Maine Legislators Get A Payraise

The Bangor Daily News noted today that legislators in Maine are set to receive a cost of living pay increase this year, raising their annual salary to a whopping $13,526. This is an automatic increase due to a law mandating that salaries will be adjusted every year in December according to increases in the Consumer Price Index.

The idea of lawmakers getting a payraise while simultaneously trying to close large budget holes has caused more than just a few people to raise an eyebrow – something the legislature hoped to silence by agreeing to forfeit one and a half million dollars of other expenditures.

Any outrage may be slightly misplaced, however, when one takes a survey of what state lawmakers get paid annually. The National Conference of State Legislatures publishes an annual salary survey, which details what each legislature pays its members, and Maine is one of the states which pays its members the least.

Just for a perspective, some of the states that rank higher than Maine on the legislator payscale include (in order): California, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Maryland, Delaware, Washington, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Florida, Missouri, Minnesota, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Alaska, Arizona, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Idaho, Arkansas, West Virginia, and North Carolina. And that doesn’t even count the states that pay their legislators by the day or by the week (Kentucky, for example, pays their legislature $184.88 per day, which will of course likely come out to be more than the new $13,526 rate for Maine.

The point is, if Maine has any problems in its budget, legislator salary is hardly one of them.

Still, the symbolic gesture of raising ones pay – even automatically – during an economic crisis, with massive budget holes occurring in the state is not particularly good PR. House and Senate leaders have both openly said that cost of living increases will be scrutinized heavily when a new state budget is adopted for fiscal 2010-11, which begins July 1.

For perspective’s sake, however, the savings of forgoing the pay hike would be roughly $40,000 – which will not exactly put a dent in Maine’s budget woes. It seems more likely the legislature will ignore this issue, and focus on other savings – if they give up the COLAs, it will be little more than a move to appease public sentiment that lawmakers are “tightening their belts”.