Illinois comptroller promises to fight against former lawmakers suing for raises
(The Center Square) – Illinois comptroller Susana Mendoza said she will take a legal challenge waged by two former lawmakers seeking raises that they voted to keep out of their pockets as far as necessary to protect taxpayer dollars.
Mendoza is the defendant in a lawsuit from lawmaker-turned-Kane County Judge Mike Noland and former Metro East Democrat James Clayborne Jr. Despite both voting to freeze their automatic wage increases between 2009 and 2016, the former state senators later sued the state for their $167,000 in refused raises.
A Cook County Circuit judge ruled on Mar. 8 that the former lawmakers were entitled to the raises they’d voted to freeze after Mendoza’s office argued that the lawmakers had waited too long to file their suit. A 2019 ruling also sided with the former lawmakers, saying Illinois’ constitution forbids changing lawmaker pay mid-term.
Noland receives more than $30,000 in annual pension benefits from his years in the General Assembly in addition to his pay as a county judge. Clayborne served more than two decades and collects more than $75,000 annually from the state’s pension fund for lawmakers.
The two had sought to apply their ruling to all lawmakers but Judge Allen P. Walker narrowed the scope to just the suing former legislators.
Mendoza said Thursday that she’s planning to appeal the ruling, not just to preserve tax dollars, but in an attempt to restore a measure of public trust in the state’s elected officials.
“They made a choice to, hypocritically, pretend that they were noble and were voting down a pay raise and, as soon as they left office, they turn around and sued the comptroller for the State of Illinois,” she said, adding that they “proactively utilized this vote against their own pay raise to get out there and campaign and thump their chests and say ‘we’re so honorable, we’re so noble and if the people are hurting, we should be hurting too.’”
Attorneys for Noland and Clayborne haven’t released any statements about the rulings.
The pay freeze legislation came as the General Assembly locked horns with former Gov. Bruce Rauner in a two-year budget standoff. Lawmakers praised the measure, saying that giving themselves raises wasn’t appropriate at a time when others are suffering due to lack of spending authority.
Senate Minority Leader Dan McConchie, R-Hawthorne Woods, is in favor of continuing the fight.
“This is the reason why we’ve had so much trouble with people having faith in Springfield,” he said. “We should not have the Legislature hiding behind judges in order to line their own pocket.”
McConchie said he fears that a ruling against Mendoza would allow future challenges to pay freezes to use the lawsuit as precedent to force the raises.
“It would seem to be that the ‘trick of the budget’ that Democrats did this last cycle would actually be unconstitutional as well, though the judge didn’t rule on those merits,” he said.
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