We have found nothing to indicate that Massachusetts media household income has increased over the past two years, requiring a legislative pay increase.
On Dec. 31, Massachusetts Benchmarks reported: "The Massachusetts Current Economic Index for November was 127.7, up 0.9 percent from October (at annual rates) and down 0.1 percent from November of last year."
On Friday, Boston Federal Reserve Bank president Cathy E. Minehan
observed, "Massachusetts for most of the past two years was in a recession, and gross state product declined for seven consecutive quarters."
Since passage of the Legislature's constitutional amendment on the 1998 ballot, legislative salaries are to be adjusted – up or down – based on the increase or decrease in median household income "as ascertained by the governor."
With the state in the midst of its worst revenue drop in half a century,
how can median family income be rising? Even if through some technical
adjustment it appears to be, Eric Kriss has stated that this year's
budget crisis will be the worst since the Great Depression. How can
legislators even consider taking a pay raise? If legislative
salaries don't remain stagnant, or drop, in the Great Depression II –
can or will they ever?
Some legislators are scrambling to avoid the message of limitless greed accepting a pay raise in such a critical moment will send. Do they pocket it? Do they give it to charity? Do they return it to the state's coffers?
Gov. Romney can settle this confusion and provide legislators with a respectable solution.
He can begin changing the culture on Beacon Hill with one simple action: Declare a "freeze" on legislative salaries until the official U.S. Census Bureau figures on median household income are released later this fall – the only real actuarial consensus. Announce that any pay raise –
or pay cut – will then become retroactive back to this month. Anything less will be Beacon Hill business-as-usual.
Barring that decision, we look forward to seeing the numbers used to justify any increase in legislative pay at this time. We hope reporters will demand and publish them.
To avoid this embarrassment in the future, House Speaker Tom Finneran should move with dispatch equal to his actions when targeting the 1998 voter-approved Clean Elections Law. The Legislature should put its flawed automatic pay raise constitutional amendment back on the ballot – to determine if voters were as "confused" about it as he believes they were about the campaign finance reform question that immediately followed as Question 2.
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