Pretty much every Statehouse finger of blame was pointing north toward Chicago for the minimum-wage-hike bill's failure during the legislative veto session that ended last week.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel does indeed have a lot of explaining to do. His decision to move up a vote to pass a $13-an-hour minimum wage for his city completely undercut Springfield's efforts to pass a statewide minimum wage capped everywhere at $11 an hour.
Months ago, Emanuel scheduled a vote on raising Chicago's minimum wage for the week after the General Assembly's annual fall veto session. After the election, though, retailers, restaurant owners, and other business groups agreed to an eventual $11-an-hour statewide minimum wage, but only if Chicago and other home-rule municipalities were not allowed to raise their own local wages above that amount. Proponents say they were within two votes of House passage before the second and final week of veto session when Emanuel quietly filed paperwork calling for a special hearing on his own minimum-wage proposal before the second week kicked off in Springfield.
There was just no way that House Speaker Michael Madigan would publicly rebuke his city's mayor by reversing that ordinance via state law. It's just not in his nature to go up against a mayor like that. Besides, Madigan lost of ton of votes from Chicago legislators who could not or would not risk supporting legislation that "cut" their constituents' pay.
Even so, Madigan himself shares in the blame here. Yes, he's not all-powerful, but he probably could've passed a minimum-wage bill during the spring session. Instead, he didn't want to rile up business groups before an election and believed he could use the issue to fire up his party's base and the unions in the November election.
As Champaign News-Gazette columnist Jim Dey wrote not long ago, former Senate President Phil Rock's autobiography contains a story that explains Madigan to a T.
Rock wrote in his book Nobody Calls Just to Say Hello that he wanted to pass a bill guaranteeing women unpaid maternity leave. Rock told Madigan and another House Democrat that he'd like to get the issue off the table by passing it. The Senate president believed Madigan was stalling.
"We jousted back and forth," Rock wrote, "and one of the House members said to me, 'You know, I'm getting a little tired of you trying to do what's right all the time. We've got a great political issue here.'"
That's Mike Madigan: Use an issue for political advantage rather than pass it into law. And he'll likely use the minimum-wage issue again next year, perhaps by passing a bill that he knows will be vetoed by incoming Governor Bruce Rauner. He can also use the issue to keep organized labor focused on that topic and away from other stuff that Madigan might oppose (such as an electronic-trading transaction tax, for instance). Business groups will also be frozen in place in opposition to a minimum-wage threat.
But the blame doesn't end there. Governor Pat Quinn and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin didn't want Chicago to pass a $13-an-hour minimum-wage ordinance before the election, believing it would undermine their attempt to gin up the city's vote for the nonbinding statewide $10-an-hour minimum-wage referendum. Politically, this made some sense at the time: Why would any Chicagoan bother to vote for a $10-an-hour minimum wage when it had already been raised to $13?
In reality, though, the minimum-wage referendum didn't work as planned. And instead of a statewide attempt to partially catch up with Chicago's minimum wage during the veto session, the whole effort fizzled.
The governor announced plans to make the minimum-wage hike his final legacy, but he didn't bother to make sure his ducks were in a row before saying so. And that is Pat Quinn in a nutshell. He's good at press conferences, not so spectacular at governing.
And, of course, Rauner's demand that the General Assembly not pass a minimum-wage bill in the veto session can also be blamed for the measure's failure last week. He'll have to wear that jacket unless and until he can come up with a plan to actually put something in place.
This was, in the end, a failure of policy, of politics, and of governance all around.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax (a daily political newsletter) and CapitolFax.com.
