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In the first week
of the fall Veto session and one week after an impressive
victory at the polls, Illinois Senate Democrats flexed their
muscle by shoving through a $7.50/hour minimum wage vote. Currently, the minimum
wage is $6.50/hour, $1.35 above the federal minimum wage of
$5.15. Should the
Illinois House pass a minimum wage increase, Illinois will join only 5
other states with such a high minimum
wage.
Over in the
Illinois House, however, Speaker Mike Madigan is playing a
different tune.
Madigan appears to be resistant to Illinois increasing the
minimum wage and perhaps would rather wait for the U.S.
Congress to take up the issue. According to pundits
there seems to be some stress between Madigan and the Governor
over the immediate nature of the Governor's push for a minimum
wage increase.
The increase, if passed, will not go into effect until
July 1, 2007 and so the big rush seems to be
premature.
In Washington, Congressional
Democrats have indicated that they will seek a federal minimum
wage of $7.25/hour in order to "level the playing field." Both in Washington and in Illinois, small businesses
are strenuously resisting such an anti-business move by
Democrats. The
National Federation of Independent Businesses said, "the
businesses it represents are opposed to government mandates
and the business owners should be allowed to determine how
much they pay their employees."
In addition to
raising the minimum wage to $7.50/hour, the Illinois
legislation also removes a provision that allows businesses to
pay $.50/hour less than the minimum for 14, 15 and 16 year-old
workers. Also,
the legislation will peg Illinois' minimum wage to
the CPI and, therefore, increase every year without the need
for legislative approval. |
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 After voting for a minimum wage increase,
the Illinois Senate Democrats also voted themselves a 10% pay
raise last week.
The lowest ranked legislator will now see a $5,524/year
raise bringing their part-time salary to $63,143/year. "We
are underpaid," said Sen. Rickey Hendon (D-Chicago). "If you
reject a raise for yourself, you're saying you're not worth
it. And I don't know about all of you, but I worked my butt
off for the people of the 5th District, and I deserve this
little cost-of-living" increase.
The legislative
pay raise will cost taxpayers an additional $4.4 million
annually. Some
senators voiced their concern that they were voting themselves
a pay raise while thousands of other state employees have not
had any raise in four years. Senator Dale Risinger
of Peoria said, "I cannot go
back and look in the eyes of other people in this government
that are doing a heck of a job, working hard, saying, 'You
know what? I got mine, but you can't get
yours.'" |
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 Late in the campaign for Governor, it was reported
that First Lady Patti Blagojevich had only received one
commission as part of her realty business in the previous
year. That
commission, it turned out, was from a large donor to Mrs.
Blagojevich's husband's campaign and a state contractor. Now it appears that
Mrs. Blagojevich's realty business was involved in other shady
deals.
The Sun-Times
reported last week that in 2002, Mrs. Blagojevich had
business dealings with indicted Blagojevich insider Tony Rezko
from which Mrs. Blagojevich reaped $47,000. In the following two
months after the real estate deal between the First Lady and
Rezko, Governor Blagojevich began placing friends and
associates of Rezko in state jobs and other postions. Nobody involved with
the deal with either comment on the transaction or remembers
exactly what Mrs. Blagojevich did to earn the commission but
shortly thereafter, Lon Monk, the Governor's Chief of Staff
faxed a list to the Blagojevich home of people that Rezko
wanted placed in state slots. |
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"Raising the
minimum wage is all the rage right now. Last week, voters in
six states endorsed measures to lift the floor, bringing to 29
the number of states that mandate more than the federal level
of $5.15. One of the first items of business for Democrats
once they take over Congress will be to raise the federal
minimum wage to $7.25 over two years. President Bush says this
is an issue on which he and the opposition may find common
ground. Meanwhile, Gov. Rod Blagojevich wants to boost the
current Illinois minimum of $6.50 an
hour to $7.50, with automatic cost-of-living increases. Mayor
Richard Daley supports the idea." Read
the whole thing... |
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State Representative Tom Cross was
re-elected as minority leader in the Illinois House last
week.