Legislative Pay Raises

A pay raise for lawmakers easily ranks alongside a tax hike as the most unpopular measure to emerge from a legislative session. The Associated Press first reported last week that the Citizens Legislative Compensation Commission has recommended salary increases as well as boosts to per-day payments.

Gov. Joe Manchin endorsed those recommendations in his State of the State address. The Charleston Gazette and Daily Mail each has a decidedly different view.

I hope to provide some context on this issue later today. For instance: West Virginia ranks 34th for overall annual salary paid to lawmakers, but offers the third-highest salary among states with the same sort of (part-time) legislative schedule and workload, according to the latest figures from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

UPDATE: Hoppy Kercheval of MetroNews touches on the sensitive nature of legislative pay raise proposals in his column for today. He also offers other tidbits from the session thus far.