It’s discouraging to see how long-term political memory is kicked aside by short-term political perspectives. History doesn’t seem to get much respect when it comes to passing current political judgements.
It’s early, I haven’t had the benefit of a cup of coffee yet, so I’m just going to take one very small example.
I noted this paragraph in a recent Politico.com entry on the 1st Congressional District race.
State Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, the only state legislator in the race, moved quickly to stake out a strong stance on the issue, running a television ad that touts her work cutting legislative salaries. The reality of Hanabusa’s record is more complicated: While she passed a bill cutting legislative salaries 5 percent, she also helped author a law outsourcing decisions on legislative pay to a nonpartisan commission, which gave lawmakers a 36 percent pay raise in 2008.
So this makes it sound like Hanabusa “helped author” a new approach to legislative salaries and somehow had a hand it pushing an unreasonable increase in legislative salaries.
Then I checked on the background of the salary commission. I took the shortcut of turning to Ann Lee’s “The Hawaii State Constitution: A Reference Guide”.
It turns out that the state has used an independent salary commission to deal with legislative salaries for decades. The salary commission structure was added into the State Constitution way back in 1968, when Senator Hanabusa was still a high school student. In its first form, the commission submitted a recommended salary plan to the Legislature, which then was free to make its own decision.
The reform minded 1978 Constitutional Convention, the same one that mandated campaign spending limits and created the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, rewrote the constitutional provision on legislative salaries to give the independent commission more weight. Under this new scheme, the commission’s recommendations would become law unless disapproved by either the legislature or the governor.
The bill apparently referred to by Politico came nearly 30 years later, making it totally false to imply that Hanabusa, as Senate president, was instrumental in the decision to “outsource” salary decisions to a commission. It had already been done here since 1968 or 1978, wherever you want to start the clock.
And it actually began as a House bill, not a Senate bill.
The bill, HB1917 HD2 SD2 (2006) rewrote the constitution to combine what had been separate legislative, judicial, and executive salary commissions–each with their own budgets and costs–into a single commission making recommendations across the board.
There’s a lot of ignorance expressed by those who are quick to heap scorn on elected officials whenever this issue of salaries comes up. It gives me that “no good deed goes unpunished” feeling.
The whole idea behind an independent salary commission is to buffer decisions from politics. It’s the same reason we have a judicial selection commission. If it’s unrealistic to remove politics from the process, you can at least get to politics at arms length.
And it’s important to note that salary recommendations aren’t just pulled out of a hat. I haven’t gone way back, but the last couple of salary commission reports I’ve looked through were based on pretty comprehensive reviews of comparable positions in other states, as well as jobs with comparable responsibilities in other sectors.
Here’s the 2007 report, if you’re so inclined.
You might also want to check out this article on trends in legislative pay.
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Has anyone seen any Ed Case commercials on TV lately? Lots of Hanabusa and Djou, but not Case. Insufficient funds?
I saw an Ed Case commercial last night during either the 5:30 or 6:00 news on KHON.
Oh Heavens, here we go…
Senator Hanabusa and I have something in common I was in High School in 1968 also, and of course, we are both Democrats. I am a proud progressive, I don’t know about her.
I took Politico off my favorites list many moons ago; it just is a tool for the corporate interests masquerading as “fair and balanced.’
I like the salary commissions and what they do, they are like mediators. Actually we need to pay these people as much as possible and get rid of lobbyists and publicly finance elections. And make laws about corruption really strong. (Good Luck.)
Some ideas like “Peace, just a dream some of us had.” But, hey they may yet prevent mankind from destroying the Earth with Nuclear weapons.
Thank you, Ian, for putting this in context. I cringe when I see inaccuracies like this, especially when they are from people/organizations with similar views (not necessarily politico.com). This issue is reminiscent (to me) of fees for court-appointed attorneys in criminal cases. They hadn’t been adjusted in 15+ years when a change was finally made a few years ago, a chnge that followed Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Simeon Acoba’s observation that the low rate was effectively denying defendants the constitutionally guaranteed assitance of counsel.
However, I’d like to add some other context. Hanabusa was chair of the lead committee in the senate that heard the bill to create the consolidated salary commission and was co-chair of the conference committee that developed the final form of the bill proposing the amendment that was approved by the voters. Also, note that 4 of the 7 members of the salary commission are appointed by the legislature (2 each by the Senate presdient and House Speaker).
In this context, it was not wrong to say that Hanabusa cut (or helped cut) legislative salaries but it was equally true that she passed (or helped pass) legislation that created a legislatively dominated salary commission that gave the legislators a pay raise that, because it was so long oversdue, seemed exorbitant at 36%. At the very least, she was naive to think that the Republicans and others would not hit her over the head with her claim to have cut legislative salaries.
That lack of judgment may or may not reflect well on her ability as a Congressperson. If she uses easily pierced spin to get herself elected, how sophisticated will she be in the shark tank that is Capitol Hill?
I don’t have any problem paying them much more than peanuts.
But …. the but is that you pay them $85k+ … but withthat job is the caveat that they can’t do anything else on the side … like a judge …
I agree with Bill. IF we moved to make the Legislature a greater body of balance and accountability for the Executive branch – that does not usurp that body’s powers but rather seeks to ensure that its policy and budget directives are upheld in an efficient and effective manner, then, yes, pay these legislators more.
At this point, what we have going now is, generally speaking, puppetry. The less powerful legislators try to throw out occasional bills or resos. The more powerful legislators try to ask the right questions, but most often dont. The senior staff try their best to gather the right data and information, but are never quite sure what they are asking for. Why? In my view, 2 primary reasons. First, time. They just cant research, learn, or understand the full scope of any one issue in the limited time of the legislative season. Second, the limited professional experiences of most of these legislators (ie. former legislative staff) dont provide for enough of a breadth of ‘how things work’ to allow them to know how to approach this all, save for throwing temper tantrums at the executive branch.
All this said, and bringing it back to the general topic of this post, this is actually a large chunk of why I like I Hanabusa. For the small paycheck she does actually get, we get a pretty good bang for our collective buck. She asks better questions than most, she tries to work with the stakeholders to make better policy changes than most. Shes just a better legislator than most – and serves as a role model for them. Thats why, when she took over as President, there was a hush in the Senate when just prior it was roaring in dysfunction. I think they knew they had a leader at the helm.
Hipoli, I agree with some of what you say about Hanabusa (and a close friend has won me over to her in the CD1 race by likening Ed Case to Joe Lieberman, a man I detest) but the quiet that reigned in the Senate after her ascension had at least as much to do with fear.
Altho’ she has moderated a bit (if only because she is no longer a committee chair), her propensity to undress lay people testifying to her committee as if she was cross-examining a hostile expert witness at trial was, and is, most unbecoming. When used on phony legislators, it is most revealing as well, somethingwhich terrified/s many of her colleagues.
What about the misinformation in the anti-Djou ad?
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/04/a-false-tax-attack/