An Unlawful Scheme to Raise Legislators' Pay

'THE LOUDER he talked of his honor," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1860, "the faster we counted our spoons." As a resident of Massachusetts, Emerson knew better than to take at face value anything public officials say about their own rectitude. That was a prudent attitude a century and a half ago. It's just as prudent now.

So when Beacon Hill created a high-powered "advisory commission" to evaluate the salaries paid to top elected officers and lawmakers, only a naïf could have doubted it would come back with anything but a recommendation for hefty pay raises all around — and pitch that recommendation as a matter of fairness, honor, and good government. Huge increases in what are already among the highest salaries paid to legislative leaders and statewide officials in America, concluded the commission in a report released Monday, is the best way to attract "publicly spirited and honest individuals" to state government. More lavish paychecks will "ensure that there is not a temptation to betray the public trust."

News stories have focused on the commission's call for hiking the governor's total compensation by nearly $100,000 a year, and boosting the six-figure salary of the House speaker and Senate president by more than 70 percent. Since governor-elect Charlie Baker says he would "probably veto" any such legislation, the Legislature may try to get the pay hikes passed before Baker takes office in January.

But the biggest affront in this plan is the element that has drawn the least attention: the commission's unlawful scheme to engineer a raise for rank-and-file legislators.

In the long-running saga of Beacon Hill pay raises, underhanded maneuvering has been the norm. Late at night on Halloween in 1979, lawmakers rammed through a bill hiking their pay with no public hearing or advance notice. Three years later the Legislature returned to the trough, attaching a 50 percent raise for its members to a judicial pay measure, which couldn't be blocked by referendum. In 1987, another ploy: A sizable (and retroactive) legislative salary increase was passed with an "emergency preamble," which made it effective immediately — and immune to repeal until it was nearly two years old. In 1994, Governor William Weld — days after claiming that still another pay hike was "not something we're considering" — colluded with legislative leaders to pass a bill enlarging the salaries of House and Senate members by a stunning 55 percent.

Time and again, Beacon Hill politicos have justified such avarice by lamenting that they had no better option — that there is never an acceptable way for elected officials to give themselves a raise.

But then they devised one: They would put a cost-of-living adjustment for legislative salaries right into the state constitution, and forswear forever the right to vote on their own pay. In 1988, Massachusetts voters were invited to approve a proposed constitutional amendment that would, once and for all, put the issue to rest. "A Yes vote would prohibit state legislators from changing their base pay," explained the official voter guide, "and instead would adjust that pay according to changes in median household income."

Voters agreed. The amendment passed handily. Massachusetts lawmakers looked forward complacently to receiving automatic biennial raises as a constitutional right, forever. And sure enough, their salaries went up by a few percentage points every two years, in keeping with the amendment's explicit formula adjusting legislative pay in tandem with median household income.

Until median household income stopped going up in the wake of the Great Recession.

In 2011, legislative base pay was trimmed by 0.5 percent. In 2013 it dropped by another 1.8 percent. After a decade of scoring regular raises without having to do anything to justify them — hey, it's in the constitution! — the Legislature was suddenly confronted with the reality that salaries can go down, too.

But that's not a reality every lawmaker is prepared to accept. And — surprise, surprise! — their "advisory commission" says they shouldn't have to. The panel recommends a new method of calculating changes in Massachusetts state income, one that relies on statewide income data "in the aggregate, not the median." That may sound boringly technical, but the bottom line is crystal-clear: The commission's recommended method would have raised legislators' pay in 2011 and 2013.

But aggregate income isn't what the constitution specifies. The amendment drafted by the Legislature — and approved by the voters in a landslide — made "median income" the touchstone. It forbids lawmakers from voting for anything else. Beacon Hill, for once, has been hoist with its own petard.

This is why people have contempt for politicians and hold them in low regard.

They think they deserve special treatment and try to justify it.

I mean keeping your word is not important for them and their cynicism diminishes the notion of public service.

I do not thinking feathering your nest is contributing to it.

Or cutting welfare benefits for poor in the name of economy while they plead poverty.

The rest of us have to live within our means and we don’t complain.

So its amusing to hear politicians squawk a reduction in their already high pay is making it hard for them to make ends meet.

My heart breaks for them until I recollect who pays their salaries. Gratitude to the people who put them in office is not among qualities our elected public officials seem to evince.

And, the report from Townhall can't be bothered to tell us what the salary is currently?

Here are the 2014 Legislative salaries:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/2014-ncsl-legislator-salary-and-per-diem-table.aspx

Massachusetts
annual: $60,032.60/year
plus per-diem: $10–$100/day, depending on distance from the State House (V); set by the legislature.

That’s more than most American families earn.

But they consider themselves insufficiently paid.

When politicians ask for a raise - remember, they are not doing it for us they are doing it for themselves.

The MA legislative salary schedule actually is very close to the median income.

https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/2013/h08.xls

$62,963

But that’s for the Little People.

Hey, they want to live in the lap of luxury! Who are their constituents to deny to them?

You see, the median income is just not enough to keep up with elected officials’ taste for the finer things in life.

Its an entitlement.

In the REAL world, the employer sets the wages and/or increases. I suggest the people who elect someone to an office should be the same ones to “evaluate” the elected person effectiveness, be it good or bad, and THAN set the amount of increase if any has been earned.

No, our elected officials have passed into law, automatic raises for themselves. If no-one questions said raises, they automatically go into effect. Pretty slick of them I would say.

In MA - the pols agreed to give up the right to set their own pay and have it established by a reasonable formula.

The voters agreed and what’s changed now is the pols think getting less than they think they deserve is no longer “reasonable” by their lights.

Their insult to people’s intelligence is far more insufferable than their conceit living within their means is too hard for them to bear.

Just in case they forget, most people in this country can’t raise on a whim their own pay.

While gutting Medicare, Tricare Life, COLA's to Ret Military and Seniors.

Memphis just did the same thing, voted the elite elected officials a hefty 7% pay raise while handing out pink slips and or very low pay raises for Fire and Police. Along with budget cuts to the 2 most important, life risking agencies in government on a city/county level.

Liberal THINK: lower budgets and pay for Fire, Police, and Teachers, and raise their own over sized pay checks and perks.

Conservative THINK: CUT PAY to all elected officials, cut travel, cut per diem's.

Raise pay for risky jobs like Police and Fire departments and make sure they have the equipment they need to do their jobs. Build more prisons for criminals. A state the size of Tennessee needs more than one 150 bed Juvenile state prison Memphis could fill that in a few days. Even 3 women's prisons are not enough in today's broken society.

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