Majority of California state senators agree to pay cut

More than half of California’s state senators have agreed to reduce their $116,208 salary this year, most taking a 5% cut starting July 1.

During budget negotiations last week, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) offered up 5% of his $133,639 pay and he also urged his 39 colleagues to follow suit as part of a cost-cutting package he called “responsive to the state’s current crisis situation.”

By Friday evening, 26 senators besides Steinberg had said they would slice their salary this year.

Some others were already making less than $116,208 after declining their last raise, in 2007, or otherwise voluntarily shrinking their paychecks.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) has not asked the 80 members of her house to reduce their earnings, although at least 13 have done so to varying degrees in the last seven months.

Sen. Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa) took Steinberg’s exhortation to heart. She said she would surrender her $25,883 state-financed Honda Civic Hybrid and her state-issued gasoline credit card, on which Senate records show she billed $2,172 last year.

She also is taking a 20% cut in the tax-free $173-a-day allowance that helps legislators defray the expense of working far from home.

“It makes no sense to ask millions of Californians to accept cutbacks in pay or services without cutting back ourselves,” Wiggins said.

A 5% decrease will save the state $5,810 per legislator per fiscal year in most cases.

State employee union spokesman Jim Zamora noted that is a drop in the bucket relative to the state’s $24-billion budget hole.

“It’s just a symbolic act. What they need to do is come up with a long-term solution to the budget problem,” said Zamora, a spokesman for Service Employees International Union, Local 1000. His members have taken a pay cut of nearly 10% through twice-monthly unpaid furloughs initiated in February, Zamora said.

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patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com