Here's some ideas for state legislators

On May 31, our state legislature sent an unbalanced budget to our governor. He immediately whined it was an unconstitutional action. We can therefore expect him to call the legislature into special session.

I am not, however, writing this to discuss the upcoming childish arguments about who gets to be the first to gobble from the budget trough. I am more interested in asking the state legislature to set the following two actions as higher priorities than the budget.

To show their concern for us, the overburdened underpaid taxpayers, the highest priority should be for our Lake County state senators -- led by Terry Link, the second most powerful person in the Senate, and joined by Mike Bond, Bill Peterson, and Susan Garrett -- to call to the Senate floor, and vote to reject the pay raise that the entire legislature will get unless the Senate votes against it. The House voted to reject it several weeks ago.

The second priority should be a straight-forward simple bill that Terry Link could quickly prepare and introduce that would require a positive vote to accept legislature pay raises rather than the current bill that requires a positive vote to reject the raises. Of course our other senators would push and push hard to get it passed.

Once the Senate passes the new bill, I am sure our Lake County state representatives -- Jo Ann Osmond, Sandy Cole, et al. -- would push and push hard for the vote and approval of the Senate bill without the need for any changes.

After those two items are taken care of to our benefit, i.e. taxpaying overburdened constituents, we can all watch the silliness our politicos have provided us in recent years.

Bob Druktanis Lindenhurst