• Frustrated by his colleagues’ reactions to the State budget crisis, State Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) recently introduced two constitutional amendments regulating legislators’ salaries. Maldonado’s “No Budget, No Pay or Per Diem” bill, SCA 7, would prohibit legislators from receiving their salaries or per diem if the budget has not been passed by the constitutional deadline. On Jan. 19, Maldonado’s office released a transcript of comments the senator made after introducing the bill. “This is just common sense at its core,” Maldonado said. “Legislators are financially rewarded for not doing their jobs. How does that make sense? The longer we drag on the budget debate, the more per diem members receive. We need to stop incentivizing failure. It’s almost embarrassing to have to introduce this legislation. You would think members would be able to get things done on time, but as long as we have a system in place that rewards their stubbornness, we will never achieve real reform in this state.” Maldonado’s second bill, SCA 8, would require the Citizens Compensation Commission—the body responsible for setting legislators’ salaries—to freeze or reduce members’ salaries during a budget deficit. This bill is identical to SCA 23, which the senator introduced in 2008. “When I introduced this bill last year, it was defeated with bipartisan opposition. It seems like the only thing both sides of the aisle agree on is that they don’t want their own salaries tied to our state’s budget,” Maldonado said in the transcript. “For a building that boasts to have so many fiscal conservatives, I was surprised to see last year’s bill be so handily defeated.”
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 5, 2009.