AP: 12% raise is in store for most (CA) lawmakers

12% raise is in store for most lawmakers

14 turn down increase, cite state budget deficit

By Steve Lawrence
ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 3, 2005

SACRAMENTO – Most California lawmakers Monday will get a 12 percent pay raise that will bump their annual salaries to $110,880 and assure their place as the best paid state legislators in the country.

Of the Legislature's 120 members, 14 have turned down the raise, citing the state's lingering budget problems. "I didn't feel right accepting the raise at a time when there was a state budget deficit," Assemblywoman Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park said yesterday. "I felt I needed to set an example for fiscal prudence." Assembly members Shirley Horton, R-Bonita, George Plescia, R-La Jolla, and Juan Vargas, D-San Diego, also rejected the pay raise.

The raise was approved in May by the California Citizens Compensation Commission. The seven-member panel was created by voters in 1990 to set pay levels for the Legislature, governor and other state elected officials.

It's the first pay increase for rank-and-file lawmakers since 1998, although the Legislature's top leaders have received more recent raises. Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, will make $127,512 a year with the latest pay hike.

Lawmakers also receive $153 a day in expense money when they're in session.

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