A not-so-crazy proposal

Turn Capitol upside down; let legislators work overtime and state employees go home to their families at shifts' end

BY HENRY BAYER

The legislature has adjourned for the spring, its last act to enact a budget in the final hours of the session. Once again the General Assembly passed that fiscal blueprint without the governor's input, a sign of continued political dysfunction at the state Capitol.

The only difference between the last two sessions is that this year, legislators were determined to avoid the long overtime session that kept them in Springfield through most of last summer

Unfortunately, their aversion to overtime for themselves didn't extend to other state employees who are forced to work extra eight-hour shifts on a routine basis. The House of Representatives did pass, by an overwhelming margin, AFSCME-initiated legislation to ban mandatory overtime in state facilities where the problem is most acute. However, successive Senate Rules Committee chairs Debbie Halvorson and Rickey Hendon both refused to allow the union's bill even to get a hearing, despite the fact that a majority of their Democratic Senate colleagues, along with a majority of Republican senators, signed a letter asking that they be allowed to vote on the bill.

Imagine trying to explain to the school kids who take the long bus trip to Springfield to see how their state government functions why legislation supported by an overwhelming majority of lawmakers doesn't get passed. Isn't democracy great?

Nor was the mandatory overtime bill the only bill to die in the Senate graveyard. Legislation requiring procedures to deal with medically resistant staph infections (MRSA), union-busting employers and pension equity all lie buried, compliments of the Senate Democratic gravediggers, otherwise known as caucus leaders.

Good public policy doesn't merely take a back seat when lawmakers who have a political vendetta are behind the wheel, it gets stuffed into the trunk, never to see the light of day.

There's something wrong with a legislative system that allows public officials not only to ignore the needs and wishes of their constituents, but to thumb their noses at a majority of their colleagues.

There's one other bill of interest that the Senate leadership never let out of the Rules Committee - a measure to block scheduled double-digit pay increases for lawmakers. The trick is that recommendations for legislative pay increases automatically go into effect unless lawmakers vote against them.

So by leaving the bill in committee, legislators can get their raise without any of the potentially damaging public relations that would have come with having to go on record voting for the pay increase.

I think the senators' world is upside down.

In a more perfect setting, their constituents would get effective disease control unless lawmakers voted against it. Folks wouldn't be forced to work overtime and miss valuable time away from their families unless lawmakers voted to make them do so. Taxpayer dollars wouldn't be doled out for the purpose of fighting unions unless the lawmakers in Springfield put their finger on the "aye" button.

I don't think that many of them would dare to suffer the wrath of the people who elect them if they had to act affirmatively.

That's my prescription for legislative reform.

If lawmakers want a pay raise, they have to vote for it. If they want us to work mandatory overtime, they have to vote for it. If they want state facilities to operate without disease control, they should be compelled to vote to that effect.

Maybe some folks think I'm crazy for suggesting this, but ask yourself: What's sane about a process that allows legislators to line their pockets with nice pay increases for part-time work at the same time they literally refuse to lift a finger to vote on important public-policy issues?

My guess is that most Illinois voters agree with me on these issues. Most don't think their senators deserve a pay increase. Most don't think employees should be forced to work double shifts two and three times a week. Most do think we should control communicable diseases.

Instead, we get the opposite of what we want. To me, that's what's crazy.

Henry Bayer is executive director of AFSCME Council 31, the state's largest union of public-service workers.