Governor paying staff out of own pocket almost seems like a bribe

We have a new governor, and several high-ranking members of J.B. Pritzker’s staff will wind up being paid significantly more money than their predecessors did.

PRITZKER: New governor offers to pay double

One of the benefits of having a governor who has significant financial wealth.

IT SEEMS HE wants to pay some 20 of his staffers about double the amounts of money that the state payroll calls for.

It means that the staffers will receive their state salary – along with another check from East Jackson Street LLC. Which is a private company that is amongst Pritzker’s business interests and one that Pritzker supposedly controls completely.

All of which creates questions about ethical and moral issues – is it proper for an outside entity to be paying government employees anything? Even if it would seem it’s the newly-inaugurated governor himself who is coughing up the cash for the extra salary payments!

I can’t help but question it because one of the basic principles of government employment is that one is doing such work out of a sense of public service. And also to gain significant experience.

SERIOUSLY, WITH THE exception of Michael Madigan himself, nobody is meant to hang around the Illinois state payroll for a significant length of time.

Those people are gaining a certain level of experience and making contacts so that eventually, they will be able to gain significant compensation within the private sector.

This almost seems like Pritzker wants to buy a certain level of experience that the state payroll usually wouldn’t be capable of accommodating. Either that, or he’s expecting to buy a certain level of loyalty toward himself – rather than to the entity of Illinois State Government that is supposed to be the focus of such a job. 

Govt. attitudes changed since old days

There’s a reason that government employment is often semi-jokingly described as “the people’s business.” Government staffers are supposed to be doing their work  for the betterment of the public at-large.

UNLESS YOU’RE OF the mentality that thinks the Age of Trump our federal government now operates under is somehow proper. Then, you think the public at-large is a batch of chumps because they’d rely on government to fulfill certain responsibilities toward them.

So are we creating an ethical mess in which certain government employees – not all, I should say – will have the appearance of gaining financial bonuses?

Would it be little better than some private company with special interests on select issues suddenly offering up salary supplements to ensure that the actual government staffers act on their behalf – rather than that of the public.

Actually, if you describe the extra salary in such a manner, it almost sounds more like a bribe. Does Pritzker literally have to offer “pay offs” to get his people (who are supposed to be extra loyal to him) in order to get them to work?

NO MATTER HOW one chooses to think of it, such salary supplements sound kind of fishy. Also problematic because they wouldn’t be lasting. Are we literally going to have a fluctuating government payroll – based off who is in charge?

TRUMP: He'd love to buy cooperative govt.

Are voters going to have to contemplate who can afford to pay their workers the best when they decide whom to cast a ballot for? With the idea being that anybody who can’t afford to toss in some extra money for salary is too much of a chump to run for public office?

I’m sure that now-former Gov. Bruce Rauner wishes he had been able to buy a more supplicant staff to work during his four years as governor, Then again, what he really wanted was a more supplicant Legislature – which is something the voters never gave him.

So what should we think of the Pritzker years; will they turn into an era in which the governor has to use his wealth to buy his political influence? Or will it turn out to be a period in which the usual factors that split Democrats into different factions wind up making our state government as ornery as they always have been?

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Federal government siding with the cheapskates of the world?

My mother – may her soul rest in peace – was a woman who worked the bulk of her adult life in jobs where tips were a reality of her financial compensation.

MADIGAN: Siding with waitresses of the world

She worked in various restaurants where she had to scurry about, was on her feet all day and would usually finish her shifts rather sore and tired. But she always said one of the perks of such work is that, because of tips, one could always count on having a few bucks in cash at the end of a shift.

THAT IS WHY I was pleased to read reports Wednesday saying that the Illinois attorney general’s office was among attorneys from 17 states challenging proposed federal government rules changes that would impact the ability of those people who serve you to keep any tips they’re able to scrounge up.

I’m sure there are some people who support this ideal – largely the ones who think they shouldn’t have to tip at all. After all, those waitresses get paid a salary, they want to believe.

That salary, however, is usually below the minimum wage, which is permitted under the law on the grounds that certain types of workers get tips to make up for the difference.

Maybe some people just arrogantly believe that these restaurant service people are serving them for the pure joy of the work – and that they shouldn’t be worried about ultimate compensation.

WHICH IS ABSURD.

So I appreciate the notion that the attorney general’s office under Lisa Madigan is working together with legal colleagues in other states, including Iowa – but not Indiana, Missouri or Wisconsin -- to challenge the proposal that would allow for employers to take the tips received by the hourly workers they employ.

Back in 2011, then-President Barack Obama imposed a rule for the federal Labor Department saying those workers should keep their tips.

TRUMP: Does he think people serve him for joy?

Maybe this is yet another example of President Donald J. Trump wanting to do away with anything that has the “mark of Obama” connected to it.

BUT NOW, THE Labor Department would permit certain employers like restaurants to collect the tips their servers receive and pool them into a fund to be shared with the kitchen staff.

Restauranteurs argue this ensures that all of the staff gets a share, and that cooks and dishwashers can use a little extra money just as much as the waitresses who are scouring about within sight of the paying customers. That is the reason the Illinois Restaurant Association, among others, supports the rule change.

Although I’d argue this ought to be a case of the restaurant owners having to provide more adequate pay for these minimum-wage workers, rather than counting on the generosity of their customers to cover this particular cost.

I’m not sympathetic to those who’d argue that adding to the restauranteur’s expense threatens their financial bottom line. All businesses have expenses to be met before one can start counting profits. That’s just business.

IT’S LIKE THE old cliché, “You have to spend money to make money.”

Besides, Madigan makes one point that undercuts the argument – she told the Chicago Tribune some 500,000 Illinois workers could lose tips, with employers taking the money and pocketing it. She says there’s no guarantee any tip pool would get distributed back to workers.

OBAMA: Another effort to erase his memory?

It sounds crass, but it seems like the federal rule change is truly meant to benefit an owner’s pockets – which some people may think is completely appropriate in this Age of Trump that we’re now in.

While also allowing those past customers who used to stiff my mother on tips to claim they’re expressing some great ideological concept instead of just stating simple fact – they’re cheapskates!

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EXTRA: It’s now in the courts!

A Cook County judge is going to be asked to decide whether or not Gov. Pat Quinn overstepped his bounds when he decided to not pay legislators until they come up with a plan for revamping the way the state covers the cost of pension programs.

MADIGAN: Using his clout against Quinn

The lawsuit filed in our own circuit court system was filed by the legislative leaders (House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton) on Tuesday. They claim that the concept of “separation of powers” means that a governor doesn’t have the right to mess with the Legislature’s compensation.

AS THOUGH HIS authority merely extends to the state agencies. Or perhaps solely to the people who actually work on the governor’s staff.


CULLERTON: A legal sidekick

Which means this whole issue is going to become a legal battle over exactly who has to pay any attention to a governor. If it were up to the legislative leaders, that would be “zero.”

They’d want to have no one listening to him.

How else to interpret the line from the lawsuit that says, “If the governor’s line item veto is upheld, the independence of each member of the General Assembly will be forever compromised. Any governor will hold a trump card over a co-equal branch of government.”

IT IS INTERESTING that Madigan and Cullerton are the ones putting their names on this lawsuit. I guess it figures that enough people already despise the concept of Mike Madigan that his reputation can’t take a harder hit by being the “bad guy” who files a lawsuit to get paid without resolving the pension funding problem.

So to ensure that officials actually get paid (state Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka has said she’d cut the checks if a court told her to do so), this now becomes a legal issue. Even though I'm inclined to agree with Quinn when he says, "today's lawsuit ... is just plain wrong,"


QUINN: Another battle to undergo

Although I won’t be surprised if a local judge winds up ruling in Madigan’s favor. As an attorney, he has some serious clout in Chicago. The real trick will be to see how high up the legal ladder this case winds up going. Is the Illinois Supreme Court destined to have to take up this issue later this summer?

Then, there’s the real question; the one that will get lost in all the upcoming legal bickering that we’re going to hear – when will the pension funding problem be resolved? The two sides aren’t anywhere near close to doing that!

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EXTRA: When “present” means “yes”

I once had an editor-type person whose hard-and-fast rule was to tell us reporter-types that a “present” vote is the same as a “no” vote.

FRITCHEY: Opposes political "plums"



After all, the number of “yes” votes it takes to approve something doesn’t change. A “present” vote does not add to the “yes” column. So it is just a weasel-ish way for political people to avoid taking a hard stand on an issue.

WHILE I AGREE with that particular editor’s concept that political people are capable of behaving in a weasel-ly manner, it seems that “present” doesn’t always mean “no.”

For the Cook County Board on Wednesday literally gave us an instance where “present” meant “yes” without actually having to take the embarrassment that a “yes” vote would have caused in this particular circumstance.

The specific instance was a measure meant to cut the compensation provided to the county’s Zoning Board of Appeals – which oversees zoning matters in unincorporated parts of Cook County.

The measure passed, but there was one part of it that failed – the idea that individual zoning board members should be limited to $20,000 per year for their work rather than the $12,000 limit that other such boards get.

THE IDEA WAS that the zoning board usually has more meetings in a given year, and should get more overall (even though the base of $500 per member per meeting would be applied to all appointees – regardless of board).

SCHNEIDER: Changing a "Y" to a "P"



In the end, the county rejected the $20,000 limit and went with the $12,000 limit – even though some said that might mean the zoning board would hold fewer hearings; which would require some people to travel farther to have their issues dealt with.

That $20,000 limit had five supporters and nine critics, with one county commissioner (Joan Patricia Murphy of suburban Crestwood) voting “present.”

Yet once the clerk announced the 5-9 vote, two of the commissioners who spoke out in favor of a $20,000 limit suddenly said they wanted their votes changed to “present.”

IT SEEMS THEY don’t want to be on the losing side of an issue. They probably didn’t want some future opponent concocting some nonsense campaign ad saying they voted to pay more money for positions that, by their own admission, were “political plums” used to reward friends.

BUTLER: The Iceman becomes Mr. Pro-bono?



So the vote went into the books as a 3-9 vote, with three others present. John Fritchey, D-Chicago, and Timothy Schneider, R-Elk Grove Village, were the two last-minute changers whose “present” vote shouldn’t be taken as opposition to the idea that these political appointees probably don’t need to be relying on the county for their health insurance or any additional credits towards their eventual pension.

Although I’m convinced the most honorable individual on the county board on Wednesday might well have been Commissioner Jerry “the Iceman” Butler. For he was the one who voted against everything on the grounds that none of these positions should be salaried, or per diemed, or compensated in any way!

“Pro bono. Nada,” said the man who gave us, “For Your Precious Love,” before adding, “They should all be pro bono.”

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