That’s a good point and hopefully we will do that. I think one of the main things that have people upset is that the raise takes effect immediately for the current members. Most of the time when this is done it takes effect with the next elected legislature. I would have liked for Jindal to take a more active roll in trying to include that in the bill but he has been pretty hands off on this thing from the beginning.
I agree with you, mostly because he promised to try to do that in his election material. That is where he is most at fault, for not pushing the legislature to require the raise to take effect after the next election.
If they really were upset, he could have compromised by having it take effect AFTER the next election, but be retroactive for those re-elected back to the date of enactment.
So if the people liked it, they could vote the reps back in and they would get their raise, if they didn’t like it they could vote them out and the raise would be gone.
Virginia has a part-time legislature, and we like it, but it does mean that some people can’t be representatives because they don’t have the kind of job that allows you to take off for several months a year.
On the other hand, I thought we had a lot of lawyers, but I learned we don’t have that many.
An interesting side effect is that staff members make more than the legislators, because they are allowed to have a full-time staffer.