Connecticut lawmakers approve pay raises for themselves
HARTFORD — After a quick 20-minute debate, state House lawmakers on Tuesday approved the first pay raise for themselves in more than 20 years. By late-afternoon, the Senate quickly concurred.
And with Gov. Ned Lamont saying this week he would sign the bill if a bipartisan deal reached his desk, the House, Senate and top-of-the-ticket statewide officers will get long-delayed salary hikes next year.
Eleven House Democrats voted against the salary hike and 11 Republicans approved the bill, providing some political symmetry to the 95-53 vote. In the Senate, after a three-minute discussion, one Republican voted for the raise and one Democrat opposed it and the bill passed 23-13.
“We all know the struggle to balance obligations enabling us to be up here doing the work that we love on behalf of the people of the state of Connecticut,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, the only lawmakers to speak about the issue after it was introduced by Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, DNorwalk.
“We all know many talented legislators who had to leave after two or three terms because they just could not sustain it in terms of providing for their families and left just as they were becoming their most productive,” Looney said. “We want to attract able people who will come, make a contribution and not be driven, regretfully before they otherwise would because of financial considerations.
The raises would be effective when the next General Assembly convenes in January 2023.
The current $28,000 salary for rank-and-file lawmakers would rise to $40,000, with future raises linked to the cost of living during every two-year legislative cycle. Compensation for top leaders — the speaker of the house and the Senate president pro tempore — would increase from $38,689 to $50,000.
The governor’s $150,000 salary, which Gov. Ned Lamont has declined taking, would rise to about $216,000 equal to the chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. The lieutenant governor, secretary of the state, comptroller, state treasurer and attorney general would each be paid $180,460, equal to Superior Court judges, up from the current $110,000.
State Rep. Bob Godfrey,
D-Danbury, who was first elected in 1988, said for the last half dozen years or so he has introduced legislation to raise the pay.
“It’s time,” Godfrey said, reminding the chamber that an inflation chart indicates that $28,000 in 2001 would be worth $45,000 today.
“You can talk about parttime legislators until the cows come home, or not,” Godfrey said. “Everyone of us works every day, every year, weekends, holidays. It is a full-time job and the low amount of compensation makes it very difficult to recruit candidates. When you go through and have a discussion with them about what it takes, what the time is, they are with you until they say how much do you get paid? And we tell them and they kind of laugh and say ‘yeah, some other time.”
He recalled that in 1989, there was a more diverse group of House members, including a plumber, an assembly line worker and a utility meter reader.
“We’ve lost that because people in those income levels, working, middleclass, just can’t afford to take the time off in order to the do the full-time job up here,” Godfrey said. “Sadly, it means that too many of us, we don’t look like the state of Connecticut economically. We skew a little up the income levels, we skew a little toward the rich and I think you can probably make an argument that that skews some of the consideration of some of the legislation.”
He called it “strange” that the state’s public financing program for House seats gives participants $33,000 to run for jobs that pay $28,000. “Twenty one years is just too long and it’s just time to do this,” Godfrey said.
“I feel this is a long overdue conversation,” said Rep. David Wilson, R-Litchfield, who was first elected in 2016 and earlier this session, announced that he would not seek reelection because of the low pay. He interviewed a half-dozen potential Republican successors with a variety of skills.
“It became abundantly clear very soon, when you really laid it out, which I think oftentimes doesn’t happen when we are trying to recruit people to run for the people’s House,” Wilson said. “I think it is underplayed to a great degree that this is a part-time position. When I say under-played what I really mean they’re not telling you it’s a fulltime position.”