West Central Reporter

Gov. J.B. Pritzker's proposed contract deal with the state's largest public employee union is bad news for Illinois but comes as no real surprise, a South Jacksonville Republican official said during a recent interview.

"I'm not surprised, not one bit," South Jacksonville No. 4 Republican Precinct Committeewoman Kem Wilson told West Central Reporter after news of Pritzker's reported contract proposal to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) leaked out last week. "This is the Democrats' thing, tax and spend."

The proposed deal, if ratified by the union membership, would be very bad for the state and for union members as well, Wilson said.

South Jacksonville No. 4 Republican Precinct Committeewoman Kem Wilson

"This definitely will be bad for Illinois," she said. "Once again, this is going to hurt not only the people of Illinois who aren't in the union but actually, when you really get right down to it, will hurt the people in the union as well because it's a lie, it's really a lie."

Wilson said that union members may be thinking Pritzker is going to the mat for them with all the supposed concessions he is promising, but she warns that the governor has yet to say how those concessions will be funded.

"It gives them a false sense that they are going to be making all this money when, really, there's no basis for it," she said. "Where's the money coming from? It's part of this negotiation, which is based on this money when nobody knows where it's coming from. He's giving them false hope."

AFSCME and the state have not had a new contract since 2015, but WCIA and Wirepoints reported last week that a Pritzker offer to the union includes pay raises, more time off, enhanced family leave and a one-time cash stipend of $2,500 to qualifying workers. The offer is intended to offset the so-called "financial hardship" union members – some of the best paid employees in the state – have suffered during long-stalled negotiations dating back to Pritzker's predecessor Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's term.

Pritzker's contract proposal would increase salaries of some state workers by almost $7,000 over the life of the four-year contract, making the average state employee's salary come in at just less than $67,000, according to the WCIA and Wirepoints reports. The proposed agreement follows other concessions to the union earlier this year about the membership's much litigated step increases. In early May, the union announced that members will again be getting the step increases that were frozen in 2015 under Rauner.

Following Pritzker's inauguration in January, "one of his first acts in office" was to undo the Rauner-era freeze, the union announcement said.

"This means that employees who were due step increases, including longevity steps, from July 1, 2015 through April 1, 2019, would be placed on the step they would have been on had Rauner not frozen step progression," the announcement said. "The Pritzker administration kept that pledge and across Illinois, state employees are seeing their proper step placement reflected in their paychecks, which will help thousands of union members begin to get their family finances back on track."

Pritzker's negotiations with AFSCME are setting the tone for what the state can expect from the Democratic governor the rest of his first term in office, Wilson said.

"Tax-and-spend leadership," she said. "All the things that Pritzker has done since he's been in office, really from day one, and especially with this budget at the end of the [fiscal] year, it's just a continuation of tax and spend. All these measures, all these bills, all these things that he's hatched, it's just tax and spend and he's hurting the people of Illinois, regular people like you and me. He just taxing and taxing and spending. It's going to be three and a half more years of the same old Democratic standard, tax and spend."