State legislative pay raise furor not dying away

Sunday, August 14, 2005

HARRISBURG -- Once, when state legislators boosted their salaries, Pennsylvanians would scream for a few days and then go on with their lives.

But this time, more than a month after legislators voted themselves raises ranging from 16 percent to 34 percent, many people across the state are still incensed.

"Everywhere I go, people want to talk about the pay raise," Temple University political science professor Marc Stier said. "I don't think this is going away."

State Sen. Patricia Vance, R-Cumberland, said she'd "never seen this kind of anger" in her 15 years at the Capitol.

KDKA radio host Mike Pintek said he thought the furor would go away a few days after the pay-raise vote July 7, but it hasn't.

"What's it been, five weeks? There have been days in the past couple weeks when we've talked about nothing else. I try to change the subject, but listeners won't let me."

Gov. Ed Rendell blamed the media last week for "inspiring" some of the fallout, and to be sure, the pay raise has been fodder for radio talk shows, newspaper editorials and columns, e-mail and Web sites, but it seems clear that the anger is primarily generated by the public, not the media.

"I was incensed by the pay raise," said Tom Cagle, of Meadville, Crawford County, who wrote an opinion piece for his local newspaper, the Meadville Tribune, and was deluged with calls "from people I didn't even know, asking what they could do."

Cagle and others have collected 3,500 petition signatures from people in Crawford County, demanding that legislators repeal the raise when they return to the Capitol in late September.

"It's been over a month now, and the voter outrage is still going strong," said Lebanon County businessman Russ Diamond, who's gotten 29,000 hits in three weeks since he started a Web site aimed at ousting all incumbents, http://www.pacleansweep.com/.

Last week, Temple's Stier and another pay-raise foe drove from Philadelphia to Blair County, home of Senate leader Robert Jubelirer, R-Altoona, whose salary shot up 34 percent to $145,000 a year. Stier sat outside the county courthouse, collecting signatures on petitions aimed at rescinding the raise.

"Everyone signed the petitions and said thanks for coming here," said Stier, who acknowledged he wasn't sure what kind of reception a Philadelphian would get in Blair County.

Altoona radio talk show host Dave Barger confirmed the public's anger in his area "is not subsiding. People continue to be upset about it."

"Public disgust, rather than evaporating in the heat of summer, might just be starting to gel," Philadelphia Daily News columnist John Baer, who's covered Harrisburg for 18 years, wrote last week.

But will the anger translate into retribution from voters? Do incumbents who voted for the raise face danger?

Lebanon activist Diamond is urging people to vote against all the current legislators next year, whether they voted yes or no on the pay raise. He said legislators who voted no are just as guilty for not standing up to those who were pushing the raise.

But some observers doubt it's possible for voters to stay angry until the May primary or the November 2006 general election

Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia political consultant who grew up in Washington County, doesn't think the throw-the-rascals-out approach will work. He said he'd seen voter anger rise and fall after other pay raises and the rate of incumbent re-election remain at almost 100 percent.

Christopher Borick, a political science professor and pollster from Muhlenberg College, agreed.

"I am impressed with the current level of public anger, but will it turn into a mass turnover on Election Day? I am skeptical," he said. While it's easy to condemn the General Assembly as a whole, "We vote on a district-by-district basis," he said, and many voters like their own legislators.

Ceisler said the base raise of 16 percent for rank-and-file legislators is lower, by percentage, than previous raises.

Not counting bonuses for leadership jobs, base salaries rose 18.7 percent in 1996, from $47,000 to $55,800; 34 percent in 1987, from $35,000 to $47,000; 40 percent in 1983, from $25,000 to $35,000; and 33 percent in 1979, from $18,720 to $25,000.

Barger's Altoona station, WRTA, has sold several hundred "political porker" T-shirts for $10 each, with a drawing of a pig and the words "Make Them Squeal on Election Day -- Vote Them Out."

The cover of the Philadelphia Daily News showed a photo last week of a hog with a big headline, "The Harrisburg Hogs -- The Outrage Grows."

Bob Durgin, of WHP radio in Harrisburg, has collected 21,000 signatures condemning the raise. He's organizing a protest on the Capitol steps for Sept. 26, the day legislators come back from their summer vacation.

"People are just enraged about the raise," he said. "Most legislators have never faced this level of anger."

Harrisburg Patriot-News columnist Pat Carroll urged people to show up to protest, saying, "Let's rock the Capitol. Don't let these guys sneak back into town."

Bethel Park native Timothy Potts is a co-founder of a new group called Democracy Rising PA, which includes Common Cause/Pennsylvania, the League of Women Voters and the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry.

Potts,, now of Carlisle, said voters didn't have to wait until 2006 to vote against incumbents. He urged the ouster of Supreme Court Justices Russell Nigro and Sandra Schultz Newman, who are up for retention in November. State courts are a major part of the problem, he said, because they consistently reject lawsuits that citizens file against the Legislature.

"We get to send a clear message in November that we are not going to put up with this arrogance anymore," Potts said. Besides the 253 legislators, raises were approved for more than 1,000 judges and two dozen members of Rendell's staff.

There have been some signs that voter anger is having an effect. Eight legislators who had planned to take the raise immediately, in the form of unvouchered expenses, have changed their minds. They'll wait to see if they get re-elected in November 2006 to take the raise when it actually goes into effect.

And Friday, the first challenger to an incumbent popped up because of the raise. Retired Beaver County teacher Jay Paisley said he'd run against 20-year incumbent Rep. Mike Veon, D-Beaver Falls, in the May Democratic primary. Veon helped push the pay raise through July 7.

John Troan, of Mt. Lebanon, editor of the former Pittsburgh Press newspaper in 1967-83, recalled last week previous battles over legislative pay raises. In 1976, he branded lawmakers who voted for the raise as "payjackers."

"You know, like a carjacker, but this was a payjacker. They jacked up their own pay," Troan recalled last week. "We raised hell about it."

Why do legislators get away with exorbitant raises? "Because people don't have long memories, and they don't get organized," Troan said.

Political observers see a few possible reasons why the public outrage continues about the July 7 pay raise:

* Although the 16 percent raise for rank-and-file members is the first actual raise since 1996, legislators have been getting cost-of-living increases each year for the past decade. From $55,800 in 1996, the salary rose to $58,341 in 1998, $60,672 in 2000, $69,647 in December 2004 and $81,050 in July.

* Forms of communication, such as e-mail and the Internet, have come to be used much more commonly over the past 10 years and they allow people from different parts of the state, such as Cagle in Meadville and Diamond in Lebanon, to keep in contact.

Former state Rep. John Kennedy, of Cumberland County, said he was amazed at getting 6,000 e-mails in a couple of days after articles about his Web site, http://www.declarationofaction.org/, appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Harrisburg Patriot-News.

* Some critics, such as Philadelphia's Stier and Meadville's Cagle, are angry at the Legislature for failing to raise the $5.15 an hour minimum wage at the same time it increased its own pay by 16 percent. They're both circulating petitions, calling for action on a minimum wage increase as well as a repeal of the raise.

* State spending on Medicaid for low-income people was reduced about $240 million July 1, even as legislators' pay increased.

* Some people are upset over the lack of property tax relief by the Legislature. Slot machines were legalized more than a year ago, but tax relief from slots revenue isn't due before 2007.

Tim Storey, an analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, said he was not aware of any legislative raise being rescinded due to voter anger.

"Legislators know they'll take flak for it, whether it's a raise of 100 percent or 1 percent," he said.

Some states, especially in the West, do offer voters a statewide referendum on issues, a tool Pennsylvania doesn't.

In 1990, California voters approved Proposition 140, which set a limit on the overall amount of compensation a legislator can receive. California still rewards its legislators well. They make $99,000 now, which soon will go to $111,000 a year. They are the only legislators making more than Pennsylvania's.

In Michigan two years ago, the Legislature got a 38 percent raise because one chamber didn't vote to stop it. But a state legislator was able to get a referendum question on the statewide ballot to stop such raises and and it passed easily.

So what might happen next at the Pennsylvania Capitol?

When legislators return in September, Rep. Will Gabig, R-Cumberland, said he'd make a move to prevent the raise from being taken immediately in the form of "unvouchered expenses."

Gabig had voted against the raise July 7, but then decided to take the expense money, but later changed his mind again. Unvouchered expenses is the form legislators are using because the state constitution forbids them from taking an actual raise during their current term.

Many critics view the tactic as a sneaky way to get around the constitution. Gabig has gotten 25 co-signers for his bill, which would prevent the 16 percent raise from being taken until after legislators are re-elected in November 2006.

Rendell said last week he would sign such a bill if the Legislature approved it, but General Assembly leaders are expected to strongly oppose the move.

Another incumbent, Rep. Tom Creighton, R-Lancaster, is thinking about going even further with a bill to repeal the raise and return the base salary to its December 2004 level of $69,647.

Ex-legislator Kennedy would like to go even further than that. He'd like to have a constitutional convention, the first since 1967.

He thinks Pennsylvanians should have the right to vote yes or no on legislative raises in a November statewide referendum, along the lines of the statewide vote on then-Gov. Robert P. Casey's proposed tax measures that was held in 1989.

But the Legislature would have to vote in two consecutive sessions to hold a convention, and giving Pennsylvanians ew veto power over raises is not expected to have much support at the Capitol.