When newly elected Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner defeated incumbent Pat Quinn, his mantra was that “business as usual is over,” signaling a change of direction from his Democratic predecessor and ushering in a new era of fiscal responsibility.
The wealthy Republican investor, with no prior elective experience, even vowed to work for a mere $1 annually, instead of the $179,400 governor’s salary.
His first act as governor was to freeze all new state hiring and non-essential state spending.
And in a February 2 memo to legislators, he stated that state employee salaries exceeded similar private sector jobs by a significant margin. Good stuff.
So what did Rauner do next? Out of his overwhelming sense of fiscal accountability, he granted a $120,000 no-bid contract to the consulting firm of Rauner’s hand-picked state chief fiscal officer, Donna Arduin.
Rauner also railed against patronage hiring during his campaign. So what did he do just four days after his inauguration? He hired the 25-year-old sister of his political director, Sarah Clamp, for a $70,000 post with the Illinois EPA, saying that Emily Clamp was “well-suited” for the job by virtue of her Cornell University degree in environmental engineering.
Oh, but there’s more. The salaries of Rauner’s top administrators are substantially higher than those of his predecessor, including the salaries of Rauner’s deputy governor, executive assistant and his deputy chief of staff.
And even Governor Rauner’s wife, despite having no official duties as first lady, has her own chief of staff who makes in excess of $100,000 per year.
Yeah, governor, that’s fiscal responsibility. In Rauner’s February memo, he even had the audacity to state that “these levels (of excessive salaries) are unsustainable and unfair to working families, small businesses and other taxpayers in Illinois.”
What hypocrisy on an optical, fiscal and political level. It’s business as usual for the State of Illinois and political and gubernatorial malpractice on the part of Governor Rauner.
To insult the intelligence of Illinois voters in assuming that they can’t discern his rhetoric from the political game of musical chairs that he is playing is reprehensible and worthy of impeachment.
Illinois has and will continue to be known as one of the worst-run and most corrupt states in America if this pattern of malfeasant governance continues.
If Rauner is this brazen, in his nepotism and cronyism, at this early juncture, then I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he shortly joins former governors Blagojevich and Ryan in Illinois’ infamous gubernatorial hall of shame.
Email: jtingram_1960@yahoo.com; Twitter@JamesTIngram.
