Last Thursday was the only scheduled public hearing of the state Commission on Legislative, Judicial, & Executive Compensation before the panel must issue its recommendations by Nov. 15 on the question of raises for the 213 members of Legislature and the four statewide elected officials.
Only two people testified, so let us speak on behalf of the 20 million other New Yorkers directly to Chair Gene Fahey (who does not get a vote) and members Helene Blank, Terri Egan, Nadine Fontaine, Victor Kovner, Bob Megna and Jerry Weinstein: No and absolutely no and fuhgeddaboudit.
New York’s Legislature is already by far the highest paid in the country, at $142,000 a year. The same for the New York governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and comptroller.
The next highest paid legislators are in California at $128,215 (which just went up this year). But the Golden State also has very tight lifetime term limits of 12 years of maximum service combined in the Assembly or state Senate.
Pennsylvania, like New York, doesn’t have term limits and the pay in Harrisburg is the next highest, at $106,422 (which also increased this year).
The excessive Albany raise to $142K didn’t come from this special pay panel, which only meets every four years, but instead in the final days of 2022. Democrats Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie huddled with Gov. Hochul to bypass the commission and hand lawmakers a huge raise from the $110K they were earning.
Stewart-Cousins and Heastie pushed their package to passage Dec. 22 so Hochul could sign it on Dec. 31, in time for the raise on Jan. 1.
The $142,000 salary began on the first day of 2023, but it came with the new 25% ($35,000) cap on outside income that is supposed to start on Jan. 1, 2025. However, as we wrote with grave displeasure at the time, an earlier income cap, of 15% ($18,000) as modeled after Congress, was due to begin in 2020, but Heastie and others knocked it down in court:
“Note that Heastie himself had lawyers in court successfully arguing against the outside earnings limit. Maybe that pattern will repeat and the salary will climb to $142,000 on Jan. 1, enriching members immediately, and during the next two years, the outside earnings curb will be court abrogated. Wouldn’t that be convenient?”
That’s exactly what’s happened. Republicans from the Assembly and Senate, who voted against the pay raise/income cap, have sued and in July won a preliminary injunction to stop the outside income cap. The case is now on appeal.
Those who voted no and sued still pocketed the higher salary. They just don’t want any limits on their outside earnings from law firms or others with vested interests before the Legislature. So no term limits, no outside income cap and by far the highest pay in the nation.
Even if the income cap stays bottled up in the courts, Stewart-Cousins and Heastie must adopt an earnings limit in the rules of their respective chambers when they meet for their new session in January. The state Constitution says that the Legislature shall convene “on the first Wednesday after the first Monday in January,” which is Jan. 8.
Legislative bodies have broad power to set their own rules governing the conduct of their members. Impose a cap; we suggest the 15% used by Congress, or at worst, the 25% in their own plan.
