— Chicago Tribune Op-ed | Mendoza, S. —

Listen to this article.

On behalf of all Illinois taxpayers, I’d like to ask our state’s “Million Dollar Man” to give up his crusade for even more taxpayer money.

State taxpayers paid former state Sen. Mike Noland $738,000 during his 10 years as a state legislator. Now we pay him $207,000 a year to be a Kane County judge. He filed a lawsuit against my office four years ago, asking the courts to force me to pay him even more money for his part-time gig as a legislator.

Why? Well, every few years, in a great show of selflessness, Noland, then a Democrat from Elgin, voted to decline cost-of-living raises for himself, which are considered automatic for lawmakers under state law. He would pat himself on the back and ask voters to reelect him because of his great self-sacrifice in voting to decline the raise. He was a chief co-sponsor of one of the resolutions to refuse the raise.

Then, after he left the legislature, he shamelessly filed a lawsuit asking the court to save him from himself. The lawyer-senator apparently did not know what he was doing when he voted to decline the pay raises. He did not know he was violating the Illinois Constitution, which says lawmaker pay cannot be changed during a two-year period — even though the provision in the constitution was debated thoroughly. So he asked the court to reverse all his votes and pay him back all those raises.

Former Sen. James Clayborne, who likewise thumped his chest about his noble sacrifice in declining those pay raises year after year, joined Noland’s lawsuit to get them back.

Noland holds a unique position as a former legislator and now a judge. Noland could potentially receive a pension for those two posts starting at $104,000 a year and climbing quickly.

Because he started under the “Tier 1” pension system that gives a compounded 3% cost-of-living adjustment every year for his General Assembly pension and a lower but still compounded increase for his judge’s pension, some back-of-the-envelope math shows that in 20 years of retirement, he’ll be paid $2.7 million by taxpayers on top of the hundreds of thousands in salary we have already paid him.

Judge Noland, isn’t that enough?

Drop this self-enriching crusade.

Senator, take your own advice. Drop your claim for back-raises.

The former senators won a round Thursday in the Circuit Court. This fight is not over. I have asked Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office to appeal the ruling to the state Appellate Court. I will exhaust every legal option available in defense of Illinois taxpayers.

Thankfully, the judge’s ruling applies only to Noland and Clayborne. Any other former legislators willing to demand the raises they previously rejected will have to walk the same gauntlet of shame Noland and Clayborne find themselves in.

The COVID-19 pandemic closed businesses all over our state. Many Illinois residents lost their jobs, leaving them unable to pay state income taxes. People were not going to restaurants and paying sales taxes. The state budget took a severe hit and we needed to turn to the federal government for help. It’s my job to pay the state’s bills and navigate us through this fiscal crisis.

Certainly, there are far better uses for $167,000 than giving Noland and Clayborne raises they voted not to take.

Susana A. Mendoza is the Illinois comptroller.

Listen to this article: Mendoza, S. (2021, April 12). Op-ed: Susana Mendoza: Ex-lawmakers trying to claw back rejected raises are wasting taxpayer money. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from www.chicagotribune.com.