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— The State Journal-Register | Finke, D. —
Comptroller Susana Mendoza said Thursday she wants to stop the practice of governors hiding employee salaries by shifting costs to state agencies.
Surrounded by three Democratic and one Republican lawmaker, Mendoza called for lawmakers to pass the “Truth In Hiring” law that requires governors to pay executive office employees out of the budget set aside for the executive office.
It would prohibit the practice of “off-shoring” in which employees who are part of the executive office staff have their salaries paid out of money set aside for state agencies. One of the more notable examples was when it was discovered Gov. Bruce Rauner’s former education secretary, Beth Purvis, was having her $250,000 contract paid out of the Department of Human Services budget. The administration defended the arrangement by saying part of Purvis’ job involved early childhood development, a program handled by DHS.
“This is a very simple bill,” Mendoza said at a Statehouse news conference. “It says if you work in the governor’s office, you will be paid from the governor’s payroll. Your salary will be counted in the governor’s budget. Your salary will not be pulled from agencies that are supposed to protect the most vulnerable.”
Mendoza said Rauner’s executive office budget this year is for $4.9 million and lists 44 staffers. She said that isn’t an accurate representation.
Instead, Mendoza said an additional 58 people are doing work that should be billed to the executive office budget but instead are having their salaries paid by different state agencies. Together, those staffers are paid about $5.5 million, making Rauner’s executive office budget more than twice as large as it appears to be on paper, according to Mendoza’s numbers.
Mendoza acknowledged the practice of off-shoring started long before Rauner and was used by former Govs. George Ryan, Rod Blagojevich and Pat Quinn, at the least.
“The practice is wrong whether it is a Democrat or Republican governor,” Mendoza said.
Lawmakers supporting the proposal said it is more than just an academic exercise. Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, who chairs a Senate appropriations committee, said lawmakers develop budgets that reflect where they think the state should emphasize spending tax dollars.
“Every time the governor shifts a new, unexpected six-figure salary into an agency’s budget and puts that expense on their plate, those are dollars that have been prioritized by the legislature for an important purpose,” he said.
“We need to have accurate accounting. We obviously don’t have it in the governor’s office,” said Rep. David McSweeney, R-Barrington Hills, who does not support Rauner in the primary election.
Rauner spokeswoman Rachel Bold said the administration is “open to a conversation about changing bookkeeping practices.”
“But let’s be clear: all state agencies that operate under Governor Rauner are part of the administration and carry out the necessary functions of state government,” she said. “Unlike previous administrations, we have been transparent and publicly reported employees that work in our office. All salaries are publicly reported.”
Manar said that Quinn used to make the same argument that all the salaries were state money so it didn’t matter which agency paid them.
“If you follow that argument to its conclusion, why are legislators in the (budgeting) business and why is that in the Constitution in the first place,” he said. If that’s how government should be run, we should just appropriate one number to the governor’s office and go home. That’s not what checks and balances is.”
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