What do we do in Illinois when there is basically nothing we can do about policies most of us want changed? Three such come immediately to mind: redistricting, term limits, and our public pension albatross.
The Illinois Supreme Court has twice rejected recent efforts by citizens to put on the ballot a proposal to take redistricting away from lawmakers and give the job to an independent commission.
This, so that Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan can no longer gerrymander districts.
A friend of mine toted up the votes in 2014 and found that 50.5 percent of the voters statewide voted Democratic in House elections, yet that party garnered 60 percent of the House seats. (By the way, Republicans majorities in many other states do the same thing.)
The Illinois Constitution of 1970 provides citizens use of the petition process to put proposals directly onto the ballot, but only for the legislative article of the charter. And a phrase in that article says any proposals “shall be limited to structural and procedural subjects.”
In 1976, six of the seven justices said that meant a proposal must make both kinds of changes. It has proved almost impossible to craft proposals that do both and also pass court muster.
The lone dissenter from the majority, the late, highly distinguished Democrat Walter Schaefer, opined to the effect: When I see a restaurant sign that says, “We have chicken and fish,” that doesn’t mean you have to order both chicken and fish!
The court also threw off the ballot a 1994 proposal for term limits, for the same reasons.
Opponents of term limits say we already have term limits: they are called elections.
Yet, there is absolutely no way, absent term limits, that Mike Madigan can ever be ejected from his “rotten borough” (the safe district he created for himself).
Madigan has won 24 elections to his 2-year House seat, most of that time as speaker. He has arguably been for decades our most powerful statewide politician. Yet the 12 million-plus residents outside his district have no opportunity to eject him.
As for public pensions, the high court has said the state constitution is quite clear, and it is: state and local public pensions are contractual obligations, the benefits of which shall not be diminished.
Some have argued that contracts are renewed periodically, and thus benefits going forward, not those already earned, can be diminished. No so, the court has said.
A Chicago civic group filed a lawsuit a few years ago that said the fiscal plight in Illinois is so dire that the state should be able to use “the police power” (not what many think of as our local police, but another concept) to override the pension part of the constitution.
This, so the state could, in effect, save itself from itself. No dice, said lower courts; the high court wouldn’t even hear the case.
Since judicial reform in 1962, the state high court has always had a Democratic majority, either 4-3 or 5-2. This was almost guaranteed because three justices are elected countywide in Cook (Chicago), so three are always Dem.
The other four are elected by districts, and the deep southern Illinois district was thought to be Dem forever. But it is now a GOP seat on the court. Yet, thanks largely to Mike Madigan’s campaign money, a district in central Illinois has been Dem since 2000; so still a 4-3 Dem majority.
This is a political court, in this sense: One owes his seat to Madigan; another is the wife of Chicago City Council baron Ed Burke, and a third is a close friend of state Senate President John Cullerton, himself a former Madigan protégé.
So, this court is never going to rock the boat against Madigan on redistricting and term limits. Of course, one can’t say this in print.
What to do? Two things, at least for the GOP-minded.
The strongest political message Rauner has in his re-election toolkit is this: “The only way to protect Illinois from another decade of harmful gerrymandering by Madigan is to re-elect me so that I can block his redistricting plan in 2021!” And that’s right.
Second, the state Supreme Court seat in the 3rd District, held by a Democrat, is up in 2020.
If there were ever a "purple" district (neither GOP nor Dem), this is it. I call it the I-80 District, running from the Mississippi to Indiana, from the Quad-Cities to Kankakee, as well as down to Peoria.
If the GOP can win back this district in 2020, the court will have a GOP majority for the first time since 1962. Expect jillions to be spent by the two parties. It’s the whole ballgame.
Note to readers: Jim Nowlan of Toulon can be reached at jnowlan3@gmail.com.