Elgin State Rep. then, State senator John Friedland had the largest legislative pension at one point.
How did that happen to a person not in leadership?
He controlled appointments to the Elgin Sanitary District.
That came about because of a law I sponsored.
After the 1970 State Constitution took effect, judges were no longer allowed to make appointments od local officials
My bill selected logical appointing replacements, except in the case of special districts overlapping county lines.
All I could come up with was allowing the state legislators covering part of a district to vote on who the officials would be.
My district in the 1970’s had State Senator Jack Schaffer and State Representative Bruce Waddell, Tom Hanahan and me. (We had Elgin Township west of Mulford Road.)
Since Friedland was from Elgin, we followed his lead on appointments to the Elgin Sanitary District.
Whoever he suggested, we ratified.
When Friedland retired, he convinced the Sanitary hired him for probably double what his last General Assembly salary had been, which hiked his pension A LOT.
But I remember John Friedland as being a Profile in Courage.
Friedland refused to vote for the income tax Governor Richard B. Ogilvie pushed.
That same year Bruce Waddell won a special election resulting from the motorcycle death of Jack Hill. It occurred at his nursery on Randall Road.
Republican House Speaker Ralph Tyler Smith told Waddell he had to vote for the income tax before Smith would swear him in.
So, Waddell voted, “Yes,” and when I ran against him in 1972 he advertised himself as “the conservativevoice in the 33rd District.
That allowed me to point out, if someone who voted for the income tax was a “conservative,” there was a very low bar to being one.
Back to Friedland.
Ogilvie was so mad at Friedland that he supported an opponent in the Republican primary election.
Friedland won, making him a member of my Profiles in Courage list.
So, what started this rambling?
This paragraph from the Daily Caller:
“Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, a fiscal hawk, was the lone GOP lawmaker to oppose a rule teeing up the funding package for a vote on final passage. Given House Speaker Mike Johnson’s razor-thin majority, just two defecting GOP lawmakers could have defeated the procedural vote and prolonged the funding lapse.”
President Trump is supporting a GOP primary opponent against Messie.
