No Soup For You!

As he’d threatened, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has suspended the pay of Illinois legislators until they deal with Illinois’s public pensions mess:

July 10, 2013 (SPRINGFIELD, Ill.) (WLS) — ”It’s time now for the legislature to legislate,” Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn said as he suspended lawmakers pay because of inaction on pension reform.

“This is an emergency. This is a crisis,” Gov. Quinn said Wednesday. “For taxpayers, when they lose millions, it’s a crisis. For lawmakers, when they lose their pay, maybe it’s a crisis for them.”

Gov. Quinn said there’ll be no paychecks for legislators until they get the job done. Quinn also said he will not accept his salary until the General Assembly sends him a comprehensive pension reform solution.

“In this budget, there should be no paychecks for legislators until they get the job done on pension reform,” Quinn said in a statement. “Pension reform is the most critical job for all of us in public office. I cannot in good conscience approve legislation that provides paychecks to legislators who are not doing their job for the taxpayers.”

There is some question over whether the governor actually has the power to do this. On the one hand, in Illinois the governor does have a line item veto and that means he has the power to strike out the budget appropriations for legislator salaries. On the other hand, there is a provision in the Illinois constitution that prohibits changes in legislators’ pay in the middle of a term.

If the governor’s move is legal, I’m for it. If it’s not, I’m against it and whether it’s legal or not is beyond my pay grade.

After three years of delay on this matter following a decade’s worth of inattention, I think it’s pretty clear that the Illinois legislature won’t deal with the pension issue without pressure and, sadly, the voters haven’t seen fit to put any pressure on them on this matter. I strongly suspect they don’t really understand what’s at stake and that itself is a failure of leadership.

Under the provisions of the hike in the Illinois individual tax rate enacted in 2011, the individual income tax rate will begin to decline again in 2015. I wonder whether the legislature will find it easier to re-authorize the tax hike or even increase it farther given their performance over the last several years.