That’s right. All the fun is to be had by the starving homeless who beg for spaghetti and pancakes.
Absolutely. I would note that median household income in Harrisburg, PA is less than $27,000. These yahoos are being paid more than 2.5 times that. Hell, median household income in Philadelphia, with its much higher cost of living is only $30,746.
These guys are giving themselves 16% raise for mismanaging the budget to the tune of a half-billion dollars in FY2003 plus a projected shortfall of another half to two billion dollars in FY2004? And all this is after stealing about 3/4 of a billion dollars from PA’s “rainy day fund.” What a racket.
What happened to the “spending freeze” that PA enacted in 12/03?
There is a problem with the lege missing the budget deadline. Had it gone on much longer, state employees wouldn’t have gotten paid on time, and might’ve gone for a significant length of time with no income at all.
Many state employees are in the Harrisburg area, which, as Unc points out, doesn’t have a very high median income to begin with. Imagine thousands of workers forced to live on nothing while the lege dukes it out over the budget.
Robin
I just heard on the news today that around 2/3rds of the legislature has other income, which they are required to report if it exceeds $1,300 per year although they don’t have to announce the total amount of that income.
The fact is that none of them are lacking, and most are already living comfortably. And the sad fact is that in order to give themselves this pay raise they broke the spirit of the law of the state. You see, they’re technically not allowed to vote themselves pay raises that take effect during the term, but they’re using “undocumented vouchers”, meaning that they get an extra $15,000 a year in cash that they don’t have to account for, to be differentiated from the stuff that they do have to account for like their luxury vehicles.
Let’s not forget the per diem they get when in session, which I think is around $150 a day. A lot of them also get $650 a month for car leases.
For crying out loud… they used to be #4 in pay of all the states, now they’re #2 after CA. :mad:
Finally found a linkable article.
Yes, they’re paid $129 per day if they travel more than 50 miles. They’re also paid approximately $7800 per annum in vehicular expense reimbursements. This is on top of their fully funded pensions, health and life insurance programs-all of the sundries that we peasants must pay for ourselves or do without.