The day’s most meaningfully sequential #sdleg Tweets from reporter Dana Ferguson:
House Joint Resolution 1001, calling for a special early public vote on raising legislator pay, awaits placement on House State Affairs’ agenda.
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VNOE
Mr. C makes a great point. I need to see if I have another #VNOE hat I can have dropped off for him.
Skol Vikings. Parkston, South Dakota native and former iowa Hawkeye standout Riley Reiff is the Vikings starting left tackle. Be nice to see a local multi-millionaire small town South Dakotan in the Super Bowl, wouldn’t it?
The Legislature has very little impact on median household income. Therefore, median income is not a good indicator of the job worth of your Legislature.
Legislators do have considerable impact, however, on teacher pay and education is, after all, a major part of their constitutional duties and a big part of their budget. Therefore, a more accurate indicator of Legislative worth, and therefore their pay, would be to track teacher pay.
Legislator salary should be tied to the ranking of teacher pay. South Dakota teachers rank 50th in pay. Therefore, legislative pay should be ranked at 50th, as well. That would mean South Dakota legislators should be paid at the New Mexico rate, which is exactly $0.00.
The legislatures have considerable impact on state government salaries, too. Or any of the other special interest crybaby groups. I say their pay should just be slapped to a flat $10,000 and left alone again for another 20 years. They shouldn’t be tied to anything, unless it’s inversely proportional to the number of law bills passed.
I’ve proposed that it be raised immediately to make up for nearly 20 years of inflation, then tie it to economic performance. I think it should match the changes in GDP per capita, yearly, which means they’d have gotten a slight pay cut for nearl every year that Daugaard has been in office. I want to see these officials spend more time and focus on growing our economy
I think yesterday’s shenanigans demonstrate that the current crop of legislators are hardly earning the pay they get, let alone doing work that deserves more pay.
But remember, as we learned with teacher pay, merit pay doesn’t work. Forget performance measures: is there an argument that we simply need to raise legislator pay to some competitive market wage to justify the sacrifice of regular work time?
Considering that median household income is the standard that seems to be the most frequently cited, “merit pay” is already built into the discussion as real household income is a fluctuating statistic when measured in constant dollars. On that scale, real household income in SD declined by 3% from ’08 to ’15 (https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2016/10/14/median-household-income-by-state-a-new-look-at-the-data). Household income isn’t my standard of choice, mainly because I prefer the most objective measure of economic growth, GDP per capita, which is individual-, not household-, based.
I can’t help pointing out that a legislative responsibility is to set the amounts of the monthly payments for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. Last session some of us pointed out the need for cost-of-living adjustments. But, sorry to say, a proposal on this never saw action in Appropriations Committee. The average is $451/mo [Nov.’17], so approving a COLA this year could add $5/mo per family – close to nothing for most of us, but important when you are that poor! Can we remember this when we think about raising legislator pay?
I like Tsitrian’s proposal. The legislature could have grown the SD economy by expanding medicaid, but they chose to send the medicaid money to other states instead of SD. If they tie legislative pay to state employee raises I’m ok with that too.
I also believe that legislators should be part of the South Dakota Retirement system with legislative years of service counted.
As I think about it, legislators already get merit pay. If a majority of voters think they are doing a good job, they get another two years of pay.
Until the legislature makes the case that they have improved the economy, they should pay us for their presence in Pierre. They are already getting love from the lobbyists, so that should be that. When they expand Medicaid, a raise. When they expand renewable energy, a raise. etc. Each time they listen to Jackley and his goofy lawsuits, a demotion of pay. See that is how merit pay should work for this bunch of knuckleheads.
NO PIFL. Figure that out, Grudz. We’ll pronounce it as “no piffle,” which is what citizen response to legislators giving themselves a pay increase should be. Legislators are trying to be Oprah to themselves, while making other people starve. They get a NEW CAR, while poor families starve with no cost of living increase. Sorry, NOPIFL.
How in good conscience can any legislator accept a pay raise when, if they follow what the governor wants, which they probably will, this will be the second year of pay freezes for all other state employees?
Well, remember, Dave, they’ll give themselves the cover of having us vote for it in the form of a special ballot measure at primary time, so they don’t have us debating it while they are facing their main opponents in November, because they are all too chicken to be up front in a discussion of the measure.
Setting their distasteful tomfoolery on the floor and the culture-war distractions of Tapio, Clark, DiSanto et al. aside, I can argue that we could justify raising legislator pay, even if other state employees get zero two years in a row, because legislators haven’t gotten a raise since 1998. Note that I’m not arguing for state employees to got for a second straight year with no raise.
But maybe someone should amend Mickelson’s HJR 1001 to raise the base pay of legislators to reflect that 20-year plateau, then establish a yearly percentage increase for legislators equal to the median percentage increase given to all state employees earning less than the median average per capita income.
If the people vote the special ballot measure down, what’s to stop wingnuts from over riding that vote by claiming the people didn’t know what they voted for or against?
You’ve like been there and done that.
Better yet, let the koch bros pay their salaries. That is who they represent.
I share your frustration, but HJR 1001 would be a constitutional amendment. Legislators can’t pass that by themselves or repeal any constitutional amendments that we do approve. They’d have to come back and pass their own pay raise through statute.