Illinois House approves 18% pay hike for lawmakers, adding $12,904 to $85,000 base salary

SPRINGFIELD, Ailing. – The concept for elevating salaries of prime Illinois state authorities officers, which culminated this weekend with the Home voting lawmakers an 18% pay hike, started with Gov. J.B. Pritzker. 

However the Democratic governor mentioned he initially requested that the Normal Meeting enhance pay for his administration’s company administrators to recruit and retain prime expertise. Pritzker mentioned he would not presume to inform the Normal Meeting what its members needs to be paid. 

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“The Legislature is a coequal department of presidency,” Pritzker mentioned Saturday at a preinaugural neighborhood service occasion at Central Illinois Foodbank. “They have not had a increase since earlier than the Nice Recession and so I can see why there’s an curiosity in doing that.”

Lame-duck lawmakers are scrambling to behave on last-minute – and principally crucial and contentious – points earlier than the 103rd Normal Meeting is sworn in on Wednesday. 

Friday evening, the Home endorsed a plan to extend spending midway via the finances yr, together with $850 million for the state’s “wet day” fund, $400 million for attracting enterprise, and a $12,904 annual enhance in base pay for members of the Home and Senate. On prime of that $85,000 wage, most members get a minimum of $12,000 or extra as stipends for additional duties. 

“We do not need a Legislature that is solely made up of the rich,” mentioned Home Majority Chief Greg Harris, the laws’s Chicago Democratic sponsor who retires Tuesday. “We wish individuals who can run for workplace, serve their neighborhood, but additionally be capable of pay for his or her household and youngsters.”

The final increase for legislators got here in 2008, and anxious concerning the optics, lawmakers voted towards any enhance every year till 2019, when the Home stunned the Senate by backing out of an agreed-to freeze on cost-of-living will increase. A locked-in COLA enhance has since been adopted.

Pritzker initially commissioned a nationwide wage research of jobs corresponding to these of his cupboard. The led to pay raises for 21 company administrators who reply to the governor. 

Pritzker, a multibillionaire fairness investor and philanthropist, started his tenure as governor in 2019 by supplementing salaries of key employees members out of his personal checking account. 

“Individuals are keen to take a reduced wage off of what they could get within the personal sector to come back to public service, however you actually must be considerably aggressive. Individuals are placing their youngsters via faculty or they’re paying their residence mortgage or their lease. …,” Pritzker mentioned. “We simply wish to be aggressive and convey nice individuals after which retain nice individuals in state authorities.”

From there, negotiators added in pay raises for six statewide constitutional officers. The proposal awaits motion by the Senate, which plans to satisfy Sunday evening. For the constitutional officers’ raises to take impact instantly, they have to be signed into regulation earlier than these officers are sworn in to four-year phrases Monday afternoon within the capital. 

The raises for many are within the 10% vary. The lieutenant governor, comptroller and treasurer, for instance, would see 10% will increase to $160,900. The legal professional common and secretary of state will see 9% extra of their paychecks, to $183,300. The governor earns $205,700, though Pritzker doesn’t take it. 

For company heads, the laws units a wage minimal however permits the governor to go above that. And every would obtain an annual value of dwelling adjustment. The highest wage set within the invoice is $200,000, which might go to chiefs at eight businesses: the departments of Youngsters and Household Providers, Corrections, Human Providers, Innovation and Know-how, Public Well being, State Police, Transportation and Veterans Affairs. 

Senate consideration of the matter leaves much less time for the session’s different two main points: Home-approved bans on sure semiautomatic weapons and on authorized motion from exterior of Illinois concentrating on individuals who journey right here for abortions or gender-affirming medical remedy. 

The gun ban, rising from the July 4th parade in Highland Park the place a gunman killed seven and injured 30, is sponsored by Rep. Bob Morgan, a Deerfield Democrat who attended the parade. It could prohibit almost seven dozen particular sorts of fast-firing pistols and rifles and sure faces a competing invoice from the Senate physique. 

Likewise there’s work within the Senate on a separate proposal that woud defend individuals receiving abortions or gender-affirming remedy – or these offering it – from authorized motion arising in states which have restricted entry to these procedures, notably abortions, because the Supreme Court docket final summer season overturned Roe v. Wade.