A new controversy erupted at the state Capitol last week\u2014a controversy over the way the Senate Republicans pay members of their governing coalition.<\/p>\n
All legislators, both in the Senate and Assembly, receive a base pay of $79,500 and that hasn\u2019t been raised in almost 20 years.\u00a0 In addition to their base pay, lawmakers are eligible for additional pay to cover extra legislative work, usually as committee chairs or for serving in leadership positions within their respective conferences.\u00a0 These stipends range from a low of $9,000 to a high of $41,500.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers technically hold part-time positions and are allowed to seek employment outside the Legislature. \u00a0There are no significant limits on that outside income.\u00a0 However, if a legislator leads a conference, or heads up a committee, the stipend is a way to offset any potential loss in outside income for the legislator spending more time doing legislative work, possibly at the expense of outside income.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the theory, whether it makes sense is another matter.\u00a0 There have been far too many instances of lawmakers\u2014including those receiving significant stipend money\u2014getting investigated for corruption as the result of using their public office for private gain.\u00a0 Nevertheless, that\u2019s the way the system works.<\/p>\n
Under the state\u2019s stipend system, the bonuses are written into law and allocated to a specific position.\u00a0 For example, by statute a stipend is issued to the Senator who is the chair of the Senate Health Committee to compensate for the additional work of running that committee.<\/p>\n
Yet last week there were stunning revelations that the Senate Republican majority was gaming that system and instead of issuing stipends to those positions identified in law, they were instead giving them to Senators who did not hold those positions or perform the roles set out in law.<\/p>\n
As reported in The New York Times<\/em>, instead of issuing stipends to the Senate chairs of the Codes, Energy and Health committees, the Senate instead issued them to newly-created positions, called \u201cVice Chairs.\u201d\u00a0 There is no mention of these positions in the law authorizing these payments.\u00a0 It is unclear who made this decision, but it would be shocking if it hadn\u2019t been decided by the Senate Majority Leader himself.\u00a0 After all, the chairs of those committees surely noticed the missing stipends.<\/p>\n Probably not coincidentally, this group of \u201cVice Chairs\u201d are all members of the Independent Democratic Conference, a group of eight Senate Democrats who have aligned with the Senate Republicans to create the majority bloc that runs that house.\u00a0 Senate staffers reportedly sent false information to the state Comptroller\u2019s office to steer the stipends to these \u201cVice Chairs,\u201d inaccurately describing the recipients as committee chairs.<\/p>\n Later in the week, the Times<\/em> reported that four Senate Republicans were also receiving stipends for legislative positions that they did not hold.<\/p>\n The Senate leadership has been reluctant to publicly discuss this arrangement and simply argues that their decisions are legal.\u00a0 A Senate Republican lawyer\u2019s memo provided to the press makes the legal argument that any legislator connected to the committee in some way is entitled to the extra stipend money\u2014regardless of title or whether they did any additional work.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not surprising that the Senate would not be interested in discussing this situation.\u00a0 Earlier in the year when one Senate Democrat moved from the mainline Conference to the Independent Democratic Conference, questions were raised about the possibility that he would receive a stipend.\u00a0 It was reported in Albany\u2019s Times Union<\/em> newspaper that he told a reporter earlier in the year that he could not get the stipend since he was not a committee chair.<\/p>\n But then he did get one.<\/p>\n It\u2019s pretty clear that instead of using these stipends to offset the possibility of outside income loss, these stipends are used to help cement the allegiance of other Senators.\u00a0 These are being used as political levers to maintain legislative power.<\/p>\n Sometimes Albany\u2019s political elite forgets whose money it is that they are spending.\u00a0 Taxpayer dollars should be used fairly and disclosed openly and the letter of the law followed to a tee.\u00a0 Those dollars shouldn\u2019t be used as political favors to reward legislative allies.<\/p>\n In this case, sending stipends to political allies is wrong and a practice that should be ended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new controversy erupted at the state Capitol last week\u2014a controversy over the way the Senate Republicans pay members of their governing coalition. All legislators, both in the Senate and Assembly, receive a base pay of $79,500 and that hasn\u2019t been raised in almost 20 years.\u00a0 In addition to their base pay, lawmakers are eligible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1882,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881\/revisions\/1882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}