The Patriot Ledger
Thursday, January 9, 2003
Editorial
Legislative pay raises
Automatic raise. Words to sleep by. Words to spend by. Words to depend on.
A promise most of us cannot count on.
Ah, but in the Great and General Court of Massachusetts - the Legislature - the automatic raise is money in the bank. This year it's not bad at all, 6.5 percent. Contrast that with the 1.3 percent increase Social Security recipients got this year, and the Legislature's sitting pretty. That's because the lawmakers, when they decided automatic was the way to go instead of having to face the ugly ritual of voting pay increases for themselves, eschewed the rate of inflation as a guidepost. Instead, the governor is mandated to determine the raise by calculating the rise in the median household income, an index which is likely to rise even in bad times.
This year's boost, the first in two years, will net each lawmaker $3,258, at a cost of $650,000 to the state treasury. House Speaker Thomas Finneran, ever fond of the understatement, called the pay hike "modest." Word quickly rumbled through the State House corridors that some legislators, chary of taking a pay hike when the state is living hand to mouth and more workers face layoffs, would refuse the raise or donate it to charity. Finneran and his Senate counterpart, the new president, Robert Travaglini, resorted to the oldest dodge in the world: behind the apron springs. They'd have to check with their wives to see how the household budget was holding up.
By Tuesday, virtually all Senate members, led by Travaglini, had decided to reject the raise. But Finneran, never swayed easily by public outrage, was not caving in. The raise was justified for these "working-class" folks, he said, and he wasn't about to suggest they refuse it. Each could decide on his own.
In any discussion of legislators' pay, it is important to remember that the vast majority have outside income. Finneran, for example, earns $100,000 or more as an attorney in addition to his speaker's salary. And, unlike most members of the working class, legislators work at their own pace and only on days when their leaders think there's business worth doing.
On the question of the pay raise, members should ask themselves if they truly believe they are worth it. And voters should watch carefully to see what the answer is.
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The Brockton Enterprise
Friday, January 10, 2003
Editorial
Legislators take the money and run — as usual
It should come as no surprise that members of the Legislature put themselves first and decided they would take their $3,258 pay raises — taxpayers be damned.
The House, in particular, acted in a typically odious manner Wednesday, debating the matter for hours before deciding to leave it up to individual representatives if they would take the 6.5 percent pay hike, tell the state to keep it or give the money to charity. More than a few members rebuffed media inquiries in the most weasly of ways: "I have to check with my wife first."
You can translate that as, "Yeah, I'm gonna take the money, but you're gonna have to do a lot of checking around to find out, and if you do find out I pocketed the cash, I'm gonna blame my wife."
The Senate seemingly took a higher road a day earlier, with 39 of 40 senators agreeing not to accept raises. But that is very misleading. Members of the Legislature have no legal recourse to rescind the raises, but as individuals, they can write letters to the state treasurer, requesting that the money be returned to the general fund. Voting against a raise and actually turning it down are two entirely different matters and we will check back in a while to see how many senators wrote letters to save the taxpayers money.
House members who said they wouldn't take the money also can take the same action. Some also said they will donate the raises to charity. But since there is no way of confirming these donations, we will have to take their word on it. Call us cynical, but we don't trust many of these legislators to make the donations — or be truthful about it.
After all, many of them just lied by saying they worked hard and deserved the money. They didn't say much about the yawning state deficit or the thousands of other state workers, who make a lot less, who were laid off in the last year. They also had little to say about private-sector workers who got no raises at all — just jarring tax hikes, courtesy of the Legislature. But mostly they talked about the pain of trying to scrape by on a minimum $60,000 a year (which most members make with committee chairmanships and "leadership" posts, etc.) for a part-time job.
All you really need to know is that, while members were wringing their hands over whether to take the money and run, new Senate President Robert Travaglini was creating a new committee, and new "leadership" posts and chairmanships. In other words, while putting on a show of giving back to the taxpayers, the Senate was spending even more money. At the same time, House Speaker Thomas Finneran was, as usual, stomping out reform, which, of course, is far more important than saving taxpayers' money. Yes, paying off toadies and consolidating power is a full-time job, whether in the Senate or the House.
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The Springfield Union-News
Friday, January 10, 2003
Editorial
The bucks stop here on legislative pay raises
Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.
Gov. W. Mitt Romney made state lawmakers an offer that they can't afford to take: a 6.5 percent pay raise.
Lawmakers can hardly accept a pay raise after they have made so many decisions that have caused pain and hardship to so many in Massachusetts, can they?
With no sign of economic improvement in sight, the worst is yet to come. Lawmakers will be loath to make some of the decisions they must make in the coming months.
They will be asked to make decisions resulting in hundreds of layoffs and the elimination of many essential programs.
Do they take the money and run? Probably not, or at least not if they want to run for re-election. Voters remember legislative pay raises.
That's why the pay raises are automatic. A constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1998 adjusts the salary of the state's 200 senators and representatives every two years, based on median income earned by Massachusetts households.
It was designed to depoliticize the process and save the lawmakers from political embarrassment. Yeah, right. This is still a political hot potato for pols.
In the past, this newspaper has supported modest pay raises for lawmakers. And we will continue to do so at some time in the future.
We cannot do so now when the state is expected to lay off hundreds of its employees, and can't afford to take care of its poor and elderly.
Just two years ago, when the state was in good financial shape, rank-and-file lawmakers received a 7 percent pay raise to bring the average salary to $50,123.
The latest automatic pay raise, set by the governor based on real and projected median income figures, would boost salaries to $53,380.
They deserve that, and probably more. These are important men and women who make important decisions affecting the quality of life in Massachusetts. They should be paid well.
When the state's finances improve, they should get their raises. Until then, they should decline the raises.
All but one of the state's 40 senators declined the pay raise, but members of the House have not reached a consensus. We commend the senators, and urge House members to waive their raises.
The buck stops here, and as long as so many Massachusetts residents are feeling the impact of a sluggish economy, so should the legislative pay raises.
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The Lowell Sun
Wednesday, January 8, 2003
The Ca-Ching Club of Beacon Hill
By Jim Campanini
Tony Soprano would say, "It's a Brinks robbery, only legal."
Paulie Walnuts would say, "It's a better scam than no-show police details."
And Bobby "Baccala" Bacalieri would chime in, "Quasimodo said this would happen."
(Never mind he meant Nostradamus. The guy has a point.)
That's the conversation we'd likely hear at the Bada-Bing Club if we could listen in on John Ashcroft's earplug.
The New Jersey boys are rolling in laughs after the esteemed General Court pulled off its latest daring budget heist in broad daylight, no less on the cash-strapped Massachusetts taxpayers.
Legislators are getting a 6.5 percent pay increase, for services unrendered. (Remember the unbalanced state budget they submitted to acting Gov. Jane Swift back in July? It's their only constitutional duty and they shanked it.)
Now there's broad outrage. Citizens using credit cards to pay taxes on prescription drugs are screaming. Fifty-thousand Medicaid patients awaiting April's guillotine are thinking of jumping off the Zakim-Bunker Hill Bridge. Hundreds of elderly forced to sell family heirlooms to finance the state levy on nursing home "beds" are calling, of all people, their state reps. And 330,000 down-on-their luck unemployed are planning to march on Starbucks, next to Beacon Hill.
Sorry, I missed a group the working taxpayers, 60 percent of whom haven't seen a decent pay raise since CMGI was selling at $100 a share. They're also upset, but way too exhausted coming off their second job to complain.
Personally, though, I'm not upset. I think legislators should get a pay raise. And they should take it, too.
The ones who turn it back well, they probably don't deserve it anyway.
As for the legislators who pocket the cash, they've got undaunted courage.
Most legislators work hard at what they do. They make taxpayers cry uncle and then convince the same crybabies to vote for them at election time. So what if 70 percent of the solons run unopposed they run, don't they?
Stop your whining and be proud of them.
Our legislators defy the will of the voters, defy the Supreme Judicial Court, defy the state constitution, heck, they defy gravity. If Galileo were alive today, he'd name a star after all 200 of them. Look, in the northeast sky, over Anthony's Pier 4, there's Constellation Finneran. See, it's the one where the Little Dipper's funneling spacebucks to the Big Dipper.
No, these guys are professional politicians, the very best. Just 'cause you've never heard one debate doesn't mean they can't. If these guys went on Wheel of Fortune, they'd never stoop so low as to buy a vowel they'd just grab one and tell Pat Sajak to catch up with the Legislature's new Sergeant-at-Arms-twisting, Kevin "Money Fitz" Fitzgerald, at Locke
Ober's.
They're slicker than any Teflon Don.
Consider how Massachusetts legislators openly embrace hypocrisy and become more popular. Take the state ballot initiatives. Lawmakers give full support to the ones that benefit them personally (pay raises) and ignore those the public wants (Clean Elections, death penalty, income tax rollback).
In November, only a handful of incumbents didn't get re-elected. See my point?
Where else can legislators run an entire state into the ground, with a $3 billion deficit after imposing a $1.2 billion tax increase, and still accept a pay hike without the fear of losing so much as a Costco card?
C'mon, these guys and gals are good, really good.
Like the formula they devised for guaranteeing an automatic pay raise every two years. It's like Coca-Cola's a guarded secret. Only one person can figure it out John (A Beautiful Mind) Nash. Consider that two years ago, when the economy was booming and there was a $1 billion tax surplus, legislators got a 7 percent pay raise. Today, when the state's sinking and only days away from putting up new banners on the 'pike Welcome to Massassippi they're getting 6.5 percent.
Oh, these guys are good, really good.
They deserve the money. A new base salary of $53,300 ain't nothin' in this new economy. And $7,200 for office expenses is a pittance for a public servant carrying such responsibilities. And so what if lawmakers get an average $5,000 travel allowance just for showing up for work on Beacon Hill? Pleeeease, mere taxpayers, this is the common-wealth. Show some pride in our General Court.
And the next time there's a ballot referendum, read the fine print, because as Tony Soprano would say, "It pays to be smart and it costs to be dumb."
