An Idea that Could Lead to Fairer Reapportionment

Found in Kankakee’s Daily Journal, this column by former State Rep., University of Illinois Professor and Illinois State government department Director Jijm Edgar is reprinted with person of author Jim Nolan:

If court won’t change, change the court

The Illinois Supreme Court repeatedly has thwarted citizen efforts to vote on term limits and redistricting reform and has dismissed, without even a hearing on the merits, a proposal to address the public employee pension mess that is strangling the state budget.

This past week, the state high court approved an outrageous violation of taxpayer-funded pension programs by awarding huge pensions to nongovernment union officials who put in a single day on a government payroll. How shameful this practice.

I say if the court won’t change its ways, change the court.

Read on, though the next several paragraphs might be a slog.

The framers of the Illinois Constitution of 1970 provided that voters could initiate and amend the legislative article of the charter. “Structural and procedural” amendments would be allowed. In 1976, the court held that this term requires amendments be both structural and procedural. This makes it almost impossible to craft a proposal to make a single change in the legislative article that is both.

The late, eminent state Supreme Court justice Walter Schaefer pooh-poohed this court reading.

“When I see that a restaurant serves both chicken and beef, that doesn’t mean every dish has to have both chicken and beef in it.”

Nevertheless, because of the court’s interpretation, term limits and redistricting reform have been prevented from reaching the voters.

As for the state pension mess, the constitution does set out a clear, contractual guarantee of pension benefits earned. The court has, however, bent over backward to expand the coverage to include health insurance, as well as to private sector union officials who now collect $150,000 per year or more from us taxpayers (while continuing in their high-paid union official jobs) for just one day of government employment.

A few years ago, a leading civic group sought to argue the state, swimming in $250 billion of pension obligations for which there is no money, had the legal right to override the pension guarantee, in order to save the state from itself. The high court wouldn’t even deign to give the argument a hearing.

Voters and taxpayers are frustrated, to say the least.

What to do?

The court now has a 4-3 Democratic majority. One of its Dem members — they are elected on a partisan basis for 10-year terms—is up for retention for another 10 years in the 2020 election cycle, right around the corner.

Previously unknown Rock Island attorney and former Kankakee County resident Thomas Kilbride, of the central Illinois 3rd District, was elected narrowly in 2000, with the help of $1 million from Democratic House speaker Mike Madigan. In 2010, Kilbride was retained by a 65.9 percent vote (60 percent is required to stay on the bench), with the help of $2.7 million from Madigan and his trial lawyer friends. This made it the most expensive retention race on record in the U.S. up to that time.

Justice Kilbride is part of the problem, voting, in my opinion, the wrong way on the types of issues noted above.

If a citizen-taxpayer effort were aroused to oppose his retention, he could be toppled. The court would then be left 3-3 Dem-Repub in 2021.

In that year, the Legislature will redraw congressional and state legislative districts. Because the Democrats will have big majorities in the two chambers and a Democratic governor, it is assured, based on history, Madigan will craft an exquisitely gerrymandered set of maps, to benefit his party.

Just as assured, Republicans will challenge the maps. In the past, the GOP has filed its complaints in federal courts, realizing the Democratic majority on the state high court would reject its appeals.

In 2011, a federal court rejected the GOP contentions — because the U.S. Supreme Court never has gone beyond requiring equal population and protection of minority opportunity to elect their own. Matters of district compactness, for example, have not been addressed, at least as of this writing.

However, the state constitution does require districts be “compact, contiguous and substantially equal in population.” (The most compact shape is a circle.)

Present Illinois districts are equal in population — but the opposite of compact. For example, the Illinois House districts in Chicago reach out similar to long, slender fingers into the nearby suburbs to grasp enough population to justify Democrat-majority districts.

If a challenge were made to the 3-3 state high court, they might deadlock, which would leave a lower circuit court decision in place. The GOP would, of course, want to challenge the remap in a Republican-friendly jurisdiction.

This rejection of Kilbride is the only way I can divine to send a message to the state high court that things have to change so the state can save itself from itself.

= = = = =
Jim Nowlan is a former Illinois legislator, agency director, senior aide to three unindicted governors, campaign manager for U.S. Senate and presidential candidates and professor of government at several universities in Illinois, as well as in China.


Comments

An Idea that Could Lead to Fairer Reapportionment — 6 Comments

  1. The time and place to have had these discussions was during the year at the Internal Support Committee.

    Franks stifled all attempts to allow that committee to do its job by instructing Peter Austin to refuse to place it on the committee agenda despite an opinion from the States Attorney that he was not allowed to do that under current Board Rules.

    Now he set up an “Ad Hoc” Committee and sprung his pre arrived at conclusions on them.

    No one on the current Board made so much as a peep.

    If you are having trouble sleeping some night, watch a Board meeting and count the sheep.

  2. Is this the RAPE of Illinois taxpayers you are referring to?
    Is so this is a gang rape.

    Once again proving why the state must amend the Illinois Constitution’s pension clause, the court unanimously ruled in favor of a special perk that inflated union leader pensions to nearly three times the pension of the average worker.

    The Illinois Supreme Court unanimously ruled Nov. 29 that the state constitution’s pension clause protects a perk granting inflated post-retirement pay – one that only benefits government employees who work for their unions.

    The decision declares untouchable a pension-spiking provision available only to a select few workers, and underscores the need for a constitutional amendment and comprehensive pension reform in Illinois. According to one estimate, those inflated pensions will cost taxpayers more than $50 million.

    In the decision – Carmichael v. Laborers’ & Retirement Board Employees’ Annuity & Benefit Fund of Chicago – the court held the Illinois General Assembly could not rescind a pension- spiking perk for employees of the city of Chicago and Chicago Board of Education who take time away from their government jobs to work for their unions.

    Pension benefits are typically calculated as a percentage of a retiree’s government salary near the end of employment, with a higher percentage of salary granted based on years of service. But for certain retired Chicago union leaders, their pensions will instead be based on their union salaries, which were higher than what they earned in their positions with their government employers. As a result, their pensions will be nearly three times higher than the typical retired city worker, according to a 2011 report from the Chicago Tribune.

    The Tribune estimated the cost of 23 such pensions at $56 million.

    Since the city of Chicago and the Chicago Board of Education are not responsible for setting union salaries, the resulting higher pension costs were ultimately unpredictable for public officials and taxpayers alike. The General Assembly effectively outsourced responsibility for setting public pension benefits to a nongovernmental third party: unions.

    The union pension-spiking perk was originally granted by the General Assembly in 1991, with no public debate and no cost estimates available, according to the Tribune. The court notes in the opinion that the General Assembly attempted to walk back this perk with Public Act 97-651 after receiving negative press coverage.

    In other words, the General Assembly was caught red-handed doling out unaffordable benefits to select special interests. Yet when lawmakers tried to correct the mistake, the Illinois Supreme Court said no.

    Although this type of abuse is not the sole cause of the Chicago pension systems’ poor financial condition, it is a perfect example of politicians doling out special favors and sticking taxpayers with the bill.

    In total, the Chicago-related pension funds have more than $41 billion in pension debt.

    https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-supreme-court-defends-inflated-pensions-for-chicago-union-leaders/

  3. **The time and place to have had these discussions was during the year at the Internal Support Committee.**

    Huh? How is this a County Board issue?

  4. What if the Dems challenge in a Dem friendly circuit and they reach the opposite conclusion as a Republican friendly judge, and then you have a tied Illinois Supreme Court?

    Would it go to the 7th U.S. Circuit or SCOTUS?

    This is an issue, because of the maps, that affects the whole state — deferring to local jurisdictions just doesn’t seem adequate.

    There needs to be an agreement on what the districts are.

    I don’t know what the goal here is.

    What would happen if everything went down like this article lays out?

    Legislative maps that are wholly within the Republican friendly jurisdiction where you won the lawsuit would have to redraw them…or what?

    Everyone would have to redraw the districts?

    I don’t get it.

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