An objection raised

These massive pay increases recommended for Arkansas politicians during a recovering and chronically poor state economy almost seem to beg for too-easy demagogic assault.

I would never want to be guilty of that. I wish only to state my reasoned opposition.

Too much too soon in some cases, never in others—that’s the long and short of it.

The Arkansas economy won’t become national-caliber overnight. Nor should our politicians’ salaries. We should avail ourselves of the cushioning process known as phasing in.

One element of reasoned opposition is the acceptance that these are political positions subject to the political perceptions of the taxpayers. And that perception—fully fair—is, and will be, that nobody else around here is getting any 150 percent raise for part-time duties identical to last year’s.

Here’s another political perception, conceivably more mine than generally held: These pay increases have been recommended, and will be unilaterally set, by an independent pay commission established by a provision of the constitutional amendment passed last year doing away with lobbyists’ gifts to legislators. The appearance might be that legislators will agree to behave ethically but that we’ll have to pay them a lot more in exchange.

Let’s start with the proposal for state legislators. Now they get paid $15,869 for their part-time citizens’ service, along with per diem and mileage reimbursements for actual expenses. And they may tap one other source of funds: up to $14,400 a year for “home office expense.”

The proposal is to raise their pay to $39,400, an increase of nearly 150 percent. In exchange, the proposal, while continuing per diem and mileage reimbursements, would do away with the reimbursement for a home office.

Historically that home office expense has been abused outrageously, though less so in recent years after exposure by the Blue Hog Report blog and a lawsuit. Still, there are filings indicating that some legislators use the money either to pay family members or to pay rental for office space to their own LLCs, documented only by an invoice sent from one’s right-side pocket to one’s left-side pocket.

My position is that we get plenty of people running for the legislature already. My further position is that legislators get access to state health insurance and accelerated credits for state retirement pay. My further position, based on decades of familiarity with legislators, is that the state always seems to be blessed with a few good and hardworking legislators and burdened with a high yahoo quotient. I don’t expect that to change much at $39,400, especially minus $14,400.

My further position is that the home office allowance is an outrage, mainly a salary supplement fraudulently wrapped in a supposed expense.

But I also accept that the time demands of a learning curve have increased on legislators because of term limits.

So I see every justification for doing away with the $14,400 salary supplement and adding that amount to straight legislative salary. That would amount to a reallocation and reform of existing remuneration.

That way, any actual nonreimbursed legislative expenses of being a legislator back at home could be documented to the Internal Revenue Service and taken as deductions. That’s how it works for regular people.

So I say we should pay legislators as straight salary the current $15,900, plus the $14,400, for a total of $30,300—not $39,400.

Now let’s take the governor, paid $87,759. The commission proposes to pay $141,000.

That’s probably reasonable in a long-term sense. But an all-of-a-sudden raise of nearly $54,000 a year for an office that gets a house and a State Police driver seems unnecessarily steep and abrupt.

We’ve had no trouble attracting quality applicants for governor. Asa Hutchinson is a former federal Cabinet-level officer. Mike Beebe was a rich lawyer. Mike Huckabee is the current evangelical pope of America. Bill Clinton is a world leader.

The same abrupt steepness applies to attorney general, which the commission would pay $130,000, up from $73,132.

I will admit to having been wrong in years past when writing that the attorney general was an insignificant position, a figurehead in an office of working professional attorneys whose permanent roles were more important than the actual elected position. I have now been sensitized to the importance of the office-holder by the clear and present dangers of Leslie Rutledge’s distressing occupancy.

As for the offices of secretary of state, treasurer, auditor and land commissioner, I see no reason to raise those salaries at all, much less by $30,000 or so.

We don’t need those elected constitutional offices. We need the employees in those offices, or most of them. But we could consolidate those services under existing executive department agencies.

Electing Martha Shoffner and Dennis Milligan to state treasurer amounts to Exhibit A and Exhibit B in my argument not to elect the state treasurer.

As for lieutenant governor, the commission insults the office by proposing no raise for it. But it doesn’t insult the office enough.

That office—more a closet than an office—should be abolished, and, until abolished, remunerated at the still-excessive rate of a dollar per year.