Albany Legislators Seek Pay Raise

Why would anyone want to increase the pay of the New York State legislators who continue to push the state into red ink? They aren't doing their jobs, and they repeatedly breach their fiduciary responsibilities to taxpayers by proffering new programs that drip in red ink and the state can ill afford still more budget increases.

The latest suggestion to raise legislative pay is to "reward" legislators with $1,000 per week for those members who do not obtain outside pay.

They say the governor, who has expressed reluctance about raising lawmakers' pay at a time when New York's finances are in disarray, would be more amenable if the money were conditioned on an agreement to abandon their private work, which has often been a source of conflict-of-interest concerns.

Under a bill introduced last year by Senator Martin Connor, a former minority leader who represents Brooklyn Heights and Lower Manhattan, and sponsored by 12 of his colleagues, lawmakers would have the option of serving as full-time members and receiving an additional allowance of $52,000 a year above their base salary of $79,500.

In exchange, they would agree to work 1,820 hours a year (or 35 hours a week) and forfeit outside sources of "active" income derived from any employment, professional practice, or consulting work.

There's no way that Shelly Silver would ever go along with this, given his lucrative ties to Weitz and Luxemberg. Given that any deal would have to get his approval, I think this not likely to happen.

However, if it does manage to get approved, what will this mean? Well, there are 150 members in the Assembly, so that's an additional $7.8 million spent annually on pay. The Senate, with its 62 members (1 per county), would cost an additional $3.2 million. That's $11 million and change for these legislators to give up their outside compensation.

It would also mean that the legislators would be in session year round, and that means the likelihood for mischief increases considerably. While it is true that it would lessen the conflict of interests between legislative duties and their outside job obligations, bumping salaries up to $131,500, not counting perks of offices, including monies for committee slots and leadership posts, and travel reimbursements (which can total tens of thousands of dollars per year for travel reimbursements alone) would push legislative compensation ahead of California for the highest in the nation (it's currently third, behind California and Michigan).