Last week, a panel charged with making decisions on the compensation levels for state legislators and top agency officials held two public hearings.\u00a0 The idea of jacking up public officials\u2019 salaries is as popular as a skunk at an outdoor party.<\/p>\n
What makes the conversation worse, however, is the staggering number of controversies and scandals that have plagued the Capitol in recent years and the refusal by the state\u2019s political leadership to address it.<\/p>\n
Currently, New York pays its state elected officials well in comparison to other states:\u00a0 New York\u2019s governor is the third highest paid state executive and lawmakers get the third highest base salary of any legislature.\u00a0 In addition, the vast majority of lawmakers are allowed to receive stipends on top of their base pay.\u00a0 Thus, the \u201csalary\u201d of most lawmakers is considerably higher<\/em> than the base salary of $79,500.<\/p>\n A simple Consumer Price Index (CPI) adjustment going back to the 1999 pay raise would boost legislative salaries to over $122,364.\u00a0 However, CPI alone does not adequately capture how well the average New Yorker has fared.<\/p>\n An earlier pay raise panel in New York City noted that a \u201cdeeper analysis uncovered that New Yorkers\u2019 median household income in the same time period rose only 14.02 percent,\u201d less than the amount it would have increased if it kept up with the consumer index.<\/p>\n In addition to most current legislators being paid far more than the base salary, elected officials can accept outside income.\u00a0 The scandals that toppled the previous legislative leaders have highlighted the problems with allowing lawmakers to serve two masters.<\/p>\n Over the past eighteen years, over 30 New York State elected officials have been sanctioned for some misconduct.<\/p>\n So, what\u2019s the argument for an increase in compensation?<\/p>\n The argument stems from the fact that state elected officials haven\u2019t had a pay increase in nearly 20 years.\u00a0 And when that decision was made, then-Governor Pataki linked his approval of pay increases to non-related policy changes\u2014that is, horse trading in exchange for lawmakers\u2019 pay.<\/p>\n This time around, the governor and the legislature agreed to create a compensation panel to independently review compensation levels.\u00a0 The panel has the power to set appropriate compensation rates without additional legislative approval.<\/p>\n The panel idea makes sense \u2013 lawmakers shouldn\u2019t have to face linkages between appropriate pay and policies advanced by the governor and vice versa.\u00a0 But given Albany\u2019s unending series of political scandals, how will a pay raise sit with the public who must pay for it?\u00a0 How will the public feel about a pay raise for Albany when the governor and the legislature are not tackling the biggest scandals in New York\u2019s modern political history?\u00a0 New Yorkers will not be happy.<\/p>\n Of course, that does not argue that public officials don\u2019t deserve a pay raise; that\u2019s up to the panel to independently and publicly discuss.\u00a0 However, if the governor and the legislature can\u2019t agree on cleaning out Albany\u2019s political stables, then the public has every right to be angry.<\/p>\n Recognizing this, the enacting legislation connects any phased-in increase in compensation to approval of a \u201ctimely\u201d legislative budget and \u201cperformance.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cTimely\u201d is not defined but understood to be tied to the state\u2019s fiscal year, which starts April 1st<\/sup>; \u201cperformance\u201d on the other hand is not defined and is subject to interpretation.<\/p>\n Thus, if there are any increases in compensation, it must be linked to improvements in the \u201cperformance of the executive and legislature\u201d by tying any such changes to measures to reduce the risk of corruption in state government.<\/p>\n Real corruption-busting measures should include: (1) independent oversight of agency contracting and better disclosures, (2) independent oversight of ethics administration and enforcement, (3) restricting outside income for lawmakers and members of the executive branch, (4) restricting campaign contributions from those seeking or receiving contracts, (5) more disclosures for those who \u201cbundle\u201d campaign contributions, as well as (6) new changes to the state\u2019s campaign financing system \u2013 such as limits on LLCs and a voluntary system of public financing.<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Fixing what ails Albany \u2013 namely appropriate responses to the incredible number of controversies, scandals, and convictions \u2013 is an important goal, the type of \u201cperformance\u201d that New Yorkers deserve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, a panel charged with making decisions on the compensation levels for state legislators and top agency officials held two public hearings.\u00a0 The idea of jacking up public officials\u2019 salaries is as popular as a skunk at an outdoor party. What makes the conversation worse, however, is the staggering number of controversies and scandals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2157,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions\/2157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}