Merry Christmas, New York taxpayer.
You will be funding a $32,000 yearly pay raise for legislators if a pair of Democratic-sponsored bills pass the Assembly and Senate on Thursday, giving New York lawmakers the highest salary among state legislators in the nation.
Members of the New York legislature, which is in session only six months a year, currently make $110,000 annually. It is second place behind California at $119,702 a year. New York lawmakers are not currently in session yet rushed the bill through in order to have a Jan. 1 effective date, said state Sen. Rob Ortt, the Republican leader.
“I can’t believe this is actually happening,” Ortt told the Washington Examiner. “We woke up to this on Tuesday morning, the bill was live. There were rumors about this, but we had no communication from Democrats. Then they want us to show up 48 hours later [to vote] — two days before Christmas.”
Republicans oppose the bill and will vigorously debate it Thursday despite being outnumbered by the Democratic supermajority.
“Personally, I believe that legislators need to be compensated for the hard work that they do,” Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said. “People don’t realize the sacrifice that they make, being away from their families.”
A companion measure to the pay raise will be a $35,000 cap on outside income raised by legislators beginning in 2025. Democrats have said this is a way to curtail corruption, but Republicans see it as preventing people with thriving businesses from entering politics.
“They see no value in the citizen legislature, someone who is a regular person like a doctor or a lawyer and takes that experience in the real world to make the state better,” Ortt said. “This breeds a ruling class of politicians.”
New York has been beset by numerous problems since the pandemic, during which the state undercounted 200,000 nursing home deaths — a scandal that cost Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo his job. A Washington Examiner investigation found a similar scenario at the state’s group homes, where thousands of workers were forced to staff infected facilities and then reassigned to other homes, spreading the disease statewide.
COVID-19 INFECTS 10,311 NEW YORK GROUP HOME WORKERS
Rampant crime, a huge exodus of businesses and residents to other states, and a high cost of living nearly gave Rep. Lee Zeldin (R) the governor’s mansion in November when he was within 5 points of unseating incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul (D).
A Siena College poll revealed that voters want Hochul to tackle these issues in the coming year. Sixty percent of respondents believe the state’s fiscal condition is poor, with 90% saying crime is a serious problem in their communities.
State lawmakers have not done a good enough job to warrant a raise, Ortt said.
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“We have shed jobs, people, and businesses. There is nothing to point to these people being the highest paid in the nation,” he said. “It’s the opposite. This shows how out of touch New York Democrats have become.”
