Politics & Government
Editorial: Why Lawmakers Should Let Rauner Do What He Was Elected To Do
"We have a feeling lawmakers will have plenty more, better battles to fight with Rauner in the not-so-distant future."
Despite what House Speaker Michael Madigan believes, Bruce Rauner really did win the election last November. And however you feel about the anti-union vigor the new governor has brought to the job since then, one thing is undeniable: Rauner was elected to bring fiscal order to a government defined by financial chaos.
He can’t do that if the General Assembly takes him out of one of the biggest responsibilities of the governor’s office: negotiating the labor contract with the union that represents 38,000 state employees. That’s exactly what will happen if the General Assembly overrides Rauner’s veto of Senate Bill 1229, which swiftly would move stalled talks between Rauner and AFSCME Council 31 to an arbitrator.
We can’t verify Rauner’s claim that this is the “worst bill in state history,” but we have no doubt that enacting it would be a very bad move so early in both this negotiation (AFSCME’s contract expired June 30) and in Rauner’s term (the bill expires in 2019, and clearly is aimed at shielding AFSCME from Rauner for the duration of his term).
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We’ve been critical of Rauner’s anti-union agenda to the extent that it has precipitated the current state budget impasse, which could portend very bad things to come for the state. That doesn’t mean we support a panicked evacuation of the governor from what we believe is the greatest mandate he earned on Nov. 4 — giving taxpayers a voice in the cost of government they fund...
You can read the rest of this editorial at Reboot Illinois-->
