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CLT UPDATE
Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Waking Up to a Constitutional Violation


The top two Massachusetts legislative leaders would become the highest paid in the country, and the governor would become the second-highest paid nationally, if recommendations released Monday by a state panel become law.

The advisory commission recommended the governor’s salary be boosted from $151,800 to $185,000; the House speaker’s and Senate president’s jump from $102,279 to $175,000; and the attorney general’s increase from $130,582 to $175,000.

The proposals on pay, which were coupled with recommended reforms in the panel’s final report, come as the state faces a budget gap and as polling data has found Massachusetts voters uneasy about their own economic prospects.

In addition to the salary increase, the commission also proposed an additional $65,000-a-year housing allowance for the governor.

If the pay raises were adopted, the Massachusetts governor would trail only the governor of Pennsylvania, who makes $187,818; the House speaker and Senate president salaries would rank first among the 50 states, according to the report....

While the panel proposed pay raises for the top legislative leaders, it did not directly recommend an increase in the base salaries of rank-and-file legislators.

By constitutional amendment, those salaries are adjusted every two years based on changes to median household income for the state, as determined by the governor. But the commission did propose the using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis for those biennial adjustments....

Fiscal watchdogs decried the proposals.

“I have a problem with any pay hike when we’re in the midst of a fiscal crisis and they’re cutting local aid,” said Barbara Anderson, president of Citizens for Limited Taxation, a Massachusetts-based antitax group.

The Boston Globe
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Commission backs big raises at top


Massachusetts' top lawmakers remained non-committal on Monday on recommendations that would boost pay for legislators and constitutional officers, as an anti-tax activist threatened to sue the state if changes to legislative pay pass....

Meanwhile, Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, threatened to take the state government to court if the legislature implements the committee's recommendations to change the pay of rank-and-file legislators.

A 1998 constitutional amendment establishes that legislative salaries are set every two years to increase or decrease at the same rate as the state's median household income, as determined by the governor....

Anderson, however, said the legislature cannot change the way it calculates legislative base pay. "It's as obviously simple as the constitutional amendment language, which is as simple as language gets," Anderson said.

She said legislative pay cannot be calculated based on anything but median household income, and Citizens for Limited Taxation will sue the state if the legislature does anything else. "They can't play with it, they can't amend it," Anderson said. "It's the Constitution."

The Springfield Republican
Monday, December 1, 2014
Top lawmakers mum on proposed pay hike
as anti-tax activist threatens lawsuit


Massachusetts’ political leaders have ascended to new heights of hubris and cluelessness, an astounding accomplishment even for them....

The better pay and perks are necessary, according to the commission, because Massachusetts can’t attract good candidates for governor without them. That’s why there were 10 candidates on the ballot this year.

We’re just getting started....

The sad part is no one is really very surprised by this shady proposal. It’s actually the second time a special “compensation commission” released a plan at the end of a lame-duck session to give elected officials a big pay raise. The first time was in 2008 when the panel included Steve Crosby, dean at UMass Boston’s McCormack Graduate School. Crosby is now doing a bang-up job running the state Gaming Commission.

This time the pay raise plan was put together by Ira Jackson, who is the current dean at the McCormack Graduate School.

So here’s the lesson for Massachusetts taxpayers. Next time a UMass Boston dean gets appointed to a special commission, grab your wallets and flee to New Hampshire.

The Boston Herald
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Pols recommend big pay hikes for ... pols
By Joe Battenfeld


As far as we know the only people crying out for “fixing” the compensation structure for public officials in Massachusetts are the public officials themselves. But kudos to the folks on Beacon Hill for making it appear we have a crisis on our hands.

With all due respect to members of the Special Advisory Commission on Public Officials’ Compensation, their final recommendations, released yesterday, were guaranteed from the word “go.” The lawmakers who created this panel never would have done so had they believed it would lead to anything but a push for more pay....

Panel chairman Ira Jackson acknowledged that pay raises are controversial and notes the “fiscal environment and the prevailing cynicism.” Were the Legislature to act on all of the recommendations in this report in a lame-duck session that cynicism would be entirely justified.

A Boston Herald editorial
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
No ‘emergency’ here


‘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 naif could have doubted it would come back with anything but a recommendation for hefty pay raises all around. 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.

Quick, count the spoons....

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 grease the skids and get the pay hikes passed before Baker takes office in January.

But the biggest affront in this plan is 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 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.

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, voters were invited to approve a 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.”

The amendment passed handily. 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....

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.

Assuming, that is, that in Massachusetts, the constitution rules. Does it?

The Boston Globe
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Mass. lawmakers’ unlawful scheme to hike pay
By Jeff Jacoby


We think rather highly of ourselves here in Massachusetts and that tendency is on full display in the report of the “Special Advisory Commission on Public Officials’ Compensation” that was released on Monday.

The panel was Oprah-esque in its recommendations (“You get a raise! And you get a raise!”). Most of the attention was focused on a proposed housing allowance for the governor and the elimination of “per diem” payments for lawmakers.

But there was so much more to the story....

Then there’s the “per diem” issue.

Lawmakers are eligible to collect the stipends for every day they report to the State House for official business, with rates varying depending on how far their district is from Beacon Hill. The commission accurately describes the payments as “controversial” and in its press release, places their elimination first on its list of recommended reforms.

But look closely and you’ll find that the $300,000 savings from eliminating per diems is swamped by the $805,000 cost of a corresponding increase in office expenses allotted to each legislator — for a net increase in legislative expenses of $505,000....

In Massachusetts we take great pride in calling ourselves No. 1 in the nation in student achievement. Soon we may get to boast that we’re No. 1 in what we pay people who make the choice to run for office — some of whom have no intention of ever looking for employment elsewhere. Is that progress?

The Boston Herald
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
A race to the top not worth winning
Panel’s plan would see Beacon Hill salaries skyrocket

By Julie Mehegan


Chip Ford's CLT Commentary

What a week it's been trying to publicize that The Special Advisory Commission Regarding the Compensation of Public Officials is proposing to violate the state Constitution in its Report to the Public, Legislature, and Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. [To download/read the entire report CLICK HERE.]  It's been a struggle to overcoming the resistance and ignorance, casting a light on the history of legislative pay raises and what the 1998 amendment to the state Constitution actually prescribes, getting so many to actually read it in its clarity:

The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Articles of Amendment

Art. CXVIII [Art. 118].
The base compensation as of January first, nineteen hundred and ninety-six, of members of the general court shall not be changed except as provided in this article. As of the first Wednesday in January of the year two thousand and one and every second year thereafter, such base compensation shall be increased or decreased at the same rate as increases or decreases in the median household income for the commonwealth for the preceding two year period, as ascertained by the governor.

Until the last day or two, most of those who didn't think we were correct thought we were outright crazy but they're beginning to come around. I would imagine by now more have actually read the amendment.

For our original alarm read:  CLT Update, Thursday, Nov. 20:
"Despite the state Constitution, pols are back for another pay hike"

The commission hasn't directly called for a legislative pay raise. What it's done is more insidious and nefarious.  It has recommended that the formula specified in the state Constitution simply be ignored, arbitrarily replaced by one more favorable to perpetual automatic legislative pay raises.

Instead of legislative salaries being based on "the median household income for the commonwealth for the preceding two year period," the commission "specifically recommends that future administrations use BEA quarterly data measuring the change in wages and salaries in Massachusetts for the most recent eight quarters to determine the biennial change in legislative salaries."

As you can see in the excerpted chart below (APPENDIX D: LEGISLATIVE COMPENSATION BASE PAY FOR LEGISLATORS), legislators' salaries only increase under the commission's proposed Constitutional end-run despite how well or poorly their constituents are and have been faring.

Table D-1
Comparison of Actual Pay Changes and Changes Using BEA Method

Session Actual Pay and
Percentage Change
BEA, 8 Most Recent
Quarters and
Percentage Change
2007 (base year) $58,197 $58,197
2009-10 session $61,440
(+5.6%)
$62,206
(+6.9%)
2011-12 session $61,133
(-0.5%)
$62,585
(+0.6%)
2013-14 session $60,032
(-1.8%)
$66,410
(+6.1%)
2015-16 session
projected
N/A $63,994
(+6.6% based on 2013-
14 actual pay)
Note: Calculations for BEA are based on the data that was available at the time of calculation.
 

Here's some further information that should be of interest in this controversy:

U.S. Department of Commerce
Bureau of Economic Analysis
Explaining Long-term Differences Between Census and BEA Measures of Household Income

U.S. Department of Commerce
According to the U.S. Census Bureau:
"The U.S. Census Bureau is the official source of statistical data tracking the national economy."

If this latest pay grab is going to happen it'll have to be rushed through by year's end.  The Legislature is currently in "informal session" so it could be adopted by a mere handful of legislators in the blink of an eye with a voice vote.  The good news is, it can also be defeated by the objection of one legislator.  Rep. Geoff Diehl (R-Whitman) has vowed to remain planted in the House chamber to be that one objection for as long as it takes.  We hope he's getting the assistance of other legislators at least to spell him long enough for a bathroom break now and then.  So far, we haven't heard that he has any allies even among other Republicans.  What's with that?

The only other way it can pass in the coming month is if the House and Senate end informal sessions and call in a formal session of both branches.  Formal sessions in a post-election year following the election are rare if ever, usually reserved for exigent emergencies; threats to the very Commonwealth itself.  This is certainly not such a situation — as least most people wouldn't consider it such.

But then we're not Bacon Hill pols, and we don't have our hands in everyone else's pockets.

Chip Ford


 

The Boston Globe
Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Commission backs big raises at top
By Joshua Miller


The top two Massachusetts legislative leaders would become the highest paid in the country, and the governor would become the second-highest paid nationally, if recommendations released Monday by a state panel become law.

The advisory commission recommended the governor’s salary be boosted from $151,800 to $185,000; the House speaker’s and Senate president’s jump from $102,279 to $175,000; and the attorney general’s increase from $130,582 to $175,000.

The proposals on pay, which were coupled with recommended reforms in the panel’s final report, come as the state faces a budget gap and as polling data has found Massachusetts voters uneasy about their own economic prospects.

In addition to the salary increase, the commission also proposed an additional $65,000-a-year housing allowance for the governor.

If the pay raises were adopted, the Massachusetts governor would trail only the governor of Pennsylvania, who makes $187,818; the House speaker and Senate president salaries would rank first among the 50 states, according to the report.

In a statement, Governor Deval Patrick said he supported the recommendations but said he would not approve salary-boosting legislation until the midyear budget gap, estimated to be $329 million, is bridged. Among other measures, Patrick has proposed cuts in aid to cities and towns, which legislators quickly rejected.

Governor-elect Charlie Baker poured cold water on the idea of salary increases with an unresolved state budget shortfall looming.

“Now is not the time to be talking about pay increases on Beacon Hill,” he said at news conference after the report was released.

If the economic situation remained similar to what it is today and Baker received legislation raising top officials’ pay, he said he “would probably veto it.” He takes office Jan. 8.

The panel pegged the yearly net cost of the proposed changes, including the salary hikes, at about $934,000, a tiny part of the state’s more than $36 billion budget. Members of the panel said they expected the increases could be absorbed within existing budgets, without additional taxpayer expense.

Ira A. Jackson, chairman of the commission, defended the recommended salaries and said they were based on a thorough review of top elected officials’ responsibilities, other states’ levels of compensation, the high cost of living in Massachusetts, how much top executives in the private sector make, and a desire to attract talented people, regardless of means, to elected office.

“We conclude that the governor of Massachusetts is inadequately compensated,” he said, noting the 24/7 nature of the job and, among other factors, that more than 1,200 state employees earn more than the governor.

Still, Jackson, dean of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, acknowledged that proposals for boosting public sector compensation are controversial and usually unpopular.

“Our democracy and form of self-government here in the Commonwealth will be strengthened if our reforms and recommendations are enacted,” he said at a news conference, announcing the commission’s final report.

Asked about the proposed gubernatorial housing allowance, Jackson said Massachusetts is one of only a few states that do not have an executive mansion or offer a housing allowance to the governor.

Michael J. Widmer, the outgoing head of the non-partisan Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation and one of the commission members, said in an e-mail the panel wanted to clearly distinguish the allowance from the salary, so did not lump the two items together. He said the group did not discuss any potential tax consequences of the housing allowance.

While the panel proposed pay raises for the top legislative leaders, it did not directly recommend an increase in the base salaries of rank-and-file legislators.

By constitutional amendment, those salaries are adjusted every two years based on changes to median household income for the state, as determined by the governor. But the commission did propose the using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis for those biennial adjustments.

The panel also recommended boosting pay for other statewide elected constitutional officials, according to its final report:

■  treasurer, from $127,917 to $175,000;

■  secretary of state, from $130,916 to $165,000;

■  auditor, from $134,952 to $165,000;

■  lieutenant governor, from $134,932 to $165,000.

Among the reforms the panel proposed were to prohibit constitutional officers, the House speaker, and the Senate president from earning outside income, other than passive income from investments.

It also recommended boosting the office expense allowance for state legislators — more for those farther outside of Boston — while eliminating per diem reimbursements.

Legislators collect per diem payments for commuting to and from the State House from their home districts.

Aides to the Senate president and the speaker of the House did not respond to questions about if or when the Legislature might take up pay-raise legislation.

Timing could matter.

If the lame duck Legislature and Patrick do not act to boost compensation before the new legislative session begins early next month, it might be years before pay raises could go into effect.

The state’s conflict-of-interest law says public employees may not participate, as such, in matters that affect their own financial interest.

That could mean some of the recommendations would need to be passed during the lame duck session in order to take effect in January when new officials are sworn in.

“If our recommendations are to become law, they must be acted upon in this legislative session to be effective for the new governor, and other constitutional officers and the 200 . . . members of the Legislature,” Jackson said.

After passing a budget and other high-profile bills over the summer, the Legislature concluded formal business for the year. Still, it has met and advanced legislation in informal sessions. But in those sessions, a single legislator can derail proceedings.

The Legislature could call a full formal session however, which might allow it to push a pay-raise bill through.

In a statement, Speaker Robert A. DeLeo offered no guidance on where he stood on the panel’s proposals. “The report will now be reviewed,” he said.

State Senator Stanley C. Rosenberg, expected to be elected Senate president next month, called the commission’s conclusions “bold recommendations.”

Fiscal watchdogs decried the proposals.

“I have a problem with any pay hike when we’re in the midst of a fiscal crisis and they’re cutting local aid,” said Barbara Anderson, president of Citizens for Limited Taxation, a Massachusetts-based antitax group.

Paul Craney, executive director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, said, “Now is not the time to enrich elected officials and people who would benefit from this plan.”


The Springfield Republican
Monday, December 1, 2014

Top lawmakers mum on proposed pay hike as anti-tax activist threatens lawsuit
By Shira Schoenberg


Massachusetts' top lawmakers remained non-committal on Monday on recommendations that would boost pay for legislators and constitutional officers, as an anti-tax activist threatened to sue the state if changes to legislative pay pass.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo, a Winthrop Democrat, outgoing Senate President Therese Murray, a Plymouth Democrat, and incoming Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, an Amherst Democrat, all declined to take positions on a report by a legislative advisory commission that would increase the pay for their jobs.

The House speaker and Senate president currently earn $102,279. An advisory commission created to review public compensation released a report Monday that recommended increasing their salaries to $175,000. The report also proposed increasing the salaries of the governor and other elected officials.

Committee Chairman Ira Jackson, dean of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said the House speaker and Senate president lead "a co-equal branch of government," but get paid less than the leaders of the executive and judiciary branches. The proposal is politically controversial, coming at a time when the state is making budget cuts.

Murray, who did not run for reelection, thanked the commission for "thoughtful and comprehensive recommendations which we are currently reviewing to determine how they could be practically implemented and what the next steps may be."

Murray said in a statement, "I believe that the governor, legislative leadership and constitutional officers should receive the compensation which would be commensurate with the full time positions they hold." But she stopped short of endorsing the commission's specific recommendations.

Rosenberg, an Amherst Democrat, is expected to replace Murray as Senate president in January. Rosenberg too declined to give an opinion. "After engaging in a transparent and thorough process the Commission has issued a series of bold recommendations, including the elimination of per-diems and the institution of a first-in-the-nation ban on outside income for legislative leaders and constitutional officers," Rosenberg said in a statement. "I look forward to reviewing the Commission's report, as well as the data used to support their recommendations."

DeLeo, in a statement, thanked the commission and said only that the House clerk received the report, and it will now be reviewed.

For the new salaries to go into effect next year, they must be approved this year. However, currently, the legislature is meeting only in informal sessions, which means it can only approve bills that face no opposition. Passing a salary increase would likely require a return to formal sessions before January. If lawmakers wait until January, the raises cannot take effect for two years, due to conflict of interest laws that prevent lawmakers from voting on something in which they have a financial interest. The bill could also face a veto from incoming Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who said he opposes the raises. Outgoing Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick supports the raises, as long as the legislature first fills a budget gap.

Meanwhile, Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, threatened to take the state government to court if the legislature implements the committee's recommendations to change the pay of rank-and-file legislators.

A 1998 constitutional amendment establishes that legislative salaries are set every two years to increase or decrease at the same rate as the state's median household income, as determined by the governor.

Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation and a member of the compensation advisory committee, said the problem with that method is median income information is only available a year later. So the governor has to estimate that information. "We put a specific proposal in place that ties the change to currently available data," Widmer said.

The commission's proposal would use data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to measure the quarterly change in salaries and wages in Massachusetts for the most recent eight quarters. That data has a time lag of three months, not a year, and there would be no estimating involved. The data measures aggregate, not median, income.

State legislators get a base salary of around $60,000, with additional payment for those in leadership positions. Using the method proposed by the report, lawmakers' base pay would have been higher each of the last three legislative sessions – by $766 in 2009-2010, $1,452 in 2011-2012 and $6,378 in 2013-2014.

Anderson, however, said the legislature cannot change the way it calculates legislative base pay. "It's as obviously simple as the constitutional amendment language, which is as simple as language gets," Anderson said.

She said legislative pay cannot be calculated based on anything but median household income, and Citizens for Limited Taxation will sue the state if the legislature does anything else. "They can't play with it, they can't amend it," Anderson said. "It's the Constitution."

The report also suggests eliminating the per diem payments, payments made to lawmakers based on how many days they drive to the Statehouse. The per diem payments range from $10 a day for lawmakers from Boston and surrounding areas to $100 a day for lawmakers from Nantucket. Not every lawmaker requests reimbursements.

In exchange, the report recommends increasing a stipend for office expenses from the current $7,200 to $10,000 for those within 50 miles of Boston and $15,000 for lawmakers living more than 50 miles from Boston. While lawmakers from Western Massachusetts will disproportionately feel the cut to their per diem payments, which range between $60 and $90 depending on their district, the $7,800 boost will be more than enough to cover the lost payments. In fact, almost all lawmakers will see their compensation rise under the new system.

With one month left to 2014 and little activity at the Statehouse, only one lawmaker requested more than $7,800 in per diem payments this year – State Sen. Benjamin Downing, a Pittsfield Democrat, who requested $8,730.

State Rep. William "Smitty" Pignatelli, a Lenox Democrat, has received $7,020. Rosenberg received $6,420. Another five legislators got more than $5,000 in per diem payments this year: Gailanne Cariddi, a North Adams Democrat; Michael Finn, a West Springfield Democrat; Tricia Farley-Bouvier, a Pittsfield Democrat; Robert Koczera, a New Bedford Democrat; and Sarah Peake, a Provincetown Democrat.

The report estimates that overall, lawmakers will get an additional $505,000 by eliminating per diem payments while increasing office expenses.

Finn said he has no problem with the state eliminating per diem payments in favor of a standardized system. "It would make it a lot easier if they did do away with per diems," Finn said.

Finn said he supports raising lawmakers' pay. "You do the job because you love it. It's not like you're getting rich doing this position," Finn said. "I don't think people realize how expensive it is to do the job. I'm out quite a bit, back and forth to Boston, the wear and tear on the car."

"It's a difficult job to do from the western part of the state based on the current compensation, especially with a family," Finn said. Finn manages real estate in addition to working as a legislator.

Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance executive director Paul Craney urged the legislature not to implement the recommendations. "Simply put, passing the commission's proposals would send the wrong message at the wrong time," Craney said in a statement. "With tens of millions of dollars in cuts to local aid and other programs being proposed to close a gaping hole in the state's budget, enormous pay increases for politicians are a completely inappropriate use of taxpayer money." Craney said he supports eliminating per diem payments but does not support the raises.


The Boston Herald
Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Pols recommend big pay hikes for ... pols
By Joe Battenfeld


Massachusetts’ political leaders have ascended to new heights of hubris and cluelessness, an astounding accomplishment even for them.

The outgoing Democratic governor with a mini-mansion in the Berkshires and the incoming GOP governor with a million-dollar home in Swampscott are now clashing over a special legislative “commission” plan giving the governor a $65,000 stipend — to pay for housing.

Baker opposes it. Patrick is open to supporting it — at least according to his press release. Deval won’t answer questions any more unless he’s on “Meet the Press.”

The “special commission” — which at the State House translates as “in the tank” — has also decided the state’s chief executive can’t possibly do his or her job without a big pay hike. This despite the fact four of the last five elected governors of Massachusetts, including Baker, have been millionaires.

The better pay and perks are necessary, according to the commission, because Massachusetts can’t attract good candidates for governor without them. That’s why there were 10 candidates on the ballot this year.

We’re just getting started.

The pay raise was cooked up in the waning weeks of a lame duck legislative session by Democrats, the same party that ran campaign ads trashing Baker for raising his pay in the private sector. The elected officials in line for the biggest pay raises would be the House speaker and Senate president, the same ones who created the commission and will decide whether the pay hikes get through the Legislature.

You following? There’s more.

The state, meaning taxpayers, would fund these big pay hikes at the same time Patrick is cutting nearly $200 million from the budget due to a deficit crisis. But that’s not a deal-breaker because our intrepid lawmakers will come up with other cuts to pay for their higher salaries.

This is like saying it’s OK for a couple behind in their mortgage payments to spend $800 for a new 60-inch flat screen — as long as they pay for it by cutting back on groceries and clothing for the kids.

Most people would conclude they just can’t afford the new TV. But not in the twisted logic of the Massachusetts Legislature.

The sad part is no one is really very surprised by this shady proposal. It’s actually the second time a special “compensation commission” released a plan at the end of a lame-duck session to give elected officials a big pay raise. The first time was in 2008 when the panel included Steve Crosby, dean at UMass Boston’s McCormack Graduate School. Crosby is now doing a bang-up job running the state Gaming Commission.

This time the pay raise plan was put together by Ira Jackson, who is the current dean at the McCormack Graduate School.

So here’s the lesson for Massachusetts taxpayers. Next time a UMass Boston dean gets appointed to a special commission, grab your wallets and flee to New Hampshire.


The Boston Herald
Tuesday, December 2, 2014

A Boston Herald editorial
No ‘emergency’ here


As far as we know the only people crying out for “fixing” the compensation structure for public officials in Massachusetts are the public officials themselves. But kudos to the folks on Beacon Hill for making it appear we have a crisis on our hands.

With all due respect to members of the Special Advisory Commission on Public Officials’ Compensation, their final recommendations, released yesterday, were guaranteed from the word “go.” The lawmakers who created this panel never would have done so had they believed it would lead to anything but a push for more pay. Tasking the panel with comparing public officials’ pay to earnings in the private sector made it that much easier.

The commission dutifully concludes the compensation of constitutional officers and legislative leadership is “generally outdated and inadequate.” The governor’s pay should go up from about $152,000 to $185,000 a year, which doesn’t sound so outrageous, until the panel adds that the governor should also collect a housing allowance of $65,000 a year.

Hey, Boston’s expensive!

At $185,000 the Massachusetts governor would earn more than the governors of every other state but Pennsylvania. Even adjusted for cost of living differences he would still earn more than the governors of California and New York which the panel finds appropriate “given the size, complexity and importance of the governor’s position and state government in Massachusetts compared with the other states.”

Sure, try telling that to Andrew Cuomo ...

Compensation for all other constitutional officers would go up, along with pay for the House speaker and Senate president, whose $175,000 salary under this plan would top every state with a full-time legislature. And they should all get the same automatic pay “adjustments” lawmakers get under the state Constitution, the commission recommends. There is some tinkering on legislative pay reforms but put it this way, no one would take a pay cut.

Panel chairman Ira Jackson acknowledged that pay raises are controversial and notes the “fiscal environment and the prevailing cynicism.” Were the Legislature to act on all of the recommendations in this report in a lame-duck session that cynicism would be entirely justified.


The Boston Globe
Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Mass. lawmakers’ unlawful scheme to hike pay
By Jeff Jacoby


‘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 naif could have doubted it would come back with anything but a recommendation for hefty pay raises all around. 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.

Quick, count the spoons.

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 grease the skids and get the pay hikes passed before Baker takes office in January.

But the biggest affront in this plan is 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 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.

Time and again, Beacon Hill politicos have justified such avarice by lamenting that they had no better option.

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, voters were invited to approve a 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.”

The amendment passed handily. 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.

Assuming, that is, that in Massachusetts, the constitution rules. Does it?


The Boston Herald
Wednesday, December 3, 2014

A race to the top not worth winning
Panel’s plan would see Beacon Hill salaries skyrocket
By Julie Mehegan


We think rather highly of ourselves here in Massachusetts and that tendency is on full display in the report of the “Special Advisory Commission on Public Officials’ Compensation” that was released on Monday.

The panel was Oprah-esque in its recommendations (“You get a raise! And you get a raise!”). Most of the attention was focused on a proposed housing allowance for the governor and the elimination of “per diem” payments for lawmakers.

But there was so much more to the story.

For example, the state Senate president and House speaker perform jobs so vital that they should be paid more than their counterparts in every other state in the union, the panel concluded. At about $102,000 each, those positions are now so dramatically underpaid that to bring them up to an acceptable level would require a 71 percent increase in salary (to $175,000).

And the job of governor of Massachusetts is so uniquely challenging, we are assured, that a 22 percent pay hike is justified, which would bring the total salary for the position to $185,000. The commission also recommends instituting a new, $65,000 housing allowance, for a total percentage increase in the governor’s compensation of 65 percent.

The proposed “update” to the governor’s salary would make it the second-highest of the 50 states, second only to Pennsylvania. Adjusted for cost-of-living differences it would rank 10th, which the commission suggests is “appropriate given the size, complexity and importance of the governor’s position and state government in Massachusetts compared with the other states.”

But scroll through the report’s appendices to discover that still behind Massachusetts on that adjusted salary list would be the governors of California, New York and Ohio (along with the governors of every other New England state).

We may truly believe ourselves to be superior to New York in every way — but no one can argue with a straight face that serving as governor of Massachusetts is more challenging than serving as governor of the Empire State, which boasts a budget and a workforce nearly three times that of Massachusetts.

And California? Well, it dwarfs Massachusetts in almost every category, starting with a population six times ours.

The members of the commission are distinguished professionals from diverse private-sector backgrounds, however the findings in their report represent a classic Beacon Hill point of view. For example, the fact that 1,254 Massachusetts state employees currently earn more than the governor is presented as de facto justification for a hike in the governor’s pay — rather than an occasion to perhaps examine why 1,254 state employees with fewer responsibilities than the state’s CEO earn possibly inflated salaries.

Then there’s the “per diem” issue.

Lawmakers are eligible to collect the stipends for every day they report to the State House for official business, with rates varying depending on how far their district is from Beacon Hill. The commission accurately describes the payments as “controversial” and in its press release, places their elimination first on its list of recommended reforms.

But look closely and you’ll find that the $300,000 savings from eliminating per diems is swamped by the $805,000 cost of a corresponding increase in office expenses allotted to each legislator — for a net increase in legislative expenses of $505,000.

Some observations that have been offered to justify the commission’s recommendations: Public officials should be adequately compensated. Most people don’t enter government service for the money. Pay raises can be controversial.

All true statements — none of which is particularly germane to the specific recommendations in this report, which seem to come from another planet — landing just as the state is grappling with a huge hole in the state budget. And while the commission “asserts” that the pay adjustments “must be” cost-neutral there is no requirement that it be so. That’s one very costly leap of faith.

In Massachusetts we take great pride in calling ourselves No. 1 in the nation in student achievement. Soon we may get to boast that we’re No. 1 in what we pay people who make the choice to run for office — some of whom have no intention of ever looking for employment elsewhere. Is that progress?

Julie Mehegan is deputy editorial page editor of the Boston Herald.

 

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml


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