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Are the PA Legislative Pay Raises Worth It?
Posted 9-20-2005
Pay raises are always a
touchy issue, especially when it comes to public officials. The recent
furor over the pay raises voted for by the Pennsylvania legislature has
brought to light the difficulty in accurately fixing a salary to the
positions of elected officials. What is a fair amount of compensation
for jobs that do not really have a corresponding position in the private
sector? Every citizen in Pennsylvania has an opinion, and frankly it is
a subjective process to evaluate legislators' performance.
Clearly, how the recent
pay raise was handled was a classic example of overreach by the
legislators who voted to approve the raise. If the raise had been
enacted and made applicable at the beginning of 2007 when a new
legislature is seated, I suspect the public uproar would not be as
rampant or passionate. Every incumbent and challenger would have been
running for a position that would pay a certain salary in 2007. The
action to make the raises immediate has caused a firestorm of negative
publicity. The other underlying issue that has not sat well with many
people is that the legislature has been getting cost-of-living increases
every year for the last decade.
The cost-of-living
increase is a fair method of increasing the salaries of elected
officials over time, and that is exactly how we address the issue in
Westmoreland County. The recent history of our compensation for public
officials goes like this: Less than three months into my first term, in
March 1996, my colleagues at the time, Terry Marolt and Dick Vidmer,
decided to raise the salaries of the commissioners and the elected row
officers by 15 percent (excluding the district attorney, who by statute
makes $1,000 less than county judges). The salaries of elected officials
had not been increased for nearly a decade, but I was only in office a
few months and could not justify a vote to raise my own salary, so I
voted no. The wise part of the ordinance was enacting a cost-of-living
increase tied to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The process allows
future boards of commissioners to not have to face this issue and
salaries will continue to keep pace with inflation.
Since that time, the
salaries of county elected officials have only gone up at the rate of
inflation, and I have donated that original 15 percent raise to charity
every year. In 2004 when we froze management salaries, I returned that
annual cost-of-living increase to the county treasury.
Some readers may feel
that none of the commissioners deserve any pay increases, but I can
assure you that we are far from being the highest-paid county employees
(I am number 45 on the payroll). Ultimately, the buck stops with the
three commissioners. Our jobs are significantly different than the
legislative branch because we set policy, establish the county's
spending priorities, hire and fire employees, and negotiate contracts.
With a three-person board there is nowhere to hide. We are essentially a
three-headed CEO of a $300 million non-profit organization.
To give you a comparison
of the difference in volatility between a board of county commissioners
and the legislative branch of Pennsylvania government, historically
every four years there has been a turnover of about 40 percent of county
commissioners throughout the state; the legislature is re-elected at
about a 98 percent rate. I am in no way complaining about my
compensation, but want to show there is a difference in our jobs and how
we deal with the issue.
In the larger picture of
the state budget, the pay raise is relatively minor. It totals about $16
million of a $24 billion budget. So, it is less than one-tenth of one
percent. The real frustration with the legislature should be with its
lack of tackling the tough issues. School funding and property tax
reform has been on the table for more than 15 years. Attempts at tax
reform, like Act 50 (the Homestead Exemption) have been a joke and Act
72 (tying gambling revenue to school funding) is bad legislation. The
bottom line is that we have an uneven and unfair method of funding
education, and the local share has had to rise because the state's
proportion has declined. We should have had gambling in the Commonwealth
years ago when our neighboring states made it legal. Since then, we have
seen billions of dollars of Pennsylvanians' money go out of our state.
As a county commissioner,
I have a laundry list of issues that the legislature has forced us to
deal with because it is easier to pass things on to another level of
government rather than assume responsibility. First and foremost is
funding for the supposedly unified judiciary of the Commonwealth. Years
ago, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled the Commonwealth should fund
the courts, so that citizens received the same level of justice in every
county. The way it is now, with primary funding for the courts at the
county level, things vary from county to county. We could easily lower
your county taxes if the Commonwealth assumed, as it should,
responsibility for what is the fastest growing expense in our county
budget.
The ultimate question
each citizen should ask about their state representative and state
senator is, are they willing to take on the tough issues? In all the
mail you get from them (that you are paying for with your tax dollars),
are they addressing the issues that make life better for ordinary
Pennsylvanians? Are rank-and-file members of both parties ready to push
their leadership into solving challenges, or are they willing to
continue to dance around the important, yet difficult, issues? To me, if
they really worked to make Pennsylvania be all it can be, so that our
children can stay and raise their families here, they would be worth
every penny they are paid.
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