Editorial: Washington lawmakers should be accountable to pay raise

Must be an odd-numbered year, because the melodrama of Washington legislators fending off a pay raise is underway.

Since 1987, the Salary Commission has met every other year to determine whether lawmakers and other statewide officials should get raises. Voters passed a referendum in 1986 that amended the state constitution, setting up a system intended to remove the politics from paychecks. The idea was thoughtful and the structure sound, but the hope of erasing politics was naive.

The commission is composed of 17 people – 10 nonpartisan voters randomly plucked from the 10 congressional districts, and seven people with expertise in compensation selected by House and Senate leaders. Their job is to assess the positions and ensure that salaries are competitive with those in other states.

For the first time since 2008, the commission this year recommended raises; an eye-popping 11.2 percent increase for legislators over two years, and smaller bumps for governor, judges and other officials.

Since the raises were announced, the consensus among legislators appears to be “awkward” and “horrific timing!”

Yes it is. Legislators are in special session, and among the items that need to be hashed out are competing pay raise proposals for state workers, including teachers. They won’t be granting double-digit salary increases.

Because legislators have no say in their pay, they can play bystander when raises are granted. Or they can make the political response: give the raise to charity. That’s what Gov. Jay Inslee has chosen to do with his 4 percent increase, which takes his salary from $166,891 to $173,617. An easy call when you’re making six figures.

That’s a tougher decision for legislators who aren’t independently wealthy. The raise will take their salary from $42,106 to $46,839 by September 2016. Some lawmakers have settled on a strategy of declining the raise until they finish their work in the special session.

Sen. Steve Litzow, R-Mercer Island, announced in a news release: “Until lawmakers can get our job done and agree on a new budget that includes ample funding for important student programs, teachers and the actual cost of educating children, it’s irresponsible to accept a pay increase.”

OK, but if raises had always hinged on meeting their constitutional duty to finance basic education, they would never have gotten them.

In any event, it’s clear that despite the admirable intention of removing politics from this process, it hasn’t worked. The answer is to make lawmakers accountable for their raises, so they can’t duck the issue.

It’s been our view that the 1986 amendment was missing one vital provision: an up or down vote by legislators on the Salary Commission’s recommendations. Last year, committees in the House and Senate voted to increase legislators’ per diem, from $90 a day to $120. If they can vote on their daily allowances, they can vote on their raises.

It’s pretty simple. If they want to stop being “the victim,” they can start to work on another constitutional amendment.