The gift that keeps on giving ...Yes, it's that time of year. The Pennsylvania Legislature is on its 12-day Thanksgiving holiday. (I don't know about you, but I was lucky to get Thanksgiving Day off this year.) The latest break comes after a two-week recess around the Nov. 6 election, so the Legislature has been in session for about 45 minutes so far in November.
What has the most expensive state legislature in the country ($320 million annual operating costs) accomplished so far in 2007? Let's review. Property taxes? Nothing. Health care reform? Nothing. Open records reform? Nothing. Energy independence? Nothing. Transportation. Other than agreeing to toll Interstate 80, nothing to solve the long-term problems of the state's crumbling infrastructure and its bloated, inefficient mass transit systems. School funding reform? Nothing.
That means the 253 members of the largest and most expensive state legislature in the country will have to work extra hard in December before taking a one-month holiday recess.
This is on top of the two months the Legislature took off for the summer. It would have been longer, but their summer vacation was cut short by 16 days because the Legislature and Gov. Ed Rendell couldn't agree on a state budget until 16 days into the new fiscal year.
For all the hard work this Legislature does, the members will be rewarding themselves on Dec. 1 with another pay raise.
According to Jan Murphy of The Harrisburg Patriot-News, the automatic cost-of-living-adjustment enacted by the Legislature in 1995 will kick in Dec. 1 when the base salary of a Pennsylvania lawmaker will jump to $76,163, up $2,549 from last year. This does not include the $152 a day "per diem" lawmakers collect for just showing up for work in Harrisburg.
The increase is based on the cost-of-living index in Philadelphia, which is much higher than the rest of the state. Nothing but best for our Pennsylvania lawmakers.
The 3.5 percent pay raise the Harrisburg Hogs are giving themselves is much higher than the 2.3 percent COLA adjustment Social Security recipients will receive in their monthly checks next year.
The same 1995 law provides automatic pay raises for members of the executive and judicial branches of Pennsylvania government. Those raises begin Jan. 1.
At the high end, Gov. Ed Rendell will earn $170,150 in 2008, or an increase of $5,754. Speaker of the House Dennis O'Brien and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati will collect $3,980 next year, bringing their salaries to $118,896.
Ron Castille, the next chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, will earn $186,582 in 2008. Murphy notes that Castille's salary will be $6,246 higher than outgoing Chief Justice Ralph Cappy, who set the whole 2005 pay raise debacle in motion by complaining that judges weren't paid enough.
That led to a deal between Gov. Ed Rendell, then-Speaker John Perzel and GOP leaders in the Senate to enact the middle-of-the-night pay raise on July 7, 2005.
We all know how well that deal went over. See Russ Diamond's new book "Tip of the Spear" for a blow-by-blow account of the pay raise and the aftermath. There are 55 new Legislators thanks to the pay raise vote and four of the seven seats on the state Supreme Court have turned over since the pay raise vote.
And let's not forget that all 203 members of the state House and 25 members of the state Senate will face re-election next year. The pay raise. The bonus scandal. The PHEAA mess. Ghost workers collecting taxpayer-paid salaries. Secret leadership accounts. It just goes on and on.
Other than giving its members annual pay raises and the best perks and benefits other people's money money can buy, the Political Class has done nothing to benefit Pennsylvania taxpayers.
Read the rest of Murphy's story, including some excellent comments from citizen activists about politicians' pay, at www.pennlive.com
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