By Pat Barcas
Staff Writer
Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012
     Three months of evidentiary hearings concluded last week in Cook County Circuit Court in the ongoing dispute over Gov. Pat Quinn’s failure to pay negotiated wage increases. The parties will appear before the court Nov. 16 to make final arguments in the case.
     At issue in the case are wage increases totaling some $60 million that AFSCME Council 31 argues should be paid to state employees.
     AFSCME contends that Quinn withheld the increases, effective July 1, 2011, based on his contention that the General Assembly had failed to appropriate the funding he had requested to pay the increases.
     AFSCME immediately filed a grievance over the administration’s refusal to honor the contract and secured an arbitration victory in which the state was ordered to pay the monies owed to employees.
     Instead, the Quinn Administration filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court seeking to vacate the arbitration award. For more than a year now, the case has been before Judge Richard Billik.
     In June, Billik issued a preliminary decision in which he found that the state is under a contractual obligation to pay the wage increases, but that the governor’s claim that he could not spend funds that had not been appropriated could be a valid public policy defense which would override the contractual obligation.
     Billik then established proceedings to give the state the opportunity to prove its public policy defense that insufficient funds had been appropriated to pay the negotiated increases. Those evidentiary hearings began in August and continued through Oct. 23. The union had the opportunity to present countervailing evidence and to challenge the state’s evidence.
     In the course of those hearings, AFSCME legal counsel identified funds that the state had not previously acknowledged and was prepared to let lapse at the conclusion of the fiscal year 2012 lapse period at the end of August. As soon as the funds were identified, AFSCME sought an order from Billik to require the state to voucher the funds so that the money would not lapse and could be used to meet the state’s obligations under the collective bargaining agreement should the union ultimately prevail in the court case.
     Attorneys for the Quinn administration opposed the union’s request to voucher the funds, seeking to use the expiration of the state’s fiscal year spending authority as an excuse not to set the funds aside.
     However, in late August the judge granted the union’s request and ordered the Illinois Department of Central Management Services and other agencies under the governor to submit vouchers to the State Comptroller in amounts equal to the personal services funds remaining in the respective agency budgets, and to preserve their statutory 2 percent transfer authority.
     In all, the agencies had to remit vouchers for some $18 million in unspent General Revenue Fund appropriations, in addition to federal and grant funds, as well as other unspent dollars available under the budgetary transfer authority.
     While the court battle has continued over the past year, the Quinn Administration acknowledged that there were clearly sufficient funds available in eight agencies to pay the monies owed.
     After final arguments are heard Nov. 16, the judge is expected to issue a decision in the case before the end of the year. AFSCME has also put the issue of unpaid wage increases front and center in the current round of contract negotiations — making clear that no contract settlement can be reached until the previous contract has been honored.

Pat Barcas’ e-mail address is pat@foxvalleylabornews.com.