Visiting Illinois Valley Community College Thursday, Democratic Illinois Comptroller Susana A. Mendoza, on a re-election campaign swing around the state, reaffirmed her support for thousands of state workers owed back wages for over three years.

Mendoza, 46, speaking to IVCC students and staff, dismissed Gov. Bruce Rauner’s assertion that it would be overly burdensome for state agencies to calculate legally guaranteed salary payments owed to more than 24,000 state workers.

Phrasing from a press statement she released Wednesday, Mendoza explained, "This foot-dragging is taking place despite clear direction from the courts and independent arbitrators to identify costs associated with the contractually established state employee salary adjustments and step increases long overdue to employees."

She said, “It’s incredulous that Governor Rauner is fighting this. His pursuit of an extreme anti-worker agenda that underlines his irresponsible and illegal delay in estimating the contractual liabilities that continue to grow is fiscally unsupportable. The critical issue of basic fairness aside, this information needs to be incorporated into the state’s financial statements and the lack of data complicates budgetary and cash management planning for the current fiscal year and beyond.”

She insisted Rauner cannot use his own ineptitude as an excuse to ignore court orders and trample basic worker rights. She said the Rauner administration is wrong to continue disputing the duration of time that back pay is owed.

Mendoza said the issue can’t be fully resolved until the governor finalizes and accepts the scope of retroactive costs that could range up to 300 or 400 million dollars.

"Would he run his businesses like he runs the state business?" she said. “I believe that workers are owed over three years of raises denied by Rauner and the sooner he acknowledges this fact, the better. Every day he delays, we cannot budget for these costs. He has no excuse for failing to identify the costs associated with this issue in a timely manner.”

During her visit, Mendoza, who previously served six terms as a state representative, also gave students facts about the comptroller office, which writes checks and manages accounts for the state.

"When I took over in December 2016, it was during the worst point of state finances – some $16.7 billion in unpaid bills because there was no state budget in place," she said. "My office had no legal authority to spend money to pay bills without a budget in place. We didn’t have a budget for 736 days which greatly affected all state finances, including payments to higher education institutions (like IVCC). It was a really scary time for the state of Illinois."

She said the state is much better off today than it was a year ago.

"We have whittled it (our bills) down to around $7.2 billion."

Mendoza said her campaign reassures Illinois citizens and investors that her office would prioritize debt service and pension payments to, hopefully, upgrade Illinois’ bond ratings.

She said she would also continue prioritizing state education payments from early childhood through high school and to state universities and colleges to keep them afloat.

"Every dollar counts and not every state project is (or should be) political."

She also touted her Debt Transparency Act legislation, which she launched that now allows taxpayers and her office to review agency-by-agency details – for the first time – of how and where the state spends its money in real time.

"I’m in politics to help people, to change people’s lives for the better," she said. "It feeds my soul."

Mendoza is being challenged in the Nov. 6 election by Republican Darlene Senger and Libertarian Claire Ball.