Panel OKs 5% Raises for Top State Officials, Legislators

SACRAMENTO —  California legislators, who received a 37% raise last year to become the highest-paid state lawmakers in the nation, will get an additional 5% raise in December.

An appointed commission also raised salaries by 5% for the governor and most other top state officials, although Gov. Pete Wilson says he will decline the increase.

Members of the California Citizens Compensation Commission said the governor and six other statewide officials deserve a raise because their salaries have been frozen for five years.

The commission increased legislators’ pay at the same time to keep their salaries to scale.

Beginning in December, annual salaries will be $126,000 for the governor, $107,100 for the attorney general and state schools superintendent and $94,500 for the lieutenant governor, state controller, treasurer and secretary of state.

But Wilson, who has taken a voluntary 5% pay cut since 1991, will reject the raise and continue to accept $114,000 a year, spokesman Sean Walsh said.

Rank-and-file senators and Assembly members will receive $75,600 a year plus expenses. Salaries of the Assembly Speaker and Senate president pro tem will be $90,720. Majority and minority leaders will receive $83,160.

Lew Uhler, president of the National Tax Limitation Committee, called the raises “another in a series of outrages” and said the commission should be abolished.

“The pay commission is just a one-way-street operation--up. They have never looked at or considered the option of decreasing pay,” Uhler said. “So you could call it the compensation increase commission rather than the compensation commission.”

The commission was created by a ballot measure passed by voters in 1990 that also banned fees for speeches and restricted gifts to legislators and other elected state officials. The proposition was put on the ballot by the Legislature.

The commission’s seven members are appointed by the governor.

On Thursday, only commission member Steve Hayward voted against the raise. Hayward said he would have supported a smaller raise on a par with income increases for other Californians this year. He said he opposed trying to make up for previous years.