Let's put our Legislators on a Performance Improvement Plan
Posted by: Teresa Shuff Trujillo | 04/30/2008 5:48 PM
I've spent a few decades in the private sector. I've been an employee, I've been the manager of a big department, a corporate executive, and a small business owner. I think it is time to review the pay policies for our legislators. California has a citizens' commission that is supposed to review legislative compensation. We voted for the California Citizens Compensation Commission when proposition 112 passed in 1990. The commission seems to understand that this is no time to raise legislators compensation, but what about completely revamping the compensation to reward them for working well together and solving California's crippling budget deficit?
This plan has one simple goal--reward the legislature for meeting legislative goals. The legislators can make a very good living if they insure that our budget is balanced, our schools are amongst the best in the nation, and our infrastructure is maintained. They get bonuses if they move welfare recipients to work, create new jobs in California, and work to promote tourism. They effectively get raises if they substantially lower the number of uninsured and homeless.
Pay for performance is a generally accepted tool in the private sector, and it would certainly offer a compelling incentive to our legislators to work together to solve the state's problems. Performance based compensation would insure that the legislators worked together to develop creative solutions to some of our most serious problems.
Today, state legislators make $116,218.00 per year plus a tax free per diem for every day they are in session.
Here are the considerations I would like to throw on the table:
This would give the legislators a total possible compensation of $135,000.00, or about double the annual compensation of the average constituent. All I'm asking is that the legislature do what the voters have asked them to do for decades. They need to provide leadership that benefits all Californians--not just line the pockets of political cronies.
They have consistently bickered over a budget to the point of being ridiculous. End the budget farce and get a big bonus. Deliver a budget that is realistic and not based on a successful sprinkling of pixie dust and get an even bigger bonus. Actually live within the state's means and get another bonus. Rewarding our elected officials for being fiscally responsible is fiscally responsible. I know that this is a very hard concept for those in the public sector. A billion here, a billion there--it's only tax money and California's voters will never miss it is the common mantra of individuals on the public payroll.
There are legislators who won't want to risk their cushy compensation package to fix the mess they've made. Maybe we will even see some of them leave their legislative seats for greener pastures. But, the good and dedicated legislators will stay as long as their term limits will let them to work out the cronyism mess in Sacramento. We can test this pay method in California, and if it is successful, move the theory to Washington.
Jobs, healthcare, and education are three essential components to California's success. Today the state taxes employers out of the marketplace. And, if employers are not taxed out of the marketplace they are buried in red tape and paperwork. Trust me, I know how hard it is to comply with regulations that even the bureaucrats can't explain in simple English. And, if California continues to refuse to get a handle on education's penchant for delivering high drop-out rates and functionally illiterate workers you will not see the kind of job creation that is necessary to sustain California's economy.
Increases in education rates and available jobs have shown to decrease crime. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to realize that an employed citizenry is a happy place.
I singled our tourism as an industry to focus growth for a specific reason. This is California, and it is cheap, easy and fast to grow jobs in tourism. The dollars that arrive in our communities stay in California. Local economies benefit from bed taxes and tourism in incalculable ways. Tourism is good for California.
What is your idea for compensating our legislators? The California Citizens Compensation Commission is looking for a new way to compensate the legislators. Let them hear your idea, or send them this plan as an idea for change. The can be reached at the following address:
California Citizens Compensation Commission
Department of Personnel Administration
1515 S Street, North Building, Suite 400
Sacramento, California 95811-7258
(916) 324-0455
This plan has one simple goal--reward the legislature for meeting legislative goals. The legislators can make a very good living if they insure that our budget is balanced, our schools are amongst the best in the nation, and our infrastructure is maintained. They get bonuses if they move welfare recipients to work, create new jobs in California, and work to promote tourism. They effectively get raises if they substantially lower the number of uninsured and homeless.
Pay for performance is a generally accepted tool in the private sector, and it would certainly offer a compelling incentive to our legislators to work together to solve the state's problems. Performance based compensation would insure that the legislators worked together to develop creative solutions to some of our most serious problems.
Today, state legislators make $116,218.00 per year plus a tax free per diem for every day they are in session.
Here are the considerations I would like to throw on the table:
- Base pay equal to the California average household income of approximately $65,000. Granted, this is mostly for two income families--but our legislators are special.
- Bonuses based on how California is performing under their legislative decision.
- Deliver a budget on time, get $10,000 in bonus
- If the state manages to stay on budget during the fiscal year get another $10,000.00 bonus
- If the state returns money to the general fund in excess of 5% of the budget add another $5,000.00
- Create 100,000 new private sector, education and healthcare jobs with pay and benefits at or above the national average and get $10,000.00
- Increase the graduation rate by 5% and get another $5,000.00
- Increase literacy rates in grades 2, 4, and 8 by 5% and get $5,000.00
- Insure that 85% of California's school districts and schools meet their annual yearly progress mandates and earn $5,000.00
- Increase access to healthcare for the working poor and get a $5,000.00 bonus
- Increase mental health and homeless services and reduce the homeless population by 25% for a $5,000.00 bonus
- Drop violent and property crime statistics by 5% and earn $5,000.00
- Increase tourism to California by 10% and get a $5,000.00 bonus.
This would give the legislators a total possible compensation of $135,000.00, or about double the annual compensation of the average constituent. All I'm asking is that the legislature do what the voters have asked them to do for decades. They need to provide leadership that benefits all Californians--not just line the pockets of political cronies.
They have consistently bickered over a budget to the point of being ridiculous. End the budget farce and get a big bonus. Deliver a budget that is realistic and not based on a successful sprinkling of pixie dust and get an even bigger bonus. Actually live within the state's means and get another bonus. Rewarding our elected officials for being fiscally responsible is fiscally responsible. I know that this is a very hard concept for those in the public sector. A billion here, a billion there--it's only tax money and California's voters will never miss it is the common mantra of individuals on the public payroll.
There are legislators who won't want to risk their cushy compensation package to fix the mess they've made. Maybe we will even see some of them leave their legislative seats for greener pastures. But, the good and dedicated legislators will stay as long as their term limits will let them to work out the cronyism mess in Sacramento. We can test this pay method in California, and if it is successful, move the theory to Washington.
Jobs, healthcare, and education are three essential components to California's success. Today the state taxes employers out of the marketplace. And, if employers are not taxed out of the marketplace they are buried in red tape and paperwork. Trust me, I know how hard it is to comply with regulations that even the bureaucrats can't explain in simple English. And, if California continues to refuse to get a handle on education's penchant for delivering high drop-out rates and functionally illiterate workers you will not see the kind of job creation that is necessary to sustain California's economy.
Increases in education rates and available jobs have shown to decrease crime. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to realize that an employed citizenry is a happy place.
I singled our tourism as an industry to focus growth for a specific reason. This is California, and it is cheap, easy and fast to grow jobs in tourism. The dollars that arrive in our communities stay in California. Local economies benefit from bed taxes and tourism in incalculable ways. Tourism is good for California.
What is your idea for compensating our legislators? The California Citizens Compensation Commission is looking for a new way to compensate the legislators. Let them hear your idea, or send them this plan as an idea for change. The can be reached at the following address:
California Citizens Compensation Commission
Department of Personnel Administration
1515 S Street, North Building, Suite 400
Sacramento, California 95811-7258
(916) 324-0455
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Mr. Ayer registered as a Republican to be electable in an interim election with no incumbents. He did...
Brilliant!
although I think the number need to be made biggers -- your compensations for a massive improvement in schools is less than many companies spend on their CEOs health club membership.
Also, your ideas aren't things that can change in one year, eg. "Increase literacy rates in grades 2, 4, and 8 by 5% ", yet you want to compensate them yearly. That's a recipe for short-term monkey-jiggering, like one often sees on Wall Street. A better idea is that legislators get yearly compensation for each of the next 20 years, tied to how that indicator does in each of the next twenty years.
Love the idea!
That sounds like an abomination - the grafting of something resembling the free market onto governmental politics. (It would work about as well as partial deregulation did with the power industry.)
Fundamentally, doesn't this hold legislators accountable for execution by the executive branch? Separation of powers creates three coequal branches of government. Business is fundamentally different than government because it does not operate under this constraint.
Businesses set goals based on economics, not politics, because businesses are accountable to the shareholders. It is nonsensical to confuse the two.
Publicly traded businesses are held to accounting and reporting standards, while government is not. Publicly traded executives who engaged in the accounting monkey business that the state does would be dragged away in handcuffs.
It would create perverse incentives to concentrate power into central bureaucracy and administration at the expense of county and local government which can more efficiently respond to local concerns.
This is the kind of terrible idea one would expect from a governmental and political body that fundamentally fails to understand the nature and structure of government.
Just to complete the thought on government structure - it is the job of the political branches (legislature and executive) to formulate public policy. This proposal makes that the job of an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy.
Under this proposal, an unelected and unaccountable panel of political appointees substitutes its preferences for those of elected officials by setting policy priorities through perverse financial incentives. These incentives reward legislators who follow the priorities set by an unelected body. Legislators who disagree with those priorities must either work against their own self-interest (by giving themselves a pay cut) or offer only token or symbolic opposition (to appease their constituency) - an act of corruption.
This idea is a complete betrayal of our Constitution.
You are correct GOP. Lefties would automatically go for this system because it makes things more complicated, more bureaucratic, etc. under the guise of running government "like a business."
As you correctly note it is the job of the electeds to establish policy. Unfortunately our system provides almost no mechanisms for holding the permanent civil service accountable for their performance in implementing policy.