The other pay raise kicks in for Pennsylvania legislators
An early Christmas present for our larcenous legislators?
Christmas comes early — and often — for the members of the Pennsylvania legislature. You didn’t think that an angry mob of voters was going to keep the larcenous legislators from lining their own pockets, did you?
Sure they repealed the July 7 pay raise as the noose tightened around their political necks, but they do not intend to part with the 3.6 percent pay raise they refer to as a cost-of-living increase. And where else but in the Pennsylvania legislature can you be on a two-week Thanksgiving break when your pay raise kicks in? They don’t even have to show up for work and they still get paid more for it.
The latest pay raise was put into place 10 years ago — the last time the legislators raided the public treasury — giving themselves immediate pay raises of 18 percent and enacting an automatic cost-of-living increase every year unless the legislators vote not to accept the higher pay. For the 10th year in a row, the legislators forgot to vote against the automatic pay raise. What’s in your wallet?
The legislators promised in 1995 that they would never seek or approve another pay raise for themselves as long as they could get an annual cost-of-living increase based on the inflation rate in Philadelphia. That “promise” apparently came with an expiration date. The July 7, 2005, pay raise vote by many of the same politicians who pledged 10 years ago never to give themselves a pay raise shows you can’t trust anything the Harrisburg Hogs say.
Our lawmakers have morphed into a permanent class of professional politicians, a legislative aristocracy if you will. Sadly, more than 90 percent of these freeloaders are reelected year after year. Two-thirds of them didn’t even have an opponent the last time they ran. That must change in 2006 or Pennsylvania is doomed.