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MADISON - ST. CLAIR RECORD

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Madigan's move to force budget resolution digs at LeChien for undermining legislative process

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan pleads that St. Clair County Circuit Judge Robert LeChien undermined the Illinois Constitution when he ordered the comptroller to continue paying state employees at normal rates.

 

Madigan petitioned to intervene in LeChien’s court on Jan. 26, for the purpose of filing a motion to dissolve a preliminary injunction he signed in August 2015.

 

“By allowing the legislature and the executive to avoid their constitutional role in the budget process, the injunction has undermined the budget process and resulted in great public harm, damaging the integrity of the state’s constitutional form of government,” Madigan wrote in the motion.

“Because of the injunction, which is broad and covers all state employees, not only members of the plaintiff unions, the state is spending money without the constitutionally required authorization by the legislature and executive.”

She wrote that the state operated for the last fiscal year and the first half of this fiscal year without appropriations legislation authorizing payment of wages, and proposes to dissolve the order on Feb. 28, so that the legislative and executive branches would have time to enact appropriations.

“With no possibility of a government shutdown to force action by the legislative and executive braches, the state has continued to operate without a budget to fund many services provided by vendors and grantees,” she wrote.

“Those vendors and grantees and the many Illinoisans they serve are bearing the brunt of this egregious and untenable budget impasse.”

 

She wrote that she acted on behalf of the people, not of any elected official.

 

She wrote that comptroller Susana Mendoza did not join the motion but would abide by any ruling of the court.

 

The last state budget expired on June 30, 2015, and collective bargaining agreements between the state and its unions expired on the same date.

 

To preserve the normal payroll, the unions sued Gov. Bruce Rauner and former comptroller Leslie Munger in St. Clair County chancery court.

 

Rauner and Munger retained private counsel, but Madigan sent assistants to a hearing to argue that they represented Munger.

 

They argued that federal law required payment of all employees at minimum wage pending passage of a budget.

 

LeChien allowed Munger to keep her lawyer, who described temporary conversion to minimum wage as a nearly impossible task.

 

On July 10, 2015, LeChien entered a temporary restraining order requiring Munger to authorize a normal payroll.

 

He converted it to a preliminary injunction on Aug. 13.

 

Rauner and the unions agreed to preserve the terms of all bargaining agreements until negotiations succeeded or reached an impasse.

 

No further proceedings took place in LeChien’s court, until Madigan filed her petition for intervention and motion for dissolution.

 

She argued that LeChien can’t make his order permanent because the Illinois Supreme Court rejected the position of the unions in a separate case last March.

In that case, six of seven Justices found that pay raises in a collective bargaining agreement are always contingent on legislative funding.

 

They reversed First District appellate judges in Chicago, who had ruled in favor of Local 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

 

Justice Mary Jane Theis wrote, “The power to appropriate for the expenditure of public funds is vested exclusively in the General Assembly; no other branch of government holds such power.”

 

The Justices denied rehearing last May and issued a mandate in June.

 

Madigan’s motion for dissolution argues that the Supreme Court spoke directly to the issues before LeChien, and that plaintiffs cannot prevail.

 

She quoted Theis on the General Assembly’s exclusive power and wrote, “Consistent with the Supreme Court’s ruling, this court should restore that power to the proper branch of government and dissolve the preliminary injunction.”

 

Meanwhile, litigation continues in LeChien’s court and elsewhere over Rauner’s declaration that negotiations reached an impasse and the old contract expired.

Judges of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Districts have involved themselves in cases out of Cook County, the state Labor Relations Board, and St. Clair County.

 

All the cases relate to three labor board declarations of an impasse, the first one oral, the second in writing without a public vote, and the third by public vote.

 

The union has asked the Supreme Court to consolidate the First District and Fourth District cases at the First District, which ruled in its favor.

 

Rauner has asked the Justices to consolidate the First District and Fourth District cases at the Fourth District, which ruled in his favor.

 

Fourth District judges branded simultaneous review of an administrative decision as an offense against judicial efficiency.

 

“Not only was it perversely unhelpful to split this matter up between the First District and the Fourth District, but the apparent forum shopping insults both districts by implying that they are sympathetic to one party or the other and that they therefore lack judicial integrity,” they wrote.

The dispute involved the Fifth District after LeChien signed an order in the union’s favor, preserving the status quo under the old contract.

Fifth District judges ruled that the legal basis for LeChien’s order no longer existed because the labor board took formal action after he signed it.

 

They issued a mandate on Jan. 27, directing LeChien to “make a determination on the temporary restraining order under the facts as they currently exist.”

 

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