Inside Report for June 25, 2008

• By WILL SENTELL
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Jun 25, 2008 - Page: 7B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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There are two lasting impressions of the 2008 regular session:

• The pay raise that lawmakers gave themselves will be the most remembered issue of the gathering, by far.
• That single topic has arguably done major political damage to lawmakers and to Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Not only did legislators initiate the pay increase. They mostly kept the issue under wraps until the end of the session, then rammed it through both chambers in just six days with virtually no public discussion.

So just what triggered so much public anger?

Unlike most of what goes on during a three-month session, rank-and-file taxpayers care about salaries and can easily understand the issue.

Legislators raised their pay packages from about $38,000 per year — roughly what typical state residents make for full-time jobs—to nearly $60,000 per year for a part-time job.

Put another way, part-time lawmakers have given themselves a pay raise that puts them at a level most state residents will never achieve in their lifetimes.

Making the raise effective in four years might have reduced public anger. Even phasing the raise in over four years could have lowered the temperature.

Instead, the raises take effect Tuesday, which fueled still more voter outrage.

The initial pay raise plan would have made Louisiana lawmakers the eighth-best paid legislators in the United States. The increase that won final approval will put them at 15th.

Meanwhile, the state still ranks at or near the bottom of countless lists on education, health care and attractiveness to outside investors. No single group bears more responsibility for those rankings than the Louisiana Legislature.

Finally, giving themselves a big pay increase has threatened most of the goodwill engendered by a new Legislature, new House and Senate leadership and lots of new faces brought on by term limits.

Fair or not, many voters have concluded the pay raise shows it is business as usual in the Legislature.

Lawmakers won some applause through two special sessions on ethics, tax cuts and other issues.

And the session that ended Monday included an income tax cut of $359 million initially, funds to keep public-school teacher salaries at the Southern average and a new push to train workers for top-paying jobs.