Pay raise fever

Tom Waseleski

The news out of Harrisburg today is there's a movement and a bill to abolish the automatic cost of living increases for state legislators, judges and top executive office holders. Activists who successfully fought the unwarranted and undeserved pay raise of 2005 -- Gene Stilp of Taxpayers and Ratepayers United, Dick Schirato of Pennsylvania Citizens for Legislator Accountability and Dennis Baylor of the Pennsylvania Accountability Project -- now want to change fundamentally how Pennsylvania compensates its top elected officials. While legislative pay is an easy populist target, the pay-raise warriors are waging one battle too many.

It's probably a good idea, financially and symbolically, for state officials to forgo the latest annual COLA, a 2.8 percent salary increase which took effect yesterday, because of Pennsylvania's $1 billion to $2 billion revenue shortfall.  But to eliminate all future COLAs, as Rep. Barbara McIlvaine Smith of Chester wants to do, would only invite the very double-digit pay spikes and the legislative mischief to obtain them that the activists abhor.

Better to raise public officials' pay a little at a time -- based on a statewide (not Philadelphia) cost-of-living index -- the way most American workers like to see their own paychecks treated. The strongest argument against the unconscionable 2005 raise (which, fortunately, was repealed after much public pressure) was the fact that state officials already got an annual COLA, leaving no need for an additional raise.

In other words, the system works. Don't mess with it.

You're a Pennsylvania taxpayer. What do you think?