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Sunday, April 10, 2011

Ind. Gov't. - "Pennsylvania legislative payroll is bigger than ever"

Pennsylvania has a full-time legislature. This lengthy story today in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, points out some issues:

HARRISBURG — During a time when most Pennsylvanians were forced to live on leaner budgets, the General Assembly's payroll soared 22 percent to $119.5 million, and the number of legislative employees paid at least $100,000 nearly doubled, a Tribune-Review analysis found.

Staffers making triple-figure salaries went from 36 in 2005 to 69 this year, records show. Edward J. Nolan, executive director of the House Appropriations Committee, is the highest-paid staffer at $191,854 a year. That is more money than Gov. Tom Corbett's salary of $177,888 and more than $18,000 above the next highest-paid employee.

"It is what it is," Nolan said.

The Legislature's payroll growth since 2005 was almost double the rate of inflation. It happened while a recession slammed Pennsylvania and the rest of the nation in 2008, and last year the state's unemployment rate hit a 26-year high of 8.8 percent in January, February and April.

"There's no oversight on who gets these raises. They're handed out, I believe, to political cronies," said Slippery Rock resident Mike Homison, 55, a retired auditor for the federal Civil Service Commission. * * *

Pennsylvania pays each of its 253 legislators a base salary of $79,646, plus automatic annual raises tied to the cost of living. The General Assembly is the nation's largest full-time state legislature, with a $300 million annual price tag for taxpayers, and its staff of about 2,650 is one of the largest. * * *

Those who study the Legislature — including four grand juries Corbett empaneled as attorney general during the past three years — say patronage hiring, duplicate caucus operations and illegal use of public employees for political campaigning contribute to the staff size. In a report released in May, one grand jury said no witness "was able to justify such a large number of employees for this body."

"The vast overstaffing problem is linked to the patronage system within the Legislature, which in turn is a symptom of the 'time warp' in which the General Assembly operates," the report said.

What about Indiana? A look at the Indiana Transparency Portal shows the following number of legislative staffers earning over $100,000 per year: 2 in the House, 2 in the Senate, 14 in the Legislative Services Agency.

Page 11 (using PDF page count, or A-7 using "bottom of the page" numbers) of this document, the budget report for the coming biennium, sets out the actual expenditure totals of the Indiana General Assembly for FY 2008-09 and FY 2009-10, plus the estimated expenditures for this FY.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 10, 2011 08:15 PM
Posted to Indiana Government