Leader Radogno Slams AFSCME Deal
by Kristina Rasmussen Here’s Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno’s take on the AFSCME deal: “This is wrong on so many counts that it is hard to know where to begin. At a minimum, there is the appearance that the Governor traded a favorable contract for the union endorsement. It was clearly wrong to take the state’s lead...
Here’s Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno’s take on the AFSCME deal:
“This is wrong on so many counts that it is hard to know where to begin. At a minimum, there is the appearance that the Governor traded a favorable contract for the union endorsement. It was clearly wrong to take the state’s lead contract negotiator with him to the endorsement session and he has irresponsibly tied the hands of legislators and the next governor at a time of financial distress by taking a large part of the budget off the table before additional spending reductions are discussed. By exempting a large part of the state’s operating budget, programs for education, community service providers and other state-financed programs are unnecessarily put at greater risk.”
“I was stunned and outraged when I first learned of this. It was a serious lapse of ethical judgment. We will never get beyond the culture of corruption if we allow these kinds of abuses to go unchallenged. The people I represent won’t see much difference between trading campaign support and contributions for a Senate seat and trading campaign support and contributions for a favorable contract.”
She’s making the same point we hammered on Tuesday: Labor costs make up one in four dollars spent from Illinois’s general funds. Walling off a major chunk of the budget from any spending reforms is ludicrous, especially when other spending priorities, including direct programmatic and grant outlays, transfers to other government entities and funds, and debt payback, will be pinched.