Senate Passes Bills to Raise Legislators’ Pay, Allowances

SACRAMENTO —  With little debate, the Senate on Thursday unanimously passed and sent to Gov. George Deukmejian two bills to give legislators a 10% pay raise and increase their daily tax-free expense allowance.

One measure, by Assemblyman Tom Bane (D-Tarzana), would increase legislative salaries from $37,105 to $40,816 after the 1988 elections. It passed 36 to 0 after having cleared the Assembly late last month on a 57-17 vote.

The expense allowance bill, by Sen. William A. Craven (R-Oceanside), quickly passed both the Assembly and the Senate on Thursday by votes of 63 to 0 and 31 to 0, respectively. The measure, in effect, would increase the legislators’ living allowance by at least $1,000 a year.

The lawmakers currently are paid $82 daily in tax-free expense money while the Legislature is in session. The Craven bill would tie the per diem to the amount paid federal employees sent to Sacramento on official business. That rate now stands at $87. The Legislature normally is in session at least 200 days a year.

A spokeswoman for Deukmejian said that the governor so far has no position on the pay raise bill, but he probably will sign the per diem measure. Besides boosting legislators’ expense accounts, the bill also raises the salaries of top Deukmejian appointees in state government.

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) said of the pay raise bill: “This is not exorbitant. It is right in line with some concept of fairness.”

The Craven bill, introduced at the request of the Deukmejian Administration, originally made no reference to legislative stipends. As first introduced, it only would have increased the salaries of 10 state department heads by raising the status of their agencies.

Agency heads are paid according to the legislatively designated size of their agencies, with directors of “major” departments receiving $82,117 per year, those of “medium” departments $72,456 and those of “small” departments $66,419.

Under the bill, the directors of the California Lottery and of the Departments of Forestry, Parks and Recreation, Fish and Game, Rehabilitation, Consumer Affairs and Veterans Affairs would be elevated to major status, and those of the Department of Aging and the Office of Emergency Services, as well as the state Fire Marshal, would be raised to medium status.

But on the Assembly side, amendments were introduced to increase the legislative per diem rate. Bane said they were Craven’s amendments, but a Craven spokesman asserted it was Bane’s idea.

The state’s director of personnel administration, Jim Mosman, who had sought the bill, said his department did not request and had no position on the increase in legislative stipends.

A 1966 ballot proposition approved by the voters gave the lawmakers the right to increase their own salaries up to 5% annually. Bane’s bill amounts to two years’ salary increase because the lawmakers’ previous raise took effect in 1986.

The increase in department head salaries, and that of the legislative per diem, would begin Jan. 1, 1988.