - and the governor - deserve more money for their miserable job performance?

Dump the pay raises. There is nothing special about them.