The state will spend close to $27 million this coming year to support the Legislature, giving Maine one of the highest legislative expenditures in the country as a percentage of income.
That budget, which was reviewed Friday by the Appropriations Committee, was one area a Brookings Institution report suggested could be trimmed to find savings to reinvest in economic development.
The legislative accounts, which cover legislative staff and analysts, salary for the part-time legislators, the law library, a new fiscal oversight office and a capital fund for the Statehouse, have grown by $11 million over the last 10 years.
Most of that money is spent on people – their salaries, health insurance and retirement. And while a little more than 200 people – not including elected members of the House and Senate – work for the Legislature out of a total of 12,000 state workers, some believe it would send a message if the Legislature cut its own.
“We are asking other agencies of government to pare down their budget,” said Rep. Janet Mills, D-Farmington, who serves on the Appropriations Committee. “I think we owe it to the public to at least look at ours in the long run.”
The Legislative Council, which is made up of Democratic and Republican leadership from the Senate and the House, reviews the budget and voted unanimously last month to recommend spending $56 million over the next two years – a $3.5 million increase over the last biennium. That’s $26.8 million in the next fiscal year, when the Legislature is in session only four months, and $28.8 million the following year when the session runs seven months.
Sen. John Martin, D-Aroostook County, a member of the council who also sits on Appropriations, recommended the budget, saying it contained no additional staff and was driven largely by increases in health insurance, pension payments and negotiated salaries.
When Mills referenced the Brookings Institution report, which says Maine’s legislative expenditures exceed the average for other rural states by 86 percent, Martin said Brookings was nothing more than a lobbying organization.
“We have a very large Legislature,” compared to other rural states, Martin said, and that wasn’t taken into account by Brookings. “This budget does not increase staff at all; it just keeps up with the cost of inflation.”
Mills believes salaries are the real problem. “I think we have to look at our salaries and how they compare with similar positions in the private sector,” Mills said. “We have a larger Legislature, but the legislators’ salaries are an extremely small part of that. It’s all staff.”
A review of the numbers shows both the size of the Legislature and the salaries it pays some staff are driving factors. The state’s 151 House members and 35 senators will get paid just over $22,000 each over the next two years – $12,713 for the current session that runs through June and $9,326 for the short session next year running from January through April. But when you add in insurance and other benefits, the cost for just legislators adds up to close to $4 million in the upcoming fiscal year.
Then there are the salaries for staff.
A review of those salaries shows eight people, largely directors of offices, the clerk of the House and secretary of the Senate, make over $100,000, with most in the $107,000 range. Seven make between $90,000 and $100,000; 10 make between $80,000 and $90,000; 18 make between $70,000 and $80,000; and, 20 earn between $60,000 and $70,000.
“I don’t come from Portland,” Mills said. “The average income in my area is about $28,000. That would be an extremely low income for a person in the legislative budget.”
Sen. Richard Rosen, R-Hancock and Penobscot counties, is the assistant minority leader. He said it would be fair to ask the Legislature to cap its budget increases at the same level the overall state budget is now capped, somewhere around 3.1 percent annually. The proposed legislative budget is growing by a little over 3.5 percent per year.
“One way to lead by example would be to make sure the legislative budget does not exceed those growth rate limits,” Rosen said.
Mills said she would like the budget to go through an “OPEGA-like analysis,” to see where things could be cut in the future, referring to the new legislative Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability.
That office was just created and funded by the Legislature in 2003. It’s annual budget, by design, has grown from $298,000 in the first year of operation to $954,000 in the upcoming fiscal year.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
