PA's Rich Get Richer.

Top state officials get an automatic 3.5% raise tomorrow.

Each December 1, Pennsylvania’s top officials – the governor, cabinet officers, attorney general, auditor general, treasurer, judges and lawmakers – get an automatic pay raise thanks to a 1995 law. This law now makes Gov. Josh Shapiro the second-highest paid governor in America, ahead of even California’s governor.

This story by Associated Press’s Marc Levy provides details.

A back story.

In 1995, I was working in the House of Representatives when the issue of a pay raise for lawmakers arose. Unlike the infamous pay raise of 2005, this one was discussed publicly before the vote. Taxpayers were unhappy about it, but at least they knew what was happening and could vent to their lawmakers.

Uniquely in our history, the 1995 pay raise included an automatic cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) every year based on the increase in the cost of living in the Philadelphia area. (An automatic pay raise was, and still is, of questionable constitutionality, but since our judges also get automatic raises, that ship has sailed.)

The argument, not without merit, was that legislative pay should be a reasonable amount for lawmakers from Philly as opposed to, say, rural Warren County. That meant both the base pay and the COLA should reflect Philly costs of living. More about this below.

In my role as press secretary for the minority leader, I was in a position to advise House Democrats about how to make this medicine more palatable to their constituents, and I did. Rather than tying future increases to the cost of living in the Philadelphia area, how about tying it to the increase in the average weekly wage of Pennsylvania workers? That way lawmakers could say, truthfully, that they were just getting an increase equal to what PA workers already got.

When the laughter subsided (since that would have meant lower COLAs), my suggestion did not prevail.

After the pay raise passed with its COLA, House Majority Leader John Perzel (R-Phila.) famously said, “We will never have to vote on another pay raise again.” Or something to that effect.

Taxpayers were reminded of that when the pay raise of 2005 happened. But that’s a story for another day.

A rhetorical question:

If the COLA for lawmakers were tied to the earnings of PA workers, would our minimum wage be stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009?

Ready for another laugh?

As the years have rolled by, I have given the question of legislative pay more thought.

Nothing in our Constitution requires that all lawmakers be paid the same amount. Here is Article II, Section 8, which sets forth how lawmakers are to be paid. (A careful reading shows the problem with automatic pay raises, but I digress.)

In fact, a better system would be to tie lawmakers’ pay to a multiple of the earnings of their constituents, say 1.5 times. So, for example, the median household income in rural Warren County in 2022 was $58,000, which, ironically, is just a bit lower than Philly’s $60,000. Meanwhile, the median household income in Montgomery County (a Philly suburb) was $107,000.

Yet as of tomorrow, lawmakers from every county will receive the same $110,000 salary. Setting salaries at 1.5 times the median income of lawmakers’ constituents would set the Warren County lawmaker’s salary at $87,000; the Philly lawmakers’ salaries at $90,000; and Mongomery’s at $160,500.

Another rhetorical question:

If lawmaker’s salaries were tied to the earnings of their constituents, would rural and urban lawmakers do more to stimulate their local economies?

For instance, if our community schools were fully and fairly funded as Commonwealth Court has ruled they should be, it would mean billions more in state funds flowing to rural communities where depressed economies encourage young people to leave because of a lack of opportunity. It would mean billions more flowing into neighborhood schools in the cities, also stimulating their local economies.

While urban lawmakers have been on board with equitable and adequate funding for public schools for a long time, rural lawmakers have opposed it, and still do. This intransigence, which is based in Republicans’ opposition to anything that has the word “public” attached to it (like public schools) comes at the expense of their own communities. Maybe they need a more personal incentive to do right by their kids.

Past and future.

In both cases, 1995 and today’s modest proposal, the key is to make lawmakers more responsive to the economic circumstance of those they represent. Is that such a bad idea?