{"id":60875,"date":"2016-11-08T09:58:45","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T15:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=60875"},"modified":"2016-11-08T09:58:45","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T15:58:45","slug":"money-changes-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=60875","title":{"rendered":"Money Changes Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the issues I&#8217;ve been silent about so far is the Constitutional Amendment that would take legislative pay out of the legislature&#8217;s hands and move the decision on salaries for legislators (and many other government employees) to an independent council.<\/p>\n<p>Brianna Biersbach writes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.minnpost.com\/politics-policy\/2016\/09\/theres-amendment-state-constitution-ballot-year-heres-what-you-need-know-abo\">an excellent piece on the subject<\/a> in\u00a0<em>MinnPost<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The government-accountability hawk in me says &#8220;note no and do it now!&#8221;. \u00a0 \u00a0Voting for pay raises is political suicide; the limited-government spending hawk in me says &#8220;good&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s a little more to it than that.<\/p>\n<p>A friend of the blog &#8211; a solid Republican &#8211; wrote me yesterday:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I am a single income, homeschooling, tithing Christian man in a [modest house in a first-ring &#8216;burb]. It would be tough for me be a legislator and leave my IT job for 6-9 months a year for $32-49k. Am I off base?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Not at all. \u00a0I&#8217;ve been approached to run for office. \u00a0I&#8217;ve had to respond &#8220;unless I win seats in a couple of districts, I can&#8217;t financially justify it&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, &#8220;serving&#8221; in the Legislature is effectively limited to a few classes of people:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People with highly remunerative jobs they can put &#8220;on hold&#8221; for weeks or months at a time. \u00a0Think lawyers.<\/li>\n<li>People whose spouses make enough to support the political habit<\/li>\n<li>People whose employers are really conscientious about allowing their employees to take sabbaticals for public service. \u00a0Show of hands? \u00a0That&#8217;s what I thought.<\/li>\n<li>People working for unions who see the benefit of having members in high places. \u00a0Including lots and lots of teachers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Oh, there\u00a0<em>are\u00a0<\/em>a very, very few legislators with relatively limited financial means who work for the $32K and change the legislature pays, and find pick-up work between sessions. \u00a0But they are rare indeed.<\/p>\n<p>In effect, it limits &#8220;public service&#8221; to people whose entire goal is&#8230;well, public &#8220;Service&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>So there&#8217;s a theoretical case to be made for the council.<\/p>\n<p>Realistically? \u00a0They&#8217;re not going to make the legislature financially remunerative enough to draw successful private-sector workers into public life. \u00a0And that&#8217;s largely a bad thing; especially in Minnesota, our legislature needs more of them.<\/p>\n<p>The other option, I hasten to remind you, would be to get by with less legislature, and legislation. \u00a0North Dakota&#8217;s legislature meets every\u00a0<em>other\u00a0<\/em>year, for a very abbreviated session. \u00a0It pays the same as it paid 120 years ago &#8211; $5 a day (plus per diems) &#8211; so it&#8217;s nobody&#8217;s idea of the career. \u00a0And North Dakota is a much better-governed state than Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s never getting on the table; too much pork for the political class is at stake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the issues I&#8217;ve been silent about so far is the Constitutional Amendment that would take legislative pay out of the legislature&#8217;s hands and move the decision on salaries for legislators (and many other government employees) to an independent council. Brianna Biersbach writes an excellent piece on the subject in\u00a0MinnPost. The government-accountability hawk in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mn-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60876,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60875\/revisions\/60876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}