Legislators to Receive 12% Raise

By Nancy Vogel

May 24, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

SACRAMENTO —

California’s consistently unpopular lawmakers, the most highly paid in the nation, got a 12% raise Monday -- a windfall that made some of them wince.

Lawmakers’ pay will jump from $99,000 a year to $110,880 starting Dec. 5, under a unanimous decision by the California Citizens Compensation Commission, a panel that meets annually to set salaries and benefits for the state’s top elected officials.

The raise was the first since 1998 for the legislators; raises were approved for the few in leadership posts in 1999 and 2000.

Though some lawmakers called the unsolicited increase overdue, others said they were not earning it.

“With the dysfunction of the Legislature,” said Assemblyman Keith Richman (R-Northridge) “if they were paying us what we were worth, we’d be giving them a refund.”

A Democratic colleague, Assembly Labor Committee Chairman Paul Koretz of West Hollywood, worried about the effects of getting a raise when lawmakers were being forced to make budget cuts. “In a lot of ways, it’s just bad news,” he said.

A cost-of-living increase is not unreasonable, Koretz said, but given the Legislature’s continuing struggle to balance the state budget, “It almost gives us a black eye without our asking for it.”

Others liked the idea.

“I think elected officials have a right to be adequately and properly compensated and shouldn’t have to feel defensive about it,” said Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles).

He said the $138 a day on top of salary that out-of-town lawmakers get for food, travel and lodging when the Legislature is in session does not offset all the costs of keeping two homes and separation from family.

That per diem, which is tied to a federally set rate, amounts to about $20,000 a year, tax-free, for lawmakers who live more than 50 miles from Sacramento.

The commission gave no raises to the governor or other officials Monday. Those salaries were raised in 2000.

Commissioner Thomas Dominguez, a bomb technician with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, said the 12% raise still lags the increase in the consumer price index over the last six years.

The raise “really doesn’t even put them back to where they were in ‘99, in my view,” said Dominguez, who was appointed to the commission in 1997 by Gov. Pete Wilson and reappointed by Gov. Gray Davis.

“We’re the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world, so it’s hard to compare ourselves to a state like Rhode Island -- no disrespect to them or any other state,” Dominguez said. “We’re California. We’re a different animal.”

Voters created the seven-member, bipartisan commission in 1990 with Proposition 112, giving it authority to set salaries and benefits without approval from lawmakers or the governor. Before Proposition 112, the Legislature could raise members’ salaries no more than 5% each year. Another initiative in 1990, Proposition 140, abolished pensions for lawmakers.

The commissioners come from business, labor and the general public. Current members include John W. Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League; Larry Gotlieb, a vice president with KB Home; Cristina Vazquez, a leader of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees; and David K. Wong, a law enforcement officer in San Francisco.

There have been two vacancies on the panel since January. The five members who voted Monday are Davis appointees.

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who does not accept his $175,000-a-year salary and has frequently criticized lawmakers as beholden to special interests, apparently was displeased by the raise.

“Obviously now is not the right time to be giving more money to politicians in Sacramento,” said Schwarzenegger spokesman Vince Sollitto. “It certainly sends the wrong signal to California taxpayers.”

Californians have expressed a mostly negative appraisal of the Legislature’s performance in recent years. The Field Poll found that only 19% of respondents approved of the lawmakers’ work in July 2003. That was the lowest percentage measured by the poll between June 1983 and February 2005, when approval measured 36%.

The highest result in that period was 57% in February 1988; most of the time the ratings were well below 50%.

Koretz said he would not accept his raise if the state’s next budget included the governor’s proposal to cut the wages of workers who care for the elderly and disabled in their homes from $10.10 an hour to the state minimum wage of $6.75.

“Everybody will have to decide on their own,” he said, “whether they want to take that money or not.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Legislative raises

Lawmakers received a 12% raise Monday that will become effective Dec. 5. Their salaries will be:

* Assembly speaker...$127,512

* Senate president

pro tem... 127,512

* Majority floor leader ...119,196

* Minority floor leader... 127,512

* 2nd ranking

minority leader... 119,196

* Other legislators...110,880