State legislators will get to have their pay raise and eat it, too, if
Justice Christina Ryba’s ruling holds up. Call it the latest despicable turn in an already outrageous tale.
As we’ve noted before, lawmakers hadn’t seen a salary increase in decades because members know the public hates seeing politicians vote to raise their own pay. So the Legislature, in collusion with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, set up an independent commission to settle the question, with legislators able to return for a special session to reject the commission’s plan if they didn’t like it.
Thanks to Cuomo, the law also gave commissioners the power to eliminate other legislative compensation (the “lulu” bonuses for top members of committees) and to restrict their outside income. But when the panel did just that — killing most lulus and setting a 15 percent limit on other pay — many legislators were furious.
Not so furious as to veto the whole package, which immediately bumped base pay from $79,500 to $110,000 this year, with two more $10,000 increases to come in 2020 and 2021. But mad enough to file multiple suits, one of them federal.
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