State Comptroller Says No Legislative Pay Increases This Year

By JERRY NOWICKI Capitol News Illinois

The complexities of Illinois’ legislator pay laws were on display again this week as the state’s comptroller insisted in a video message that there will be no raises for lawmakers this year.

Comptroller Susana Mendoza, a Democrat and the state’s chief fiscal officer, emphatically said in a one-minute YouTube video there would be “zero” raises for lawmakers despite claims to the contrary.

“By law, there is a (cost of living adjustment) in the budget every year,” Mendoza said in the video. “But this year, the General Assembly voted to make the COLA zero, and I'm glad because it's the right thing to do, especially in the COVID-19 crisis that has really hit our state budget hard.”

Mendoza should know, she said in the video, because she writes the checks in Illinois, and money not appropriated by the General Assembly cannot be spent. Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, said the same on the Senate floor, noting lawmakers intentionally appropriated zero dollars for raises this year.

Republicans, however, issued news releases and spoke on the floor Saturday claiming the budget included the automatic raises. The state GOP asserted on Twitter that one lawsuit from a “safe, entrenched legislator” could force the payment of the raises which the comptroller has unequivocally denied she will pay.

While Mendoza made clear there will be no raises this year, the exchanges highlighted the fact that an ongoing legal challenge leaves much uncertain in terms of whether legislators can halt their own pay raises legally.

At the crux of the issue is a section in the state Constitution and an Illinois law dating back to 1990 which provides for automatic COLA increases of roughly 2 percent to 3 percent every year unless lawmakers act to stop them. In fiscal Year 2009 and thereafter, lawmakers routinely did just that by including language in a budget implementation bill prohibiting the COLAs.

Lawmakers did not include that language in a budget approved last May, which allowed for a roughly 2.4 percent raise to lawmaker base pay for the first time since 2008, bringing it to $69,464 annually, not including stipends for legislative leaders and committee chairs and spokespersons.

This year, according to Mendoza and Manar, lawmakers went back to denying themselves a raise by specifically appropriating no money to pay for it. That approach is different than in years past, when lawmakers passed language prohibiting cost of living adjustments. The new approach was in large part a response to an ongoing lawsuit which deemed the previous method unconstitutional.