As many Massachusetts residents worry about where they’ll find their next paycheck or meal amid mass unemployment during the pandemic, Beacon Hill officials are welcoming the new year with a fat raise.
The state’s 200 senators and representatives are each in line for a $4,280 bump in their base salaries — their third raise in as many legislative sessions. The 6.46% raise will boost their base pay to $70,536. The House speaker and Senate president will each pull down $178,000-plus.
Lawmakers will also be cashing in on a separate 4.89% hike to their office expense accounts and leadership will get another boost in their already lucrative stipends.
“We’re in the middle of record-high unemployment, people can’t pay their rent, people don’t have enough to maintain their businesses and their businesses are closing — to me, it’s bad timing,” said Greg Sullivan, research director of the Pioneer Institute, noting jobless rates hovering around 6.7% are double what they were last year.
The raises are the result of a controversial pay hike legislation enacted four years ago that tied biennial adjustments to inflation. Base salary increases are mandated in the state constitution.
Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito will decline the raises, according to a spokesperson.
State Rep. Mike Connolly, who voted against the raises for party leadership in 2017 citing its emphasis on “top-down” management, said he would take the bump in his base salary this year.
“Cost of living increases make sense for everyone in terms of government benefits, social security and other programs,” he told the Herald. He added that by most standards, lawmakers’ base pay is still well below the state’s median area income, which Housing and Urban Development placed at $106,000 last year.
The typical household income in the Cambridge Democrat’s district is even higher, at $119,000 a year.
“There is an element that if we aren’t willing to compensate legislators and public servants fairly, then the only people who can seek those positions are the independently wealthy,” the Cambridge renter said.
Freshly minted Speaker of the House Ronald Mariano intends to accept the raise. Senate President Karen Spilka’s office did not respond to a request for comment. For both, their total income will rise to more than $178,000 a year — an increase of about $9,000 a year.
The Herald was still waiting for an answer from Attorney General Maura Healey, State Auditor Suzanne Bump and Secretary of State William Galvin.
David Tuerck, president of the Beacon Hill Institute, said “it is utterly inappropriate for any state government official to take a pay raise at this time, considering we are still in the depths of this COVID-19 crisis and considering the fact many that many people have gone without pay for quite some time.”
Paul Diego Craney of the conservative think tank Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance called it a “great illustration of the divide among us.”
Beacon Hill politicians “ought to be sharing some of the pain” inflicted by the pandemic, Sullivan said, urging them to reject the raises.
