THE PENSION DEBACLE IN ILLINOIS: MR. MADGIAN AS MACHIAVELLI, MR. EMANUEL LOSES A ROUND, OR MR. QUINN GOES TO SPRINGFIELD?

6/3/13

Some comments on the close of Illinois’ legislative session  and the resultant hastening of the state’s now nearly certain journey to financial oblivion are in order.

First, one supposes it would be too much to argue that the Illinois state legislature did nothing in the session that ended Friday night.  The legislature did

• Pass a budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
• Pass a concealed carry law, finally bringing the state of Illinois into compliance with the Constitution and into the modern age by joining its 49 brethren in allowing its citizens to  carry their guns into areas in which they would be most useful as tools of self-defense.
• Add 340,000 low income residents to the Medicaid rolls as part of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
• Authorize Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to build a basketball arena for DePaul, or to have DePaul subsidize Chicago’s latest manifestation of Mr. Emanuel’s bread and circuses approach to government, depending on how one approaches this latest boondoggle.  (See my 5/17/13 post DEPAUL AND THE McARENA:  WHERE’S THE RETURN ON DEPAUL’S INVESTMENT IN CLOUT? and my 5/16/13 post AN ARENA FOR DEPAUL AND ELEVATING CHICAGO:  “FRAU BLUCHER, ELEVATE ME!”) for more on this latest Emanuel Knows Best project.

So whether one agrees with any of these actions, it wouldn’t be fair to say the legislature did NOTHING this session. 

However, despite Democratic supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, the session failed to take action on gay marriage, casino gambling (See my 5/30/13 piece CASINO EXPANSION IN ILLNIOIS:   WHAT’S THE POINT? and the posts to which it will direct you.) and, most importantly, Illinois’ $98 billion pension liability.  (See my 5/8/13 piece THE CULLERTON PENSION PLAN:  “THE (PUBLIC EMPLOYEE UNIONS) FAMILY DON’T EVEN HAVE THAT KIND OF MUSCLE ANY MORE”??? and the posts to which it will direct you.)

The legislature does not convene again until November.   Governor Pat Quinn (no relation) says he will consult with legislative leaders to try to work out something on all three of the major “failed” issues, but especially on pensions.  Progress, however, is doubtful and, even if the Governor, House Speaker Mike Madigan, and Senate President John Cullerton can work out something, any plan will have to muster a 3/5 majority in both houses since the legislative session has ended.  

Second, some fans of conspiracy theories think that Mr. Madigan sabotaged progress on casinos, gay marriage, and especially on pensions, the latter by espousing a plan he knew the Senate wouldn’t pass.  His motivation, according to such theories, could be a desire to please the public employee unions by doing nothing to disturb their pension Valhalla or, more likely, to make Governor Quinn look impotent and thus enhance the case for the candidacy of his daughter, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, for governor in the 2014 Democratic Party.

Yours truly enjoys a conspiracy theory nearly as much as the next guy, unless the next guy is Alex Jones.   And, as anyone who reads my musings knows, while I somewhat grudgingly admire Mr. Madigan as perhaps the most skilled practitioner of his craft certainly in this state and probably anywhere in this country, I am no fan of his approach to government.  Further, no sort of Machiavellian machination from Mr. Madigan would surprise me.  

However…

At the risk of sounding naïve, Mr. Madigan can’t be that callous, that uncaring about the future of this state, as to drive us to and perhaps over the precipice of financial ruin just to elect his daughter or to curry the favor of the public employee unions…can he?   Besides, it doesn’t look like the public employee unions have the juice they once did (Again, see that 5/8/13 piece.) in Illinois politics, so, even if we assume that Mr. Madigan cares about absolutely nothing but power and wealth, engaging in such a game of financial chicken would make almost no political sense.  And even if Mr. Madigan doesn’t give a rat’s hindquarters about the financial viability of the state, he (almost) never makes a dumb political move.

--Another of the measures that failed, a measure that didn’t completely escape notice, but nearly did, was Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to have the Chicago Public Schools (“CPS”) extend for two more years the pension payment “holiday” that began in 2010.   If passed, the measure would have allowed the CPS to skip its otherwise required payments into the teachers’ pension system.   Mr. Emanuel said he needed this measure because of the CPS looming $1 billion deficit.  Since the measure failed, CPS will now have to (Horrors!) meet its obligations like all private sector, and most public sector, entities.

At the risk of sounding obvious, such pension holidays are a big part of what got Illinois into the pension quicksand in which it is currently sinking.  Promising pensions that it couldn’t possibly pay, thus nearly forcing such holidays, is the major reason for our wallowing in this quagmire, but I digress.  And even our somewhat dense legislators realize this; note the comments of Republican Representative Dave McSweeney of Barrington Hills, who, commenting on Mr. Emanuel’s bill, stated “This bill is a joke.  Stop the madness.  Vote no.”  Amazingly, enough of Mr. McSweeney’s colleagues agreed and gave Mr. Emanuel an unaccustomed slap on the hand, albeit a minor one.

So why did Mr. Emanuel propose a plan for a pension holiday in the very session in which the state was supposed to deal with the debilitating consequences of prior pension holidays?   Simple…the rules don’t apply to superior beings like Mr. Emanuel.   Super Rahm transcends the basic rules of finance, economics, or, one supposes, physics.  If one is to believe the Chicago, and national, media, he is the reincarnation of Zeus…or perhaps merely (but don’t tell Mr. Emanuel) Zeus’s gift to the benighted people of Chicago.  

--Governor Quinn (no relation) is looking pretty good right now, certainly relative to the legislature.  Even yours truly, who agrees with Mr. Quinn on nearly nothing beyond the virtues of the Catholic League and the utter beauty and seriousness of our common last name, is getting to kind of like and respect the guy.  Nearly all, even those of us who think Mr. Quinn suffers from never really having had to breathe private sector air and consequently lives in a fantasy world in which all that is required for nirvana is wise manipulation of the levers of government, agree he is something of an earnest fellow who despises the normal workings of Illinois government…except during those period in which they are working in his favor. 

Mr. Quinn is a pretty decent politician and a smart guy.   He can, and probably will, conduct a sort of Mr. Quinn Goes to Springfield type of campaign in 2014, in which Mr. Quinn, a lifelong politician who has played “get along, go along” for the last 40 years, will be cast as a sort of St. George who battles the dragons of Mike Madigan and his minions.   The voters of Illinois might go for it; they have certainly gone for much more preposterous notions; see, as only the most salient example, the governorship of the man whom Mr. Quinn served as Lieutenant Governor, Rod Blagojevich.

So if this whole legislative debacle was an effort by Mr. Madigan to enhance the chances of his daughter in her near certain efforts to topple Mr. Quinn (Again, I’m not willing to entirely concede this point.), the Speaker may have been too clever by more than half.  

 See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.