OPINION: Idaho legislators’ raise would cost $1.5 million

This editorial was published in The Idaho Statesman of Boise.

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We recognize the need to increase Idaho legislators’ pay.

But the latest proposal from Republican and Democratic leaders is an outrageous ask.

As the Idaho Statesman’s Ian Max Stevenson reported last week, the Citizens’ Committee on Legislative Compensation is considering a proposal to increase legislators’ pay from $19,394 to $37,801.

The increase is tempered by an elimination of a daily $74 daily meal allowance for legislators.

Still, it comes out to a roughly 43% pay increase when all is said and done.

Raise your hand if you’re getting a 43% pay raise this year. Anyone?

And here we thought Idaho legislators wanted to run the government like a business.

We have several problems with this request.

First, it’s much wiser to increase wages incrementally, a little bit each year, rather than massive jumps like this. This one pay raise would cost taxpayers $1.5 million.

This drastic increase request comes from legislators who are constantly complaining about government spending.

These are the same people who were unwilling to pay for kids’ lunches in the last session, cutting funds for a summer school lunch program for poor families.

These are the same legislators who beat the drum of “small government” and “rein in spending” every year, but then they want more money for themselves.

Just more hypocrisy.

Second, let’s suppose our citizen Legislature meets for just four months, which is one-third of a year (it’s really three months, with one month of pandering and preening, but we’ll still include that in our calculations, as well as the time they sit in committee hearings not listening to public testimony they disagree with).

That $37,801 is the equivalent of a $113,403 annual salary. Do we really think legislators should make nearly as much as the Secretary of State or the Superintendent of Public Instruction?

We’re sure this is probably more money than a lot of legislators pay some of their own employees.

It sounds like Idaho legislators are making a strong case for raising the minimum wage.

To show how out of touch some legislators are, outgoing Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder, R-Boise, had the gall to say, “We’re here almost as volunteers based on what we’re paid.”

Even at $19,394 for four months of work amounts to $58,182, plus $74 a day for food, which is an awful lot of Big Macs.

Calling that volunteer work is outrageous and insulting.

And it appears legislators were trying to be misleading in their request, calling it a 34% increase.

But they used after-tax calculations, which is disingenuous and misleading. No one calculates a pay raise based on the after-tax, take-home amount. Raises are calculated on gross income, which in this case is a higher percentage and looks worse than the number they gave in their proposal.

Intentional?

Next, the proposal is tying the legislators’ pay to 40% of average household income.

Why 40%? If they meet four months out of the year, that should be 33.3%.

Why average and not median? Everyone knows that using the average skews the data because someone making $52 million a year will pull the average up.

Indeed, the average income in Idaho is $94,503. The median income — which is a more accurate representation — is $73,910.

So based on 33.3% of median household income in Idaho, the legislator pay should be $24,636.

Next, this proposal goes beyond the increase in inflation. The Legislative Services Office said legislators are 25% behind their pay from 2005 when adjusted for inflation.

Then why not increase pay by 25%?

Keep in mind that legislators have refused to index your homeowners exemption to inflation, meaning you have to pay more in property taxes every year.

We fully recognize that higher levels of legislative compensation would on the whole means Idaho will get more competent people willing to serve as a legislator.

If you’re a successful lawyer, you’ve got to make a decision between a huge chunk of income, your ability to maintain continuity with clients, etc., and being willing to serve as a legislator.

It can be a big financial hit to participate in the session if you’re a skilled professional.

If you’re a “direct response copywriter” like Sen. Brian Lenney, R-Nampa, on the other hand, you might be getting a raise as a legislator, so it makes sense to run for office.

On the whole, we suspect Idaho lawmakers generally have lower levels of educational attainment and relevant job experience than they would with higher levels of compensation. And as a result, Idaho deals with quite a bit of unnecessary incompetence and the extremism that tends to accompany lower levels of education.

So we support increasing legislator pay if it means we can get higher quality legislators.

But $37,000 for four months’ work is beyond the pale, especially raising the salary all at once.

Kudos to the Citizens Committee on Legislative Compensation for recognizing the flaws in the proposal and delaying a vote.

Boo to the committee, though, for scheduling the next vote at 8 a.m. Nov. 6 — the day after the election, quite possibly the worst possible day and time to schedule an important vote.

When committee members do meet, though, we recommend raising legislators’ pay but to a lesser degree and perhaps phased in over the next three years.

And that when they calculate the pay raise, they should use better numbers than the numbers given to them by the legislators.

TNS