Legislative pay raise passes

By Mannix Porterfield
REGISTER-HERALD REPORTER

CHARLESTON February 29, 2008 11:17 pm

— Justifying their decision on the balance of long separations from family and jobs, the state Senate raised lawmakers’ annual pay Friday by $5,000, sending a House-originated bill to Gov. Joe Manchin.
“I’m not going to apologize for anything,” Judiciary Chairman Jeffrey Kessler, D-Marshall, intoned in a lead-off speech that inspired five of his colleagues to voice support for the first salary hike in 14 years.
“We work hard.”
Kessler pointed to 2001, when lawmakers toiled through a regular session and seven special sessions, putting them at their desks 178 days.
A school calendar runs only two days longer, Kessler reminded the Senate, “yet no one calls school personnel greedy” when they come to the Capitol seeking pay raises. That was Kessler’s way of answering some newspaper pundits branding them as avarice-driven in seeking the raise.
When the speeches died, the pay bill survived on a 20-13 vote, with ailing Sen. William Sharpe, D-Lewis, absent.
Manchin says he supports the measure.
Not since 1994 have lawmakers been given a raise, when it was elevated from $6,500 to $15,000.
Included in the package are clauses that triple to $150 the daily payments to the House speaker and Senate president while in session, and double to $50 those for party chieftains of both chambers, and a $16 increase putting the per diem allowance for all members at $131.
Many lame-duck senators with nothing to gain, since checks don’t get any bigger until next January, supported the bill.
Two Republicans on their way out opposed it.
While he agrees the increase is needed, Sen. Jesse Guills, R-Greenbrier, who is seeking a judgeship in his district, said before the floor session he considers it ill-timed, considering such matters as the teachers’ pay raise and retirement system switching are undecided.
“I think this is a poor time to be running a pay raise bill for us when we’re talking about serious problems, trying to resolve the issue on the pension plan for teachers,” he said.
Guills agreed with Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin, D-Logan, that the decision should be removed from the Legislature and turned over to a citizens commission which recommends salary adjustments for lawmakers.
Since he is retiring this year, Sen. Shirley Love, D-Fayette, likewise will never see a penny of the extra money. Love voted for it as a way of helping to attract and retain the “professional expertise” in members such as Kessler and Finance Chairman Walt Helmick, D-Pocahontas.
Helmick helps oversee a state that costs $9 billion to run, Kessler said, then wondered how many CEOs of major firms would do that for $20,000 a year?
“In the past 10 years, I have never taken home a pay day,” Love said, explaining he has been netting a mere $8,600 in his tax bracket while his Public Employees Insurance Agency payments have run about $9,000 annually.
On top of that, Love said he often has been called to visit constituents in far reaches of his 11th District at personal expense since lawmakers are reimbursed only when traveling to and from Charleston, or to out-of-town interims.
“For the past seven or eight years, it’s cost me from $1,100 to $1,500 a year just to be a member,” he said.
“I’m not complaining. I knew what I was going to get paid when I got here.”
On the floor, he recalled often abusive phone calls from constituents, prompting wife Audrey to once remark, “If I weren’t a Christian lady, I know what I would say to them.”
In one decade, Kessler said, he has put in more than 1,000 days at the Capitol, missing time when his son was in the formative years. The child grew so distraught when Kessler once left for the Capitol that he followed his car down a highway, pleading, “Daddy, don’t leave.”
“It’s not that I want sympathy or anything else, but I want to point out to the people of this state the real and genuine sacrifices every single person in this body makes in order to serve the people of this state,” he said.
In recent years, he pointed out, the governor’s pay has risen from $90,000 to $117,000, while all the Board of Public Works and the judicial branch likewise have seen fatter paychecks.
“You name it — from teachers to school service personnel to state troopers to correctional officers — every single state employee over the last decade has received more than one significant raise,” he said.
The only note of discord came from another lame-duck lawmaker, former Minority Leader Vic Spouse, R-Kanawha, who complained that many have made the Legislature lifetime work.
“I don’t think our forefathers, when they set up this citizens legislature, ever dreamed that people would be here 20, 30 years,” he said.
Besides, he added, “There are many people who don’t get paid $20,000 a year.”
Sen. Ed Bowman, D-Hancock, told his colleagues his cell phone is his “office” on the road since he often has to stop and deal with important Senate business, even taking calls when he is on a fishing trip.
“I work at my Senate job seven days a week,” he added.