Milan Simonich in the Jan. 19 issue of the Santa Fe New Mexican, lays out the shifty tricks legislators played on the public in the last few years to increase their take-home pay. First, they raised their pensions by 27% in 2022, during the pandemic when no one was paying much attention, citing inflation.
Two years later Rep. Harry Garcia (D-Grants) offered up a “cleanup” bill to increase pensions on top of that by 50% as the oil production that many progressives love to hate was adding billions of new dollars to the state’s treasury.
These increases allow legislators with 10 years of service to retire on a lifetime salary of $29,110 from a part-time job that requires attendance only 90 days in a two-year term, fully a 90% increase in two years. If you were a state government employee earning $50,000 in 2021, with the same increases the legislature gave itself, equivalent increases would have given you a salary of $95,000 in 2024. Did you get this kind of raise? During those years PERA pensions increased by a total of about 3%, after an inflation rate of about 20%.
Full disclosure: I receive a state pension based on ERA and PERA service. Am I resentful of the legislature helping itself to a 90% increase for its service when I only got 3%? You bet I am.
Legislators, feeling sorry for themselves, also helped themselves to taxpayer money to provide for a legislative assistant for each one, a move touted loudly by legislators as a step in “professionalizing” the legislature.
But now, I am occasionally told, when you try to call a legislator on the phone you are asked on voicemail to contact the legislative assistant.
This is hardly a step in keeping with the concept of a citizen’s legislature as baked into the New Mexico Constitution. Abuse is already popping up. And we have learned from decades of observation how malleable some legislators can be with their vote after a steak dinner and a glass of wine or two at a lobbyist’s expense. What guarantee will we have of better government if we now provide legislators with salaries?
Particularly if gerrymandering continues to reduce the ability of candidates out of line with their party to have a chance at beating an incumbent?
Now, Simonich asserts, Cristina Parajón (D-Bernalillo) is introducing legislation to float a constitutional amendment for a vote allowing salaries for legislators. This, as envisioned by Parajón, will provide a salary in 2024 money of about $64,000, going up in lockstep as NM median incomes increase over time. No such legislation is proposed for state government workers’ salaries.
But instead of talking about fairness in the past, let me make a modest proposal for the future that might improve the performance of the legislature enough for voters to swallow a constitutional amendment to provide salaries for legislators.
The strongest case for salaries up to now has been that legislators typically come from only three buckets: the rich, the retired, and the highly resourceful (the latter covering a lot of ground). Salaries should help create a legislature that is more like most New Mexicans, a move in the direction of greater democracy.
Under my proposal salaries would be tied to legislative performance in improving state government. Exactly one year after U.S. News & World Report moves New Mexico up from 50 out of 50 in education to, say, 45, a constitutional amendment allowing for salaries will be put up for a vote. Think the task is impossible? If Mississippi could move up dramatically from 48 in 2014 to the low 30s (U.S. News & World Report), why can’t we, especially with incentives to do so?
Should the amendment allowing salaries be approved by the voters, future increases in legislative salaries would be tied to a specific metric of improvement in the operations or policy outcomes of state government. Parajón wants a salary of $64,000? Sure.
But New Mexico needs first to improve its standing in education. Want a cost-of-living increase after that? Sure, as soon as New Mexico’s ranking in health care goes up 5 places.
Instead of the usual excuses given by legislators for poor performance in health care, education, the condition of our roads, efficiency metrics for the operations of state agencies, etc., only tangible progress must happen if you want a salary increase.
That’s the way CE0s and professional athletes often get salary increases. Why can’t we adopt this here?
Jose Z. Garcia is a former New Mexico secretary of higher education.