Are You Ready for Your Employees to Vote Themselves a Pay Raise? on Smugtown Beacon

By: Terry_Schnurr on 6/30/12
Chris,

It’s pretty easy to make the populist argument that our public officials are paid too much – regardless of how much or how little there paid. That’s because, as much as our Catholic upbringing may make us want to believe otherwise, the Thomistic notion that there is something intrinsic in the nature of a job that determines its just wage just doesn’t hold water. A job is ultimately worth what someone is willing to pay someone to do it.

The added problem with our elected leaders is that they control their own compensation, and that complication is unavoidable. No matter what remedies, mitigations, and distractions self-styled reformers come up with, the nature of government and governmental legitimacy is that this will always be true.

What is a virtuous legislator to do in deciding what her salary ought to be? The only thing she can do is make comparisons. What do the executive branch decision-makers who implement the laws she makes and whose work she oversees get paid? What do judges who interpret the laws she makes get paid? What do people who do comparable work in the private sector (let’s say directors in Fortune 500 corporations) get paid? While I’m agnostic on whether New York legislators should get a pay raise, these questions militate in favor of it.

The danger of paying our legislators too little is that if we make it so running for the legislature is not a financially responsible decision for a broad cross-section of the population with a range of education and life experience we will make the legislature (more than it already is) the exclusive domain of wealthy dilettantes and go-getters looking to pad their resumes for careers in Congress or as lobbyists.

Terry Schnurr
Minneapolis, MN

By: admin on 6/30/12
(from the Co-Owner & Publisher of the Smugtown Beacon, Christopher J. Wilmot)

Dear Mr. Schnurr:

As usual, your points are well reasoned, and made in an articulate fashion, and with respect.

However, it does seem you failed to address one of my most important points. I do not claim that being a state legislator is not an important, vital job. Even for part time work, I think a job where one oversees a budget well in excess of $100 billion a year warrants a salary of at least $50,000 per annum.

But, the current proposition that N.Y. lawmakers would earn more than their counterparts in California--a state with nearly twice the population of the Crumbling Empire State--should give one pause (especially N.Y. State taxpayers).

While it may be true that state legislators in Texas make too little ($28,000 per year), it would seem there is little rational debate that N.Y. State lawmakers are currently underpaid ($79,500), or will be still be underpaid, at over $100,000.

Thank you!

Christopher J. Wilmot
Pittsford, NY