Last week's umpteenth special legislative session had a lot
more to do with giving the Senate an opportunity to kill off the legislative
pay raises than coming up with education funding reform ideas or passing a
capital construction plan.
The official reason the General Assembly was brought back
to town last Tuesday was to deal with education funding reform, but that was a
farce on its face. Gov. Rod Blagojevich offered up no plans of his own. Blagojevich said he called the special
session at the behest of the Legislative Black Caucus, but didn't bother to
reach out to African-Americans at all. The governor, who said this month that
he sometimes considers himself to be the state's first African-American
governor, instead spent the day at the Illinois State Fair's "Auction of
Champions."
That failure to communicate and to show his face brought
harsh words from Rev. Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago), an education funding reform
advocate who is sounding more like a possible gubernatorial candidate with each
passing day.
"When the governor calls a special session, the
governor is supposed to have an agenda," Meeks told reporters yesterday.
The Senator also quipped that the governor had put "cows before
kids," with his decision to attend the animal auction. Blagojevich pledged
to put $2 billion into education funding during his 2006 reelection campaign,
which prompted Meeks to drop out of the race. It's now payback time.
But early last week, there was little talk about education
and much talk about the pay raise. It's actually been that way throughout the
summer. Editorials have lambasted Senate President Emil Jones for refusing to
call a vote to reject the raises during the spring session and for his... um...
unfortunate choice of words regarding the issue. Jones had joked with reporters
that he needed a pay raise and food stamps in the final days of the spring
session, and those remarks have been repeated ad nauseum for months.
The governor's special session call was immediately seized
upon by most of the state's news media as a prime opportunity to reject the
raises, especially since many believed that the raises would kick in last week.
Illinois law requires both chambers to reject the raises within 30 session days
or they automatically take effect. It's been assumed for weeks that Jones has
wanted to quietly allow the raises to take effect after the November elections,
but it has become clear that there would be nothing "quiet" about
this tactic.
Instead, the pay raise issue managed to break through all
the clutter and resonate clearly with voters. One suburban Democratic Senator
claimed he was receiving ten calls an hour early last week from his
constituents about the raises. The raises had essentially become the chief
symbol in the voters' minds for all the intractable Statehouse problems.
Usually, the public tends not to notice much of what goes
on in Springfield, but the governor's horrible poll numbers and various state
crises have made voters sit up and take notice. Last year's skyrocketing
electric rates exploded Downstate voter anger, and the mass transit meltdown
caught Chicago-area voters' attention, and not in a good way. The intransigence
on the capital construction plan has prompted much voter disgust. But this pay
raise thing was working against the legislative Democrats throughout the state
in a way that those other hot-button issues didn't even approach.
Democratic polling was apparently showing that the raises
were causing significant problems for some Senate incumbents. The Democrats in
both chambers believed earlier this year that they could do just about anything
they wanted and not be harmed at the polls because of Barack Obama's presence
on the ballot. But that isn't turning out to be the case, mainly because the
pay raise issue has become such a potent and devastatingly simple rallying cry
for critics of the current system.
Freshman Sen. Linda Holmes (D-Aurora) was said to be
particularly vulnerable on this issue. Senate President Jones had hoped to
easily hold all his Democratic seats this year and even add to his super
majority, but the pay raises were apparently mucking up the works.
Clearly, something had to be done, and no matter how much
Jones and some of his members wanted those raises, they weren't going to be
able to grab that cash.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political
newsletter, and thecapitolfaxblog.com.