An attractive capital works plan that earned bi-partisan support remains mired in a political tug-of-war. Jobs and new construction for Southern Illinois remain in limbo.

And for each man's contributions to the gridlock, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, House Speaker Michael Madigan and Sen. President Emil Jones deserve the healthy doses of criticism they've received in recent months.

Madigan won't even speak to Blagojevich; the dysfunctional trio worked together just long enough to pass a nearly $60 billion spending plan that has led to some painful cuts, and now Jones is pulling off one of the ugliest affronts to Illinois voters.

The senate president has said he won't bring back his chamber for session work until after the November election.

Why?

Because he doesn't want his members to face the wrath of voters for accepting double-digit percentage salary increases this year.

Let's let this sink in a bit: Jones, considered by many to be a fairly shrewd politician, refuses to call senators back to work primarily because he wants a big salary boost for all elected state office holders, lawmakers, and judges to kick in without taking any immediate political heat for it.

And Jones makes no bones about the salary issue: He has said he and lawmakers all deserve the increases.

No matter how shrewd, Jones is dead wrong by pushing salary increases at a time when the state economy is sluggish and many people won't see any salary bump at all, let alone a cost-of-living increase.

To most of us - whether we work in the private or public sector - how much we are paid is a sensitive matter. For public sector employees, though, there is the added and justified exposure of their salaries to the public. Taxpayers, after all, have a right to know how their money is being spent.

This isn't a discussion about whether state lawmakers in Illinois are overpaid. As a detailed piece in The Southern laid out this week, senators and representatives now make a base salary of $67,836 a year thanks to an automatic 3.9 percent increase this year. Another 7.6 percent increase - to nearly $73,000 - is set to take effect next June unless the Senate votes to reject them sometime before the fall veto session begins.

That's a fairly good wage from a pure dollar standpoint. Ask your friends and neighbors if they'd like to make that kind of money. Most will say "yes." And the legislative base pay doesn't include thousands of dollars more in earnings lawmakers receive from leadership positions and committee assignments.

What is the median salary for the roughly 103,000 people employed within the region's largest area that includes Jackson, Williamson, Jefferson, Perry and Franklin counties?

According to the most recent statistics available from the Illinois Department of Employment Security and the U.S. Department of Labor, the figure was $24,872 - about a third of the new base salary for state lawmakers that Jones insists they should receive.

It is the latest in a string of bungling and bumbling by our state's top leaders, and easily could be considered the worst.

By any measure, our current crop of lawmakers - especially those in leadership positions - did little to win over support for any kind of salary increase.

In the private sector, there wouldn't be any chance of getting a raise for a year of substandard performance. The same type of behavior in the real world of lunch buckets, timecards and hardhats could lead to a pink slip.