Automatic pay raise ducks accountability

Many elected officials, from Washington, D.C., to Spokane, Wash., are getting a raise this year.

The fact that they are getting a bump in what might charitably be described as “hard times” has some people angry.

It’s also fodder for late-night television. Those who weren’t tired from shoveling snow could stay awake and catch comedians cracking wise that Congress, which gets a raise despite landing the nation trillions in debt, was raking over the auto executives for their big salaries and being billions in debt.

But the real problem isn’t how much more they get, but how they get it – with very little effort and very little accountability.

Congress gets an automatic, cost-of-living pay raise unless the two chambers take action to turn it down. Some state and local elected officials get an increase when an appointed body of supposed experts decides they deserve it. Some elected county officials get a percentage of what county commissioners get, while others, such as Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, get an increase when fellow sheriffs in several other counties get a raise.

This is not to suggest that Knezovich – who can be described as a stand-up elected official who is competent and returns phone calls – does or doesn’t deserve the roughly 2.5 percent increase this process generated this year. Or that Washington’s or Idaho’s members of the U.S. House and Senate – also generally stand-up men and women, who also return calls – may or may not be worth the roughly 2.75 percent bump they got. Collectively or individually, they may have been worth more; they may have been worth less.

It’s that the raises come so … effortlessly.

So effortlessly that they can be embarrassing. Earlier this month Idaho Gov. Butch Otter tried to refuse a 3 percent hike a previous Legislature established, and was told he couldn’t. So he announced he’d donate the money – roughly three grand – to a scholarship fund. It was a nice gesture, but we should all have such problems.

Over the years, the ability of an elected official to raise his or her own pay, or the pay of another elected official, has been controversial. When legislative bodies have to vote on raising their own pay, some members have been accused of grandstanding by voting publicly against a raise while lobbying privately for it.

In other words, practicing the kind of politics they might employ for any other controversial thing that comes before them. Imagine that, politicians engaging in politics.

To take the raises out of politics, elected officials like to set up commissions, give the authority to people they appoint and who frequently work under the rules that elected officials establish. Sometimes this allows the electeds to say the raises are merely based on inflation, or a comparison to what their jobs would pay in the private sector, or some other nonpolitical factor. Whatever the explanation, it is usually accompanied by a description of how hard the elected official works, how long the hours, how many the days away from family.

That may make their constituents feel better in good economic times. It’s unlikely to set well this year.

Not when many workers are being given a choice between taking wage cuts or being kicked to the curb. Not when Washington state teachers might be denied a voter-mandated cost-of-living increase by politicians who like to say “children are our future.” Not when labor unions and managers are fighting over every financial element in their contracts. Think a laid-off auto worker in Detroit or airplane worker in Seattle or a bricklayer in any city with a burst real estate bubble has much sympathy for the workload of an elected official whose job might properly be described as “mostly inside work, no heavy lifting”?

The real question is, why should politics be taken out of the equation for determining what an elected official makes?

Politics isn’t a bad thing in government; it’s part of the process. If the electeds are chary of voting themselves a raise, they could do what they often do with topics too hot for them to handle. Have very public and contentious debates on the rationale for the extra ration, come up with a percentage or a dollar figure that they’d have to vote on, then try to pass it. Then if it passes, put it on the ballot for public ratification.

Some elected officials will say that the public will never approve a raise.

Some of these are the same ones who worry that the public will never approve a tax increase. But voters do approve tax increases, when given enough information and an understandable plan on how it would be spent. Some years, the electeds could make a very good case that they’re worth much more money. Crime is down, SAT scores are up, the potholes got fixed and the streets plowed, peace prevails in 99 percent of the world. Whatever.

This year, the raise could be a tough sell.