Maine’s governor earns an annual salary of $70,000, which doesn’t seem like all that much considering what we expect from the poor guy.
Of course, the governor also gets free health care, free housing, free food, free servants and a chauffeured ride with gas and maintenance paid for by us. And his retirement benefits can kick in after just one day in office and pay him or his surviving spouse $26,000 a year for life.
Still, the state’s chief executive is the lowest paid governor in the nation. He makes less than Maine’s secretary of state ($78,000), attorney general ($104,000) or state treasurer ($71,000). All those officials get regular raises, in line with what’s paid to other state employees. But by law, the guv is stuck at 70 grand.
“Compared to the tremendous amount of work the governor performs every single day, all year long – nights and weekends included – the governor’s pay is wildly out of sync with the much better pay and much lower workload of the constitutional officers,” a spokesman for Republican Gov. Paul LePage told the Bangor Daily News last year.
Nevertheless, bills to increase the governor’s salary have gone nowhere.
The last time our guy in the Blaine House got a raise was 1987, when GOP Gov. John McKernan took office, and the salary was doubled from $35,000. The only reason the Legislature approved that measure was because McKernan’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Brennan, had so much trouble making ends meet that he had to take a part-time job as a ball boy for the New England Patriots. It didn’t pay much, but the tips from the quarterback were terrific.
It’s unseemly for the leader of our state to even have to consider moonlighting. Finagling with pressure gauges or greeting shoppers at Walmart isn’t gubernatorial behavior. That’s how our legislators keep the wolf from the door.
Members of the state House and Senate are paid about $13,000 for the first year of their terms, when the Legislature is in session for six months. In the second year, when the session runs about three months, they get around nine grand. That pitiful amount can be supplemented by reimbursements for mileage, housing and meals for each day legislators are in Augusta, even if there’s no session. Getting appointed to a few commissions or study groups can effectively double the compensation received by a favored few members.
That still doesn’t put them much ahead of fast-food workers and convenience store clerks.
Given the miserly wages we pay our public servants, you might suppose they’d empathize with the plight of those minimum-wage slaves. Scraping together a living by working two or three jobs at $7.50 an hour shouldn’t be an alien concept to our impoverished elected officials.
Except that a disproportionate percentage of Maine’s legislators are retired and receive pensions. Another big chunk are educators, whose regular jobs and benefits are guaranteed by law while they serve. And there are lots of lawyers, most of whom never have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.
For this crowd, the experience of working multiple crummy jobs to cover the costs of rent, groceries and taxes is not only not part of their lifestyles, it’s also not part of the planet they live on. They may have heard somewhere that about 20,000 Mainers earn the minimum wage (or less) each year, but they can’t quite grasp the concept.
As a result, the chance of a minimum wage increase passing the Legislature anytime soon is about the same as the Patriots winning a game without cheating.
Faced with that political reality, Portland, South Portland and Bangor are considering enacting local ordinances to raise the basic wage. There also may be a referendum in Portland to create an even higher “living wage.” If these efforts gain traction, the movement might spread to other towns. There’s a possibility that in the next couple of years a majority of the state’s workers could receive fatter paychecks.
That prospect has prompted LePage and other opponents of an increased minimum to action. The underpaid and overworked governor, who first claimed incorrectly that such local laws are unconstitutional, has now proposed legislation that would ban municipalities from going it alone on a higher wage.
The guv probably figures that if he can get by for almost three decades without a raise, poor people ought to do the same. And he’d be right – if they had free housing, free food and a chauffeur.
If I gave you a rise (instead of a raise), email me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
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