The Underground Conservative

Don’t blame the members of the Wisconsin state Legislature. They’re just poor victims of an oppressive bureaucracy which is forcing them to accept a $2,500 a year pay raise at a time when the the state budget is staring down a $5.4 billion deficit within the next two years and at a time when many taxpayers have been forced to take real pay cuts — that is, if they still have a job at all.

MADISON — With the state facing a $5.4 billion budget shortfall, state legislators say they have no control over the $2,500 pay raises they’re scheduled to receive next year.

Lawmakers’ annual salaries will rise $2,530, or 5.3 percent, to $49,943, according to the state Department of Administration.

The raises were approved when the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Employment Relations voted to accept the salaries recommended by the Office of State Employment Relations.

Lawmakers can’t write a law next year undoing the raises because the state Constitution bars changing the pay of elected officials during their terms, said Carrie Lynch, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston.

Critics acknowledge the $334,000 wouldn’t do much to address the budget shortfall, but they say the raises send the wrong message when so many others are having trouble making ends meet.

“It’s much more symbolic right now for them to give themselves a 5.3 percent pay raise at a time when people are struggling to keep their jobs or are getting laid off all over Wisconsin,” said Jay Heck, director of Common Cause in Wisconsin.

He also criticized the fact that raises are approved only by the eight members of the Joint Committee on Employment Relations, and not by every lawmaker who benefits.

“If you want a pay raise you should have the guts to vote for one,” Heck said.

Heck is correct. It is like the automatic increase in the state gasoline tax that the cowardly legislators didn’t want to go on record but would rather it just happen automatically. Coward. Go on the record and make a decision. It’s like legislators who vote “Present” on controversial issues.

Here’s a thought. If you really don’t want that $2,500, give it to a charity in your district which is trying to help the very people your policies are hurting.