Throwing the Bums Out

How a small-town businessman sparked an anti-incumbency movement in Pennsylvania--and what it means for national politics.

Shira Toeplitz from the December 2006 issue

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/span> GOP span class="c2">agreed to spend more on his pet projects. Whether or not it was a quid pro quo, he got at least some of what he asked for: Among other things, the legislature passed emergency spending for mass transit, and the final budget included money to implement environmental bonds. o:p> /o:p> /span> /p> p> span class="c2">During budget discussions the following summer, legislative language for the pay raise came in the form of Act 44, which made congressional salaries the benchmark for state lawmakers’ salaries. Under the act, state representatives and senators would get a base salary half that paid to U.S. representatives, who currently receive about $165,000 a year. Act 44 also increased pay for judges and other high-level government officials. Because the state constitution says lawmakers may not accept pay increases in the middle of a session, members took their raises in the form of “unvouchered expenses,” which don’t require receipts. o:p> /o:p> /span> /p> p> When Rendell signed the bill into law, he hailed it on the grounds that it took the power to increase salaries out of lawmakers’ hands by tying their pay to the salaries earned by members of Congress. He also argued that to keep bringing bright legal minds to the statehouse and the courts, salaries had to be in the range of what law school graduates could earn at private firms in their first year. The defense went over well in urban Philadelphia, but not in the conservative midstate area, where both the cost of living and constituent salaries are much lower. The median household income in Central Pennsylvania is about $42,000, and state legislators had approved salaries for themselves almost twice that in most cases—around $81,000, depending on a lawmaker’s leadership role and committee assignments. The job is full-time and the leadership tends to work long nights, but no one is clocking hours during the legislature’s 11-week summer recess. The raise made Pennsylvania’s General Assembly the second highest-paid legislature in the country, next to California’s.