Jan 07 2009
The Legislature - Well the Democrats - Refuse to Take a Cut
In a move that everyone should have expected, the Democrats in the Legislature have declined to take a 10% cut to their budget in order to help out the budget deficit. The democratic leaders have declined to take up the Governor’s proposal that they cut their budgets by 10%.
However, be assured by Sen. Steinberg’s words “We will certainly do the responsible thing and share the pain.” He declined to commit to the proposal because he said they needed more time to figure out what “form” their reduction would take.
Sen. Cogdill (Republican) said that if the state workers have to take a cut, everyone who gets a paycheck from the state would have to cut. He said that a 10% cut would mean Democrats would have to reduce staff.
Now, I have been a former Republican Assembly staffer. I want to tell you that the salaries and staff are not equal between Democrats and Republicans. The Republicans do not have nearly as many staff (you are lucky if you are a Republican and can afford 3-4 staffers…if you were a Democrat you have at least 3 and normally more). The Republican staffers also get paid quite a bit less. I made under $25,000 as a legislative aide for a Republican Assemblymember. The same position on the Democratic side pays almost twice as much.
I do agree that everyone needs to share in the pain.
Assemblyman Villines (Republican) said the proposed Republican budget included a 5% cut in pay to the legislators. Why wasn’t this 10%? I don’t get to choose between a 5% and 10% cut to my paycheck, so why should the legislators get off the hook so easy? Why is there no scrutiny of their budget the way that they scrutinize the budgets for Corrections and Health and Human services.
In fact, there is no way to know how much money is spent on what in the Legislature. There is very little transparencey to their budget (check it out on www.dof.ca.gov).
If these are the people who are going to lead the state, shouldn’t they also lead by example?
This is just another show for the public. The Legislature won’t be able to do the right thing at the end of the day and take a cut -instead they will cut others and keep themselves whole.
