PITTSBURGH — The key problem with the latest pay grab that
Pennsylvania’s lawmakers in Harrisburg have awarded themselves is
that their salary boost is totally unrelated to performance.
In the rest of the economy, raises are generally linked to
performance, a reward for perhaps developing an improved surgical
procedure or selling more cars. In Harrisburg, a legislature that’s
stalled economic growth and destroyed jobs by perpetuating one of
the worst business climates in the nation has now established
itself as the second-highest-paid state legislature in the country,
second only to California.
Adjusted for the difference in the cost of living in
Pennsylvania and California, the latest Harrisburg pay hike, in
fact, might well have made my state’s lawmakers the highest-paid in
the nation. “In California, a middle-class family with two earners
each making $50,000 a year now owns, on average, an $830,000 home,”
reported the Washington Monthly last April. That’s not
exactly the kind of housing cost that Pennsylvania’s lawmakers are
faced with in Scranton or Turtle Creek.
This latest pay increase, hammered out in secret by legislative
leaders and voted on at 2 a.m. without debate or public hearings,
will boost the annual base pay of lawmakers by 16 percent, from
$69,647 to $81,050. For committee chairman and vice chairman,
respectively, the base pay increases by 28 percent and 22 percent,
to $89,155 and $85,103. For the majority and minority leaders,
paychecks jump by 24 percent, from $100,911 to $124,788. For the
speaker of the House and Senate president pro tempore, base
salaries are hiked by 34 percent, from $108,724 to $145,553.
In the Senate, none of the 50 members will be paid just the new
base salary, since they all have some sort of leadership title.
Overall, the average new salary in the Senate will be in excess of
$98,000, plus benefits.
All these pay increases are on top of the 5.2 percent
automatically provided cost-of-living increase that the lawmakers
received at the beginning of the year. In 1995, Harrisburg’s
lawmakers voted themselves a 19 percent base pay increase, from
$47,000 to $55,800, and added automatic annual cost-of-living
increases that, in theory, were supposed to put a stop to the kind
of pay grab that just transpired.
In any case, Pennsylvania lawmakers, in addition to their
rapidly escalating base salaries, also receive taxpayer-leased
cars, at an annual cost of up to $7,200 per member in the House and
$7,800 in the Senate. Lawmakers also receive fully paid pensions,
fully paid prescription coverage and health insurance, fully paid
life insurance and long-term care insurance, and fully paid vision
and dental coverage. On average, the annual cost to taxpayers for
each House member’s health care insurance and prescription drug
coverage is, respectively, $8,016 and $3,096.
The pay hike vote was taken just hours after lawmakers approved
cuts in Medicaid services for disabled, elderly and poor residents
across the state.
Justifying his own enhanced base pay, raised to $134,688,
Democrat floor leader Robert Mellow of Scranton explained that
higher paychecks are needed to produce a first-rate Legislature:
“It will attract the proper type of individuals for the General
Assembly and the proper people to serve as judges and Cabinet
members.” In other words, we’re supposed to be glad we’re being
forced to pay the current crop of legislators big-bucks protection
money so as not to get an even worse crop in the future.
With his base pay jumping to $137,771, House Democrat Leader H.
William DeWeese of Waynesburg said that legislators deserve the
robust pay hikes because they’re doing more than a full-time job.
“This assignment is 24-7 and we are at work when we are at Giant
Eagle or the Friday night high school football game,” he
explained.
DeWeese’s “24-7” contention doesn’t precisely mesh with the fact
that the legislature averaged only 77 days in session per year over
the past five years, or with the fact that half the members of the
Senate and a fourth of the House members have outside jobs or
business interests.
If only the rest of us could rack up big pay hikes for shopping
at the Eagle or schmoozing at weekend ball games! Between the time
my wife spends shopping at South Hills Village and I spend at
Chapon’s Greenhouse searching for the perfect perennials, I could
be a friggin’ multimillionaire.
