Ex-lawmakers who rejected raises are awarded back pay
The state of Illinois must pay two former Democratic state senators salary hikes they voted to reject while in office, a Cook County judge ruled late Thursday.
The ruling stems from a lawsuit Michael Noland of Elgin and James Clayborne of Belleville brought against Democratic state Comptroller Susana Mendoza’s office. The senators argued that laws freezing legislative salaries from 2009 to 2016 violated the Illinois Constitution, which prohibits lawmakers from changing their pay during their current term.
Noland, now a Kane County judge, sued in 2017 seeking back pay for himself and “all others impacted” by the eight bills lawmakers passed to give up the annual cost-of-living raises they are automatically granted under state law.
The lawsuit, which Clayborne joined as a plaintiff in 2018, also takes issue with unpaid furlough days lawmakers approved for themselves each year from 2009 through 2013.
Then-Cook County Judge Franklin Valderrama ruled in July 2019 that the state constitution is “unambiguous” in prohibiting such action. In Thursday’s ruling, Judge Allen Price Walker, who took over the case last year when Valderrama was appointed to the federal bench, rejected Mendoza’s arguments that Noland and Clayborne waited too long to sue. Her office also argued it has discretion over when to pay the former lawmakers their back wages.
But in a partial victory for Mendoza, Walker said the ruling only applies to Noland and Clayborne, not other lawmakers who were in the legislature at the time, because they filed their lawsuit as individuals and not as public officials.
“This court cannot
enter an order directing (Mendoza) to pay all members of the General Assembly,” Walker wrote.
The court did not issue an order directing Mendoza to cut checks by a specific date.
Mendoza in a statement promised to appeal the ruling, calling the lawsuit “a brazen money grab.”
“Former Senators Noland and Clayborne voted to decline these pay raises,” she said. “They issued statements at the time patting themselves on the back for declining the pay hikes. Now that they are out of office, these shameless grifters want the courts to reverse their votes, reaching into taxpayers’ pockets to give them those retroactive raises.”
Mendoza’s office estimates it would have to pay Noland about $71,000 and Clayborne $95,000 if an appeal ultimately is unsuccessful.
On top of his judicial salary of more than $200,000, Noland, who was in the General Assembly from 2007 to 2017, collects a legislative pension of more than $30,000 annually. Clayborne, who was a lawmaker from 1995 until 2018, receives a legislative pension of more than $75,000 annually.
An attorney for the former legislators did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Kwame Raoul, whose office represents the state in the case, said the ruling is under review.
As the state struggled with severe financial problems in the wake of the Great Recession, lawmakers repeatedly voted to freeze their salaries in an effort to show they were doing their part.
Clayborne, now an attorney in private practice, voted in favor of the measures each time. From 2009 to 2016, Noland only once voted against the legislation canceling cost-of-living raises and approving unpaid furlough days. In 2012, he was quoted in a statement put out by Senate Democrats praising the legislation.
“We need structural tax reform to properly fund our most important priorities — like education, health care and the ongoing need for infrastructure,” Noland said. “Until we do this, the least we can do is cut our own pay again. I know most working families in Illinois are not seeing raises this year, so we shouldn’t either.”
Lawmakers started getting their first raises in more than a decade in 2019, when their base salaries were bumped up by about $1,600, to more than $69,000 annually, as part of Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s first-year budget.
The state budget for the current year, which ends June 30, did not include language blocking automatic pay raises for lawmakers, which led to Republican opposition. Democrats cited the ongoing lawsuit as the reason for omitting such a provision but didn’t include any additional money in the budget to pay higher salaries.