Pay hikes for Idaho lawmakers appear to be on a glide path to taking effect next week.
Every two years, a citizens’ committee proposes potential pay raises for state legislators. Their current salaries are around $19,000.
Late last year, the committee voted to bump lawmakers’ pay to $25,000. Members of leadership would receive additional compensation under the plan.
The Idaho Senate last week approved a resolution rejecting the proposed pay hikes, but a House committee on Wednesday effectively killed the legislation in committee.
In its place, House Republican leaders authored their own resolution giving any lawmaker who doesn’t want to accept the raise an alternative.
“...legislators who believe themselves to be overcompensated may donate all or a portion of their legislative compensation to the Tax Relief Fund…" reads the resolution.
Rep. Kent Marmon (R-Caldwell) said the resolution is simply “playing word games.”
“You’re still increasing spending by over half a million dollars with this. And half a million here, half a million there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money,” Marmon said.
For Marmon and the new class of conservative freshman lawmakers, the legislature should instead focus on providing more tax relief to Idahoans before boosting their own pay.
Just six other state representatives joined Marmon in opposing the resolution Thursday.
Rep. Ron Mendive (R-Coeur d’Alene) agreed with a point supporters of the proposal have long argued: the current legislative salary is nowhere near high enough to allow average, working-aged people to run for office.
“I’m at a point in my life where it’s not a problem,” said Mendive. “But for somebody that’s trying to support a family this is not doable.”
Since 2005, legislative pay has risen 27% compared to the average state employee’s salary increasing by 74% during that time period.
That’s not enough, many lawmakers argue, given how much time they put in both during and outside of the legislative session.
“I cannot in my time here find anybody that I have found overpaid – even those who don’t do much work,” said Rep. John Vander Woude (R-Nampa), who’s in his ninth term.
The raises will become permanent unless both the House and Senate reject them by Jan. 30.
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