Illinois Budget: Would Bill Brady Cut Governor Staff Salaries by 10%?

(Chicago, IL) — July 7, 2010. What policy would State Senator Bill Brady (R-Bloomington) adopt toward gubernatorial staff salaries were he to become governor?

Would he cut top staff salaries by 10%?

The Associated Press yesterday revealed that Governor Pat Quinn has handed out 43 raises to 35 staffers, averaging 11.4%, over the last 15 months. Some raises exceeded 20%.

Brady, predictably, waled on Quinn:

“Today’s revelation shows there are two rules under Governor Pat Quinn – one for him and the powerful insider crowd, and another for all the rest of us.

While working families are tightening their belts and doing more with less, Pat Quinn is doling out massive pay raises to his own staff – and we’re paying for them.  Today’s revelation shows, once again, that Pat Quinn is incapable of solving our fiscal crisis, and has lost control of state government. How many other agencies received pay raises?”

The sharp rhetoric suggested that a Governor Brady, who has been campaigning on a 10% across-the-board budget cut or some version of a 10% cut, would not be handing out staff raises during an economic crisis, a crisis which is shredding the state’s balance sheet into confetti. In fact, you would think that a Brady budget ax would land a blow on top staff pay.

You would be wrong.

Since Brady’s statement lacked a specific policy statement on staff raises, I posed the raise question to the Brady. I asked:

“Were Sen. Brady to win, what would be his policy on gubernatorial staff compensation? Would he impose a pay freeze for a period of time? Would he limit raises by pre-determined, standardized percentage? Or would he cut salaries by pre-determined percentage, such as 5%, 10%, etc. in light of the economic crisis?”

I thought that would cover all the bases. Wrong.

Patty Schuh, Brady’s spokesperson, who was working late, late into the night, responded promptly and graciously to my inquiry with the following statement:

“At this point, I think we could only say that Bill Brady plans to have Illinois government live within its means.”

That’s it.

At this point, Brady has no plans to cut top staff salaries, freeze top staff salaries or even limit top staff raises.

For the all the justified outrage over the Quinn raises, Brady declined to apply his “10% budget cut” to top gubernatorial staff salaries. Huh?

If not there, where?