Essay: Cutting Lawmakers' Pay - 3.11.09

Michigan Radio’s Senior Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about the recent decision by The State Officers Compensation Commission to cut legislative pay by ten percent.

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There is something to be said for a spirit of shared sacrifice during hard times, and you can make a excellent case in favor of lawmakers, who are paid with taxpayer dollars, voluntarily reducing their pay. In fact, I’d guess that the vast majority of my fellow Michiganders are in favor of automatically cutting their compensation.

But I think passing a law to do that is a lousy idea, for one big capitalist reason: You get what you pay for. First of all, before we decide to limit our elected leaders’ salaries, we need to decide what we want them to be. Do we want a part-time legislature, staffed by lawyers and businessmen who make most of their living elsewhere? If so, the present salary of $79,650 is too much.

However, if we want a full-time legislature, I wouldn‘t reduce that salary at all.

That may sound like a lot to you, but it really isn‘t, especially if you have to live in two places much of the year. Take Mike Prusi, for example, the minority leader in the state senate. He lives 410 miles from the state capitol, which means he can’t very well drive home at night. While the legislature is in session, he needs a second place to live. We already have a problem with certain representatives who miss too many votes because they have other jobs. Some may be irresponsible or greedy.

But in other cases, frankly, you sometimes can’t blame them.

Say you lived in Ishpeming, and got elected when you were in your early 40s. You have two or three kids. You have to live in two places. Does that legislative salary now seem very much?

Of course not. But now, some are clamoring to make it less.

So if we cut their pay ten percent, what does that do? The more you reduce their pay, the more normal, intelligent, educated people with kids won’t think about public service. We will get a legislature full of rich people, of old people, and oddballs, like the guy who had no family, and drove to Lansing with his pink fiberglas pig.

Are those the people you want deciding our state’s future?

By the way, there was something deeply irritating in Governor Jennifer Granholm’s call for a ten percent pay cut for all elected officials. “We must tighten our belts,” she said. Nice words. But they don’t apply to her. The pay cuts wouldn’t take effect till after she leaves office. Not all that much sacrifice involved in cutting some other guy’s pay. But doesn’t the state have a huge budget deficit? Indeed. Cutting the lawmakers pay would net the state just a hair over a million dollars a year, which is less than one one-thousandth of the deficit. And the savings wouldn’t start till 2011.

Maybe the problem is that we aren’t paying our lawmakers enough. If we could replace them with a team of brilliant economists who could save us billions, I’d be in favor of tripling their salaries.

You get what you pay for.

And we need to get so much more.

Comments

[spot on]

Lawmakers are overpaid ....80k/yr is a damn good salary for full time work. They seemed to have the unmitigated gall to vote themselves a raise when the rest of us poor folk have to pay for it. If I really believed they were doing their jobs for the general good of their constituents then you could justify that pay. But, the reality is they are in it for their good. If they are going to ask other state employees/programs to go without then they can go without also even if it is just a token. A lot of the mess we are in is a direct result of the policy makers' decisions. So its pay for performance like the rest of us.

[Anonymous]

First, a Metro Times column in which Jack Lessenberry quite courageously rips the veneer of respectability off of an utterly dsyfunctional Detroit City council, followed by an equally courageous and unvarnished look at the real meaning of legislative pay cuts.

Jack Lessenberry, making perfect sense, without partisanship and without platitudes.

Well, it does happen, and this isn't the first time nor will it be the last. Whatever Jack's been drinking lately (and it most assuredly is not Republican KoolAid), I'd like to have one of the same.

[Communications guru]

You again, hit the nail on the head. I don’t want a Legislature filled with retires and rich people. We have a Legislature now that includes a miner, an auto worker, two medical doctors, a steel company executive, teachers, lawyers, business people and just about every occupation under the sun. Back in 2000 when the hue and cry arose over the 38 percent pay increase they received, everyone ignore the fact that it had been years since they had received a raise, and it averaged out to about 1 percent a year. Now a 10 percent cut? Wrong.

I want the best and the brightest, and you have to pay them to get them.