Brown Says Pay Raise Falls Short : Legislature: The Speaker believes lawmakers should receive $95,214 salary, the same as municipal court judges. Instead, they received a 37% boost to $72,000.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said Monday the Legislature’s new 37% raise to $72,000 a year is a good step, but that state lawmakers are still underpaid and suggested they should receive $95,214 annually, the same salary paid to municipal court judges.

Brown was reacting to the decision by the independent California Citizens Compensation Commission, which voted Friday to increase the $52,500-a-year pay of rank-and-file lawmakers by $19,500. It will be the first pay hike in four years and, when it takes effect in December, will make California legislators the highest paid in the country.

The salary-setting commission, created by voters in 1990 as part of a legislative ethics reform plan embodied in Proposition 112, said the raise was needed to attract high-quality candidates who, in the new era of term limits, will temporarily leave careers to run for the Legislature.

Brown, who will get $86,400 annually because of his leadership position, said the money for the salary hike will have to come from existing legislative operating funds, as required by the term limits initiative, Proposition 140, which capped the Legislature’s budget.

“There is not one additional nickel cost to the taxpayers, and that pleases me,” he told reporters at an impromptu Capitol news conference.

“They (the commission) have set the base salary at $72,000. I still think that’s low,” Brown said. “Salaries for members of the Legislature ought to be at least equal to municipal court judges.”

Brown, a San Francisco attorney, said the higher pay is needed to not only attract the best candidates, but as reasonable reimbursement for long, hard days and nights the legislators must spend in Sacramento.

State legislators also receive $101 a day tax-free to pay for living expenses when they are in session, plus a host of other fringe benefits, which starting in December will bring their total annual compensation package to about $100,000.