A long-overdue pay raise for legislators

The salary to be governor of Connecticut will rise from $150,000 to $226,711 in the new year. It will still be $0 as far as taxpayers are concerned, as Gov. Ned Lamont, who is independently wealthy, defers the paycheck. Imagine if someone proposed Connecticut follow that example by insisting all future gubernatorial candidates be able to afford forsaking a salary. That would be a step in the wrong direction of representation, right?

Yet Connecticut has a version of that issue in the General Assembly. Since the start of this millennium, the salary of the rank-and-file lawmaker has remained frozen at $28,000 a year. Yes, on paper it is a part-time job. Next time you see your state senator or representative, ask them about the hours they put in. Late nights crafting or debating bills in Hartford, or the hundreds of hours no one notices when they are doing constituency work.

That may not amount to a full-time job for all of them, but it is hardly a side hustle. Then there are the hours most of them put in commuting to Hartford.

The result is that most of the 187 legislators run their own businesses, are wealthy or retired. As the rest of America is still struggling to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion, the people making the decisions in Hartford became even more monolithic.

It’s in this context that these lawmakers were able to give themselves 43 percent raises on the penultimate day of the spring session without any real opposition. A base pay of $40,000 is still not going to inspire anyone to quit their day job, but it will hopefully inspire more people to consider entering public service.

There’s an argument to be made that these should be fulltime positions with salaries to match. Such a transformative pivot would surely create a different challenge, with lawyers and the like opting not to run for office.

This reckoning was a long time coming. When the current increase was discussed in the spring, state Rep. David Wilson, a Republican from Litchfield, said from the House floor that “we are underpaid for the work that we do.”

“How do you find qualified people — many, many who work for employers who are not willing to give them time off ?” said Wilson, who announced on the opening day of that session that he could not afford to seek a third two-year term in the last election cycle.

The new top pay in the General Assembly will be $52,000 for the president pro tem of the Senate and the speaker of the House.

There will not be another 23year gap before the next round of raises, which are to be adjusted every two years to mirror the labor inflation index. Most people can’t rely on raises that way, but then, most people don’t wait more than two decades between pay increases.

The issue lingered for this long because there is no political capital in asking for a raise. The old salaries gradually became punch lines for lawmakers who are (we’ll be the first to fess up to it) underappreciated.

And those lawmakers who want another raise in a few years can always run for governor.

The result is that most of the 187 legislators run their own businesses, are wealthy or retired. As the rest of America is still struggling to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion, the people making the decisions in Hartford became even more monolithic.