Marathon Pundit: Chicago Tribune op-ed: Quinn sold out state to AFSCME

The decline and fall of Illinois: The Chicago Tribune, in an op-ed published yesterday, blows the whistle on Gov. Pat Quinn-Pro-Quo."

Selling out Illinois. We used that headline a year ago when news broke that Gov. Pat Quinn had cut a craven deal with AFSCME, the state's largest employees union. The governor agreed that the state, though it faced massive debts, would not lay off a single state worker or close any state institutions for nearly two years, through June 2012.

In exchange, the union made some minor cost concessions. Within days of the deal, the union endorsed the governor's bid for election. Think that was pure coincidence? Quinn brought the state budget director to his endorsement interview with AFSCME.

Quinn sold out the state. And now his feeble bid to unravel his own craven deal has been stomped down by an arbitrator. On Monday, the arbitrator ruled that Quinn's bid to lay off 1,900 workers and shut down a handful of institutions cannot go forward … because Quinn has to honor his own deal.

Quinn says he should be able to wriggle out of the AFSCME deal because the Legislature didn't provide enough money to keep everybody working. But Quinn knew when he made the deal that, even with the whopping state income tax increase he later signed, the state wouldn't have the money to protect every job and every institution unless it consorted to more fiscal recklessness.