Smacked on the Snout

Legislative pay ‘pig-out’ triggers voter outrage

Conventional wisdom has always dictated that pay raises are passed early in a legislative session. The theory is that by the time voters go to the polls a year or so later they will have forgotten all about the most recent pay grab.

So far that strategy has worked almost to perfection. Looking back over the past fifty years the list of legislators who have been rejected by voters angry over a pay raise vote likely would take the fingers on just one hand to count. This time, however, it may be different.

As usual, the vote came early in the new session, and – also as usual – the cowardly deed was done in the middle of the night during a holiday week. This time the tactic backfired. By making the pay raise vote one of their last items of business, then leaving town for an extended summer vacation, pay raise strategists created a two month window where no new news is being created – so the pay hike is all everyone has to talk about.

And talk about it we are. There has been a public uproar after every previous pay raise vote. It is always pointed out that our legislature is the second or third highest paid in the nation. And then, within a few days, life returns to normal. We move on to other issues and, as convention wisdom dictates, all is forgotten and the perpetrators are returned to office at the next election.

This, however, is our summer of discontent. Rather than abating, the anger over the pay grab is gaining steam. Talk radio hosts are screaming into their microphones, editorial pages sport blaring headlines and hundreds of letters from angry readers. PCN scheduled a special program for viewers to vent. New grassroots groups are springing up and old ones have been re-energized. The pay hike has taken on a life of its own.

What is different this time?

For starters, there has been a steady patter of chatter from Governor Ed Rendell on down about tax reform and the big tax breaks property owners were going to get from the last midnight legislation that legalized slot machines. That plan went down in flames when school boards en mass rejected it, and so all those anticipating tax relief had their hopes dashed. It rubbed salt into the wound to see legislators then turn around and give themselves a big pay raise.

The other big difference is technology. People are connected now in ways that did not exist in the 1990s, which was the last time a pay raise was rammed down our throats. The internet has been crackling with activity. At least two web sites – PACleanSweep.com and DeclarationOfAction.org – have sprung up and received tens of thousands of hits. With e-mail, it is cheap and quick to organize and to keep people informed.

Talk radio has proliferated in Pennsylvania. Few markets in the state lack at least one news/talk radio station, and most have two or more. Talk radio audiences have grown in size and especially in the wake of last year’s presidential election listeners do more than just listen – they act.

There are more grassroots groups and they are more organized that ever before. A record sell-out crowd of over 500 attended this year’s Pennsylvania Leadership Conference – all fiscal conservative activists ready to take on an issue such as the pay hike. And, the recently-founded Pennsylvania Club for Growth, already looking for a couple of free-spending incumbents to take out, has been super-energized by this issue.

The Pennsylvania General Assembly is used to operating in an insular world to which few except special interest groups paid much attention. That world has changed, and they failed to see it. This is an issue that is not going to go away. Expect the pay grab to be issue number one in many legislative elections around the state next year – and expect it to take more than one hand to count the number of incumbents who will have to start looking for new jobs.