Thursday, March 28, 2024

Senate approves amendment to change pay raises

February 9, 2001

With a 34-0 vote, the state Senate passed a proposed constitutional amendment Thursday that would change the way Michigan lawmakers receive pay raises.

With the amendment, lawmakers would have to approve pay raises or increases in expense allowances. They also would be able to amend pay proposals, a power they do not now possess.

The only senators who did not vote for the proposal were Jackie Vaughn and Joe Young Jr., Detroit Democrats who were absent.

Currently, pay raises - proposed by the seven-member State Officers Compensation Commission - do not need to be approved by the Legislature.

The proposal was sponsored by Sen. Thaddeus McCottor, R-Livonia.

“I think everybody realized the current system constitutes a procedural problem in the way legislators are compensated,” McCottor said. “It was time to change.”

The amendment comes days after a 35.8 percent pay raise for state lawmakers took effect. The raise was rejected by the House and ignored by the Senate.

Raises take effect automatically unless two-thirds vote in both houses rejects the raise. If the amendment is approved, raises would not take effect until after the next general election.

Commission pay-raise proposals have only been rejected once by legislative vote, in January 1991.

If the House approves the proposed constitutional amendment by a two-thirds vote, the general population will vote on it in the next general election.

McCottor said they are urging the House to move quickly on the proposal.

“These things have a way of slowing down,” he said. “We just prefer they move now while the public is very energized about this issue.”

The pay-raise procedure was put in place by a 1968 constitutional amendment. Prior to that, legislators proposed and passed their own pay raises.

“The current system was put in place by a vote of the people,” said Larry Steckelberg, chief of staff for Sen. Dianne Byrum. “It’s not something the Legislature can amend. It has to go to a vote of the people.”

Steckelberg said Byrum, an Onondaga Democrat, supported the bill because “the public just gets outraged that there is not a requirement that there be a vote and it’s time to change that.”

Ed Sarpolus, vice president of EPIC/MRA, a Lansing-based polling firm, said the amendment proposal is a “no-brainer.”

“(Legislators) are going to get the pay raise and by the time this goes into effect, the bulk of them will be gone anyway,” he said. “This does not take courage.

“Basically, they’re having their cake and eating it, too.”

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