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Post Office Box 1147 ●
Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945 ●
(781) 639-9709
“Every Tax is a Pay Cut ... A Tax Cut is a Pay Raise”
44 years as “The Voice of Massachusetts Taxpayers”
— and
their Institutional Memory — |
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CLT UPDATE
Saturday, December 29, 2018
A very,
very Happy & Prosperous New Year for greedy Bacon Hill pols
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State legislative leaders stand to collect
not one, not two, but three different pay raises in January
thanks to a humming economy and a controversial state law,
promising to swell some lawmakers’ paychecks by nearly
$12,000 just two years after they awarded themselves a pay
hike.
All of the state’s 200 senators and
representatives are in line for a $3,700 increase to their
base salary and a separate 8.3 percent hike to their office
expense accounts, which currently range between $15,000 and
$20,000, depending on how far they live from the State
House.
When they’re sworn in Wednesday, House
Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, Senate President Karen E. Spilka —
both already among the highest-paid legislative leaders in
the country — and dozens of their top deputies will also get
a third increase — an 8.3 percent raise to their legislative
stipends, the lucrative add-ons the Legislature affords to
its highest-ranking officials and committee leaders.
And the good economic tidings don’t stop
with the Legislature. Governor Charlie Baker is entitled to
take home an additional $21,000 on top of his $250,000 pay
package, though aides say the Republican doesn’t intend to
take the extra pay. Other constitutional officers could
score increases of up to nearly $15,000....
The first, a constitutional amendment, ties
lawmakers’ base pay to household median income, but gives
the governor leeway to set the exact amount of the change.
In a letter to state Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg on
Thursday, Baker ordered a 5.9 percent increase for
legislators, pushing their base salary from $62,550 to
$66,250.
The second trigger is more complicated. In
ramming an $18 million pay raise package into law in early
2017, lawmakers boosted their own compensation by increasing
the stipends they could receive, while also hiking the pay
of an array of state officials....
For the Legislature, the move promises an
array of increases.
DeLeo, for example, made $157,500 last year,
thanks to his base salary, an $80,000 stipend, and $15,000
in office expenses. After the hikes go into effect, his
total compensation will balloon to $169,100 — a jump of
$11,600. That same pay package will also welcome Spilka when
she starts her first full term as the Senate leader.
Other lawmakers will see smaller increases,
depending on which leadership positions they’re appointed to
in the new legislative session....
[Senate President Karen] Spilka on Thursday
defended the increases, noting that the process for meting
them out has been in place since early 2017.
“This law, passed two years ago, created a
transparent and standardized method to adjust pay and
stipends for constitutional officers and legislators,”
Spilka said. “We expect these adjustments to be made, in
accordance with the law, through normal payroll mechanisms
beginning in the new year.”
The Boston Globe
Friday, December 28, 2018
Legislative leaders to collect 3 pay bumps in 2019
The nine secretaries who make up Gov.
Charlie Baker's Cabinet, eligible executive agency heads and
commissioners and members of the governor's office will ring
in the new year with a 5.5 percent pay raise.
Chief Human Resources Officer Ronald Arigo
outlined the raises, which are effective Jan. 1, in a memo
to the secretaries and their chiefs of staff and human
resources directors Friday, a day after salary increases for
lawmakers and constitutional officers were announced....
Most members of Baker's office will also
receive the same 5.5 percent increase effective next
Tuesday, with recent hires ineligible. According to the
governor's office, staff there have not received the merit
pay increases other executive branch managers received over
the past four years.
Baker's salary is set to grow from $151,800
to $185,000 plus a housing allowance of $65,000, while the
base pay for legislators will go up $3,709 to $66,256.
State House News Service
Friday, December 28, 2018
Cabinet secretaries, gov's staff getting 5.5 percent raises
Two years after legislators ignited an
uproar by voting through a generous package of pay raises
for themselves and other public officials, the salaries for
top ranking elected officials and rank-and-file legislators
on Beacon Hill are going up again.
Gov. Charlie Baker certified a pay raise of
5.93 percent for the 200 members of the House and Senate for
the 2019-2020 session, raising the base pay for legislators
by $3,709 to $66,256.
Stipends for the many leadership positions
and committee chairmanships to be handed out early next year
by legislative leaders are also due to rise by over 8
percent, according to Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, and all
six statewide elected officials appear to be eligible for
sizable raises on the scale of 8.32 percent.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate
President Karen Spilka, for instance, are in line for raises
of $11,613, in total, which would bring their compensation
to $152,912 a year, plus $16,248 for office and travel
expenses. That includes the 5.93 percent bump in base pay,
and an 8.32 percent increase in their leadership stipend,
which now totals $86,656.
Meanwhile, Gov. Charlie Baker will accept,
for the first time, an increased salary of $185,000 and a
$65,000 housing stipend, upping his total pay package from
its current level of $151,800. Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito will
also be accepting an increased salary of $165,000....
While that process is spelled out in the
Constitution, Speaker DeLeo and then-Senate President
Stanley Rosenberg in 2017 pushed through a package of pay
raises for lawmakers that adjusted the stipends they receive
for office expenses and leadership and committee postings.
The speaker and Senate president, for
instance, saw their stipends bumped from $35,000 to $80,000
two years ago, and will now receive $86,656 on top of their
base salary.
The chairmanships of the House and Senate
Ways and Means Committees, two powerful positions that are
currently vacant and must be filled in the new session, will
carry stipends of $70,408, up from $65,000. And the
Democratic majority leaders in each branch – positions
currently held by Rep. Ronald Mariano and Sen. Cynthia Stone
Creem – will see their stipends grow from $60,000 to
$64,992.
Though Massachusetts differs from many other
states with its full-time Legislature, many lawmakers also
hold outside jobs in the private sector to supplement their
incomes.
State House News Service
Thursday, December 27, 2018
Baker jumps on Beacon Hill pay raise train
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
“The Best Legislature Money Can Buy"
just got another few hefty pay raises, just two
years after legislators pulled off
their obscene pay grab of 2017.
This is “trickle-down economics," Bay
State style: They seize a 5.83% pay raise next
week and another illicit hike in their "expenses"
of 8% and even more money for a
multitude of "leadership" positions; then the
governor and other constitutional officers swoop in for
theirs. Like water flowing downhill, cabinet
secretaries and the well-connected schooling downstream
catch the scraps from the feeding frenzy.
It's amazing that judges and courthouse
hangers-on got left out of this money grab.
How long will it be before we hear howls of outrage
echoing throughout courthouses across the commonwealth
demanding their pay hikes too? And no doubt
they'll get them.
Meanwhile, taxpayers got trickled on,
as usual: A paltry .05 percent pay raise from the
miniscule reduction of the long-past-due rollback of the
3-decades old "temporary" income tax hike. On
Beacon Hill this passes for "pay equity."
Marie-Antoinette called it “Let them eat cake.”
How do they dare exhibit such
in-your-face naked greed?
Because they can, and know they
will get away with it. Because they count on
enough voters forgetting these outrages by the
time they're running for re-election, or being oblivious
to them, or just not caring ―
as was yet again demonstrated in November.
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Chip Ford
Executive Director |
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The Boston Globe
Friday, December 28, 2018
Legislative leaders to collect 3 pay bumps in
2019
By Matt Stout
State legislative leaders stand to collect not
one, not two, but three different pay raises in
January thanks to a humming economy and a
controversial state law, promising to swell some
lawmakers’ paychecks by nearly $12,000 just two
years after they awarded themselves a pay hike.
All of the state’s 200 senators and
representatives are in line for a $3,700
increase to their base salary and a separate 8.3
percent hike to their office expense accounts,
which currently range between $15,000 and
$20,000, depending on how far they live from the
State House.
When they’re sworn in Wednesday, House Speaker
Robert A. DeLeo, Senate President Karen E.
Spilka — both already among the highest-paid
legislative leaders in the country — and dozens
of their top deputies will also get a third
increase — an 8.3 percent raise to their
legislative stipends, the lucrative add-ons the
Legislature affords to its highest-ranking
officials and committee leaders.
And the good economic tidings don’t stop with
the Legislature. Governor Charlie Baker is
entitled to take home an additional $21,000 on
top of his $250,000 pay package, though aides
say the Republican doesn’t intend to take the
extra pay. Other constitutional officers could
score increases of up to nearly $15,000.
The windfall for elected officials is, in part,
a confluence of two different pay adjustments —
one guaranteed by the Massachusetts
Constitution, the other newly baked into state
law — each designed to tether the pay of the
state’s most powerful leaders to changes in the
state’s wage levels every two years.
The first, a constitutional amendment, ties
lawmakers’ base pay to household median income,
but gives the governor leeway to set the exact
amount of the change. In a letter to state
Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg on Thursday, Baker
ordered a 5.9 percent increase for legislators,
pushing their base salary from $62,550 to
$66,250.
The second trigger is more complicated. In
ramming an $18 million pay raise package into
law in early 2017, lawmakers boosted their own
compensation by increasing the stipends they
could receive, while also hiking the pay of an
array of state officials.
The Legislature also established a separate
process, similar to the mechanism in the
constitutional amendment, that ties the salaries
of the six constitutional officers and
lawmakers’ additional pay to changes in state
wages over the previous two years.
That first biennial change under the legislation
comes due next week. But while the pay raise
package specified what type of federal data on
which to base the adjustment, its vague wording
did not task a certain office or official with
actually determining it.
Goldberg’s office, which handles legislative
pay, said Thursday that “by default” it would
take on the duty, and determined those pay
scales would rise by 8.3 percent in 2019.
Chandra Allard, Goldberg’s deputy chief of
staff, said the office would apply it to both
legislative stipends and expenses, as well as
Goldberg’s own salary, which will jump to nearly
$190,000.
Allard said the treasurer’s office would share
the recommended increase with the other
constitutional officers as well, though it will
ultimately be up to them whether to accept it.
For the Legislature, the move promises an array
of increases.
DeLeo, for example, made $157,500 last year,
thanks to his base salary, an $80,000 stipend,
and $15,000 in office expenses. After the hikes
go into effect, his total compensation will
balloon to $169,100 — a jump of $11,600. That
same pay package will also welcome Spilka when
she starts her first full term as the Senate
leader.
Other lawmakers will see smaller increases,
depending on which leadership positions they’re
appointed to in the new legislative session.
Spilka on Thursday defended the increases,
noting that the process for meting them out has
been in place since early 2017.
“This law, passed two years ago, created a
transparent and standardized method to adjust
pay and stipends for constitutional officers and
legislators,” Spilka said. “We expect these
adjustments to be made, in accordance with the
law, through normal payroll mechanisms beginning
in the new year.”
A spokeswoman for DeLeo did not respond to
questions Thursday about the pay increases.
Baker — whose veto of the pay raise bill was
overridden in 2017 — has said he intends to take
the full $250,000 pay package afforded to him
under the law in his second term, which includes
a $65,000 housing stipend. His salary is
currently $151,000. Lieutenant Governor Karyn
Polito, who makes $122,000 now, also plans to
take her statutorily set $165,000 salary.
But both said Thursday that they would not take
any additional pay generated by the biennial
adjustment tied to state wage levels. For Baker,
that could have meant another $20,800, and
Polito, an additional $13,700 in annual pay.
“Governor Baker and Lieutenant Governor Polito
will not accept any additional adjustments to
their compensation beyond what was originally
provided by the 2017 statute,” spokesman Brendan
Moss said.
The state auditor and secretary of state, who
under the law can make up to $165,000, would
also be in line for $13,700 more through the 8.3
percent increase. Similar to the treasurer, the
$175,000 salary afforded to the attorney general
would also rise to more than $190,000 — a
$14,560 difference.
When lawmakers passed the pay raise package in
2017, only Auditor Suzanne M. Bump took the full
pay raise among the state’s six constitutional
officers, and each would have to decide whether
to accept the new pay as well.
Goldberg, for example, declined the initial
raise to $175,000 in 2017, but Allard said she
would take that salary, and the additional
adjustment, when she begins her second term in
January.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura T.
Healey said the Charlestown Democrat will also
accept the increase to $190,000 given she
“declined to take the midterm raise two years
ago.”
Efforts to reach aides to Bump and Secretary of
State William F. Galvin were not successful
Thursday night.
The 2017 pay raise legislation also increased
the salaries for the state’s judges and a slew
of other officials, from court clerks and
assistant clerks to the Suffolk County register
of deeds. But it did not bake in biennial
adjustments for them as it did for the
constitutional officers and legislators.
State House News Service
Friday, December 28, 2018
Cabinet secretaries, gov's staff getting 5.5
percent raises
By Katie Lannan
The nine secretaries who make up Gov. Charlie
Baker's Cabinet, eligible executive agency heads
and commissioners and members of the governor's
office will ring in the new year with a 5.5
percent pay raise.
Chief Human Resources Officer Ronald Arigo
outlined the raises, which are effective Jan. 1,
in a memo to the secretaries and their chiefs of
staff and human resources directors Friday, a
day after salary increases for lawmakers and
constitutional officers were announced.
The 5.5 percent raise will bring the salary for
cabinet secretaries up to $170,405.71 from the
current $161,522.
Agency heads and commissioners will not be
eligible for the pay hike if they entered their
role on or after Jan. 2, 2018. Acting or interim
appointees and 120-day appointees are
ineligible, Arigo wrote.
Most members of Baker's office will also receive
the same 5.5 percent increase effective next
Tuesday, with recent hires ineligible. According
to the governor's office, staff there have not
received the merit pay increases other executive
branch managers received over the past four
years.
Baker's salary is set to grow from $151,800 to
$185,000 plus a housing allowance of $65,000,
while the base pay for legislators will go up
$3,709 to $66,256.
State House News Service
Thursday, December 27, 2018
Baker jumps on Beacon Hill pay raise train
By Matt Murphy
Two years after legislators ignited an uproar by
voting through a generous package of pay raises
for themselves and other public officials, the
salaries for top ranking elected officials and
rank-and-file legislators on Beacon Hill are
going up again.
Gov. Charlie Baker certified a pay raise of 5.93
percent for the 200 members of the House and
Senate for the 2019-2020 session, raising the
base pay for legislators by $3,709 to $66,256.
Stipends for the many leadership positions and
committee chairmanships to be handed out early
next year by legislative leaders are also due to
rise by over 8 percent, according to Treasurer
Deborah Goldberg, and all six statewide elected
officials appear to be eligible for sizable
raises on the scale of 8.32 percent.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President
Karen Spilka, for instance, are in line for
raises of $11,613, in total, which would bring
their compensation to $152,912 a year, plus
$16,248 for office and travel expenses. That
includes the 5.93 percent bump in base pay, and
an 8.32 percent increase in their leadership
stipend, which now totals $86,656.
Meanwhile, Gov. Charlie Baker will accept, for
the first time, an increased salary of $185,000
and a $65,000 housing stipend, upping his total
pay package from its current level of $151,800.
Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito will also be accepting an
increased salary of $165,000.
After rejecting the same increase in pay in
2017, Baker during his campaign for re-election
said he would accept the higher rate.
"I opposed that then because I hated the process
that the Legislature went through to deliver on
it and I didn't feel like the Commonwealth was
in a position to deal with it. But it's now the
statutory requirement here in Massachusetts,"
Baker said during his final debate against
Democrat Jay Gonzalez.
Asked to clarify what that meant for him, Baker
said, "That’s what it is – if the voters are
kind enough to give me a second term, I’ll just
take it because that’s what it is."
The governor and lieutenant governor, however,
will be declining a further 8.32 percent
increase in base pay that Goldberg says he is
eligible for under the 2017 compensation law
that the Legislature passed over his veto.
That increase would have raised his salary to
over $200,000 and his housing allowance to over
$70,000.
The adjustments in legislative base pay are
required biennially under the state
Constitution, and are based on changes in the
median household income statewide. It's the
second time in the past decade that the base pay
for lawmakers has been adjusted upward after
lawmakers got a 4.2 percent raise at the start
of the 2017-2018 session.
The additional increases stem from a
controversial 2017 law that raised the pay for
Constitutional officers like the governor and
stipends for legislative leaders like the
speaker and committee chairmen.
That law also awarded office and travel expense
budgets of between $15,000 and $20,000 for every
legislator, based on how far they live from the
State House, and called for all of that
compensation to be adjusted every two years
based on changes in wages and salaries over two
years as reported by the Bureau of Economic
Analysis in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The problem is that the new law never spelled
out who should determine the size of those
adjustments.
The omission allowed confusion to reign for much
of the day Thursday among officials and staff
who had grown accustomed to seeing the governor,
lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer
and auditor all receive the same bump in base
pay as legislators.
Goldberg's office eventually said that it had
done the math, as prescribed under the 2017 law,
and came up with an 8.23 percent adjustment
factor. The treasurer's office said she intended
to apply that rate of increase to her $175,000
salary, as well as the leadership stipends and
office expense budgets for lawmakers.
Goldberg's office, however, said it lacked the
authority to apply the salary increase to other
constitutional offices, and would instead wait
to hear from their human resources departments
whether the elected officials intended to take
the raise, for which Goldberg said they are
eligible.
The treasurer and attorney general's offices
come with salaries of $175,000, according to
state law, while the secretary of state or
auditor are paid $165,000 annually. Should any
of them accept an adjustment, Attorney General
Maura Healey is eligible for the same $14,560
raise as Goldberg, while Secretary of State
William Galvin and Auditor Suzanne Bump could
receive an extra $13,728.
Baker, for one, declined the 2019 adjusted bump
in pay.
"Governor Baker and Lt. Governor Polito will not
accept any additional adjustments to their
compensation beyond what was originally provided
by the 2017 statute," spokesman Brendan Moss
said in a statement.
Other offices could not immediately be reached
for comment late Thursday when the size of the
raises became clear.
Spilka's office seemed to dispute that there was
any ambiguity in the 2017 law at all.
"This law, passed two years ago, created a
transparent and standardized method to adjust
pay and stipends for constitutional officers and
legislators. We expect these adjustments to be
made, in accordance with the law, through normal
payroll mechanisms beginning in the new year,"
spokesman Scott Zoback said in an email on
behalf of the president's office.
The 5.9 percent increase in the starting salary
for legislators was based on changes in median
household income in Massachusetts over two
years, as calculated by the United States Census
Bureau.
Baker said he used the most recently available
data from the American Community Survey to
determine that median household income in
Massachusetts from 2015 to 2017 had grown from
$73,052 to $77,385, or 5.93 percent.
While that process is spelled out in the
Constitution, Speaker DeLeo and then-Senate
President Stanley Rosenberg in 2017 pushed
through a package of pay raises for lawmakers
that adjusted the stipends they receive for
office expenses and leadership and committee
postings.
The speaker and Senate president, for instance,
saw their stipends bumped from $35,000 to
$80,000 two years ago, and will now receive
$86,656 on top of their base salary.
The chairmanships of the House and Senate Ways
and Means Committees, two powerful positions
that are currently vacant and must be filled in
the new session, will carry stipends of $70,408,
up from $65,000. And the Democratic majority
leaders in each branch – positions currently
held by Rep. Ronald Mariano and Sen. Cynthia
Stone Creem – will see their stipends grow from
$60,000 to $64,992.
Though Massachusetts differs from many other
states with its full-time Legislature, many
lawmakers also hold outside jobs in the private
sector to supplement their incomes.
Each branch of the Legislature most weeks holds
one formal session, and for about seven months
of the two-year session only informal sessions
are held, which most lawmakers do not attend.
Lawmakers also stay busy with committee work,
their own legislative priorities, constituent
services, and meetings in their districts.
All of the salary adjustments, by law, are
supposed to happen by Jan. 1 or Jan. 2 this year
when the new legislators will take their oaths
of office and begin the next two year session. |
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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:
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Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪
PO Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945
▪ (781) 990-1251
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