SPRINGFIELD-Attorneys for House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton urged the Illinois Supreme Court to reject Gov. Pat Quinn’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that he overstepped his authority in yanking legislators’ pay.
Madigan (D-Chicago) and Cullerton (D-Chicago) also said they had no quarrel with the governor’s argument to bypass the Illinois Appellate Court and take the hot-button issue directly to the state’s seven Supreme Court justices.
“Regardless of its lack of merit, because it is a controversy between two branches of state government which has attracted some notoriety, we urge the court to exercise … jurisdiction over this appeal,” the leaders’ lawyers wrote.
But they disputed Quinn’s contention that the drafters of the state’s 1970 Constitution, who barred any mid-term “changes” to legislators’ pay, meant that to apply only to instances where their salaries increased.
“The governor’s constitutional argument in this case is contrived,” the legislative leaders’ lawyers wrote in their filing, which the Supreme Court released Tuesday.
In July, Quinn used his line-item veto authority to zero out legislators’ pay, arguing they didn’t deserve a paycheck until they pass a pension-reform package to his desk. The governor lost in Cook County Circuit Court and failed to persuade a state appeals court to impose a stay on that lower-court order while the case is on appeal with the state Supreme Court.
In their filing Tuesday, the legislative leaders’ lawyers also argued against Quinn’s contention that the matter is not “ripe” – that it does not yet warrant court intervention – because state lawmakers still have the authority to take the politically-embarrassing vote to override the governor’s line-item veto.
“This argument will be shown to be a transparent attempt to avoid an adverse ruling on his actions, which were in violation of the Constitution,” Madigan and Cullerton’s lawyers wrote.
