Charles Murray chairs the California Citizens Compensation Commission. He says he got a lot of mail about cutting state lawmakers’ pay again this year.
“We had tons of emails, letters. Some more toward getting it down to zero, a lot of it was, if they don’t have a budget, we’ll cut their budget to zero.”
Murray says he favored another pay cut for lawmakers. But ultimately the Commission voted to keep the status quo, in light of last year’s 18-percent reduction. Democratic Senator Loni Hancock says she agrees with the decision.
“The salary that we get is a reasonable for the very, very hard work, 24-7 increasingly just about 12 months out of every year.”
Republican Senator Tony Strickland says last year’s cut reflects what a lot of Californians are going through.
"I thought you know the 18-percent pay cut was appropriate, maybe even a little deep, but it wasn’t as deep as some as these other families are going through.”
Last year, lawmakers’ pay was reduced from more than 116-thousand dollars per year to just over 95-thousand.