To say that Proposition1F on the May 19 Special Election ballot is popular with the voters is an understatement of Tyrannosaurus Rex proportions. The only measure on the ballot to secure over fifty percent in the recent Public Policy Institute of California poll, it rang the bell at 81% approval. But, then the measure has a punitive effect on legislators, so there’s little surprise here.
The measure would prohibit the state commission assigned to setting legislators’ salaries from authorizing a pay raise any year the state budget is in deficit. Given that the legislative approval rating in that same PPIC poll hovered a little above the floor at 11%, the voters’ affection with the measure cannot be a surprise.
But, this sure thing proposition should not even be on the ballot.
This has nothing to do with Senator Abel Maldanado, who required this law change as part of a package of measures he wanted enacted before voting for the budget bill. My problem is with the commission setting the legislative salaries in the first place.
The California Citizens Compensation Commission was created by a ballot measure in 1990. The commission is made up of seven members appointed by the governor. They must come from designated backgrounds. (Full disclosure: In the 1990s Governor Pete Wilson offered me a place on the commission and I turned it down.)
The proposition outlawed honorariums and limited gift giving to legislators at the same time taking the power of setting legislators salaries out of their hands.
Just the way the legislators wanted it.
Proposition 112 establishing the commission was put on the ballot by the legislators themselves. The argument made on behalf of the measure was that special interests would no longer influence legislators with their gifts and honorariums.
How’s that worked out, I wonder?
For many of the legislators, in reality, it was far better for an outside commission to determine what they were worth than hearing it from their constituents every time the legislators voted to up their own salaries. They didn’t want that on-going headache but they wanted salaries to be raised more often than every decade or so.
Little did the legislators know that five months later Californians would show their contempt for the legislative body by imposing term limits. What the voters giveth, the voters taketh away – with a vengeance. The legislators who finally got out from under the responsibility of setting their own pay did not have long to enjoy the commission-set salaries.
Whether Proposition1F is even needed is questionable. Last year, with the state in a fiscal mess, the salary commission froze government officials’ pay.
But, the problem with Proposition 1F is that it doesn’t go far enough. The measure should do away with the compensation commission all together. Let the legislators have to justify their salary increases to the not-so adoring public. Then maybe we’ll see some progress under the capitol dome for a change.