Kankakee Times

A GOP press secretary has suggested a Kankakee lawmaker won $8.5 million in state contracts and is also now suing to get her legislative pay restored.

Downstate GOP press secretary Aaron DeGroot's Tweet, was issued shortly after former state Rep. Kate Cloonen (D-Kankakee) and five other Democrat lawmakers sued the Illinois Comptroller's office to get their paychecks reinstated. The comptroller's office began delaying pay for lawmakers in 2016 as they failed to overcome a budget impasse that has crippled the state's ability to pay its bills. 

"For Kate Cloonen, $8.5 million in state contracts for her construction company isn't enough. She needs that extra $68k/year," DeGroot's tweet read.

The observation has its roots in then-Illinois Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger's announcement in April that her office would delay monthly paychecks for lawmakers and other statewide officials while putting other services at the head of the line. Illinois taxpayers foot the bill for about $1.3 million a month in paychecks for lawmakers and other statewide officials.

The move was an attempt to get Springfield to resolve its then 10-month budget standoff between first-term Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, long-time Democrat House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) and Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago), Munger said at the time.

That summer, lawmakers passed a stop-gap measure to keep the state barely running but little additional progress after that. In July, lawmakers received their paychecks for April and, shortly after, for May but Munger continued to delay future monthly paychecks.

On Dec. 2, a few weeks after the General Election, Cloonen and five other Democrat lawmakers filed their lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court against Munger's office, claiming their withheld paychecks is a violation of state law. The lawsuit was filed, probably not coincidentally, on Munger's last day in office, a move Munger called cowardly and self-serving.

Susan Mendoza, a two-term Chicago city clerk who served 10 years in the state House representing Illinois' 1st District, took over the comptroller’s office the following Monday. Mendoza defeated Munger in an unusually contentious race, with the candidates running as proxies, respectively, for Madigan and Rauner.

Shortly after being sworn in as comptroller, Mendoza pointed to the state's bill backlog, by then swollen to $10.4 billion, and said she would not change Munger’s policy on lawmaker payments.

Meanwhile, the state's stop-gap budget measure ended with 2016. Illinois' General Assembly reconvened Monday, but it remains unclear what, if anything, will be done to address the state's financial difficulties.

In analyzing DeGroot's Tweet, Politifact Illinois found that the $8.5 million figure to which the Tweet referred derives from a 2013 the Illinois Procurement Policy Board review, which occurred well before Munger's decision to delay lawmaker's paychecks.

"Cloonen’s company received $8.5 million in state construction funding for projects during her time as a legislator," Politifact Illinois said in its rating of DeGroot's Tweet. "Cloonen said that number is not an accurate reflection of what she personally netted from the state construction work, but she declined to share that amount."

Politifact Illinois called DeGroot's assertion a "half truth" saying he tried to draw a comparison between an individual salary and a company’s gross payment, not net profit, for work completed.

"Cloonen’s construction company only acted as a subcontractor and never directly bid on any state projects," Politifact Illinois said. "Cloonen never was found to have a conflict of interest, and she recused herself from most votes regarding capital projects."