Assistant House Minority Leader Paul LeVota (D-Kansas City) urged the State Salary Commission to recommend against giving lawmakers, judges and statewide elected officials pay increases Monday.
The commission faces a December 1st deadline for recommending hikes covering the next two fiscal years. The Commission held its first meeting on pay raises today. But LeVota notes that just six commissioners attended the first meeting, and only 14 of the 22 members have been appointed. LeVota added that under the state constitution, the commission could have started holding hearings as early as August.
In a press release today, LeVota criticized the Commission for holding hearings on the issue, just 11 days before the deadline.
"This is too important a task to rush through in just 11 days with only a fraction of the commissioners participating," LeVota said in a release. "As a result, prudent course of action would be for the commission to recommend against pay hikes."
A constitutional amendment that passed on election day now makes it a bit harder for lawmakers to reject a salary hike. Before the passage of Amendment 7, lawmakers could reject a pay raise with a simple majority vote. Now, a two-thirds majority is needed to shoot down a pay raise.
Some have called the ballot language of amendment 7 "deceptive."
House Democratic spokesman Marc Powers tells the KY3 Political Blog it was wrong for Rep. Mark Wright to pin the blame on Secretary of State Robin Carnahan for the ballot language.
"Fact is, the sponsors of HJR 55, the legislation that put Amendment 7 on the ballot, wrote that language. The sponsors made no mention of the ballot language when HJR 55 was debated.
As a result, most lawmakers were unaware of it until well after the fact," Powers said in an e-mail to me.
"It is true that the Secretary of State's Office typically writes the ballot language. The SOS has sole authority to do so when a measure is placed on the ballot via initiative petition," Powers said.
"When the General Assembly proposes a ballot measure, however, it has the right to dictate the ballot language under RSMo. 116.155. Although the legislature has put several measures before voters since that statute was enacted in 1999, near as I can tell HJR 55/Amendment 7 marked the first time lawmakers have exercised that option," he added.
HERE is the link to the final version of the resolution that voters ultimately approved.
2 comments:
Maybe they should have read the bill before they voted on it. When I was a staffer I do not know how many times I was stopped in the halls with the question. What does this bill say and do. Many politicains never take time to read the bill proposed. They rely heavily on lobbyist opinions and the aides. I thought we paid them to do this sort of thing? I guess not.
I'm just amazed that a Democrat would say "no" to an opportunity to spend more taxpayer money...
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