SACRAMENTO — California's consistently unpopular lawmakers, the most highly paid in the nation, got a 12% raise Monday -- a windfall that made some of them wince.
Lawmakers' pay will jump from $99,000 a year to $110,880 starting Dec. 5, under a unanimous decision by the California Citizens Compensation Commission, a panel that meets annually to set salaries and benefits for the state's top elected officials.
The raise was the first since 1998 for the legislators; raises were approved for the few in leadership posts in 1999 and 2000.
Though some lawmakers called the unsolicited increase overdue, others said they were not earning it.
"With the dysfunction of the Legislature," said Assemblyman Keith Richman (R-Northridge) "if they were paying us what we were worth, we'd be giving them a refund."
A Democratic colleague, Assembly Labor Committee Chairman Paul Koretz of West Hollywood, worried about the effects of getting a raise when lawmakers were being forced to make budget cuts. "In a lot of ways, it's just bad news," he said.
A cost-of-living increase is not unreasonable, Koretz said, but given the Legislature's continuing struggle to balance the state budget, "It almost gives us a black eye without our asking for it."
Others liked the idea.
"I think elected officials have a right to be adequately and properly compensated and shouldn't have to feel defensive about it," said Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles).
He said the $138 a day on top of salary that out-of-town lawmakers get for food, travel and lodging when the Legislature is in session does not offset all the costs of keeping two homes and separation from family.
That per diem, which is tied to a federally set rate, amounts to about $20,000 a year, tax-free, for lawmakers who live more than 50 miles from Sacramento.
The commission gave no raises to the governor or other officials Monday. Those salaries were raised in 2000.
Commissioner Thomas Dominguez, a bomb technician with the Orange County Sheriff's Department, said the 12% raise still lags the increase in the consumer price index over the last six years.
The raise "really doesn't even put them back to where they were in '99, in my view," said Dominguez, who was appointed to the commission in 1997 by Gov. Pete Wilson and reappointed by Gov. Gray Davis.
