Controversial $30K-Per-Month Hire Central to Deep Cuts to Education, Services for Elderly and Disabled

CHICAGO – The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that after stonewalling the press about the contract of a controversial consultant hired to enact deep cuts to the Illinois social safety net, Gov. Bruce Rauner abruptly announced that he was cutting the hatchet’s $30,000-per-month pay in half.

Donna Arduin, who became embroiled in controversy in budget fights in California, Michigan and Florida, is involved in new controversy here in Illinois, where the Sun-Times reported that her pay-like that of other top Rauner consultants-comes from a different funding source than the governor’s office, in a practice known as “off-shoring.”

She joins top officials Linda Lingle and Beth Purvis in being paid from separate funds. According to the paper, “Rauner criticized Gov. Pat Quinn for engaging in the same practice and during an intensely divisive campaign (calling) it “ghost-payrolling.”

Read the entire Sun-Times report here.