#ncga: No money for roads. PLENTY of money for leadership staff salaries.
The “conservative revolution” in Raleigh is telling us the state is so cash-poor that it can’t afford some vital road repairs and construction. Yet, the folks at the AP are sharing with us some interesting details about the legislative leadership’s priorities:
As North Carolina’s population soars and annual sessions of the General Assembly often extend deep into the summer, larger staffs for the top lawmakers running the legislature have also become the norm.
Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore counted over a dozen workers in each of their offices at the start of this year’s session. The salaries of the taxpayer-funded employees assigned to the two offices exceed $2 million, according to personnel data provided to The Associated Press. Seven workers are paid at least $100,000 each.[…]
Hoo-boy. “Conservative revoluntionaries” padding their payrolls with two dozen staff making more than $2 million total. How many of you out there are making that kind of money, or paying your employees that kind of money? Of course, YOUR EMPLOYEES would actually be working full-time year round. But wait. There’s MORE:
[…] Non-partisan research workers at the legislative complex have provided assistance to all lawmakers since the 1970s. Forty years ago, the speaker’s staff was usually comprised of a single legislative assistant.
But so-called “partisan” staffs specifically assigned to help chamber leaders with governing have grown slowly in recent decades, starting under Democratic leadership. Republicans who took charge of state government in 2011 pledged to trim staff salary expenses, with some success. The number of permanent staff workers however, has remained the same or grown a little since then.
These staff employees provide advice on legal matters, manage appointments to state commissions and communicate with the public and the media on the Republican agenda. They also provide research and guidance to Republicans on issues like health care, education and energy exploration.[…]
More staff to support what IS a part-time job. If you are serious about shrinking government, why aren’t you shrinking the number of flacks
you have on your our payroll? MORE:
[…] The General Assembly has gotten “more complicated over the past 20 years or so,” Berger, R-Rockingham, said this week. While the use of non-partisan staff should be maximized, he added, “I think there are from time to time issues that it’s important for us to have folks that are aligned with the majority in the General Assembly.” […]
We gave you a majority so you could make things less complicated and shrink the size of government. Not aid and abet that phenomenon. MORE:
Although the General Assembly is still a part-time legislature, the speaker and Senate leader basically have become full-time posts at a time when the state has grown.
“They’re spending more and more time in Raleigh, and therefore feel the need to be involved in more issues,” said Jim Johnson, former director of the General Assembly’s nonpartisan Fiscal Research Division.
Today, Berger’s staff is comprised of 15 workers making combined annual salaries of $1.04 million, according to a list provided by the legislature’s Financial Services Office. Berger, now in his third term as Senate leader, had the same number of employees when last year’s budget-adjustment session began in May, with combined salaries of nearly $1.1 million.
“Most of our staff members could make considerably more money in the private sector but choose to work here because they believe in what Sen. Berger and the Senate caucus are doing for the state,” Berger Chief of Staff Jim Blaine said by email.
Moore, R-Cleveland, elected speaker for the first time last month, has 13 employees with annual salaries of nearly $977,000. Last May, outgoing Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, had 11 employees totaling $839,000 in salaries, personnel data show. Tillis’ staff salaries exceeded $1 million during his first term as speaker in 2011, but he reduced the amount after the session ended later that year.
Moore’s staffing decisions reflect his plans to offer more assistance to members and to work more closely with committees and their chairmen, spokeswoman Mollie Young said. “Every speaker has had a different structure and management style — Speaker Moore is no different,” Young wrote in an email.
I wonder if that ”assistance” includes the on-going efforts by some House leadership staff to determine which legislators are leaking to THIS web site. MORE:
[…]
Harold Brubaker, the Republican House speaker from 1995 through 1998, said he recalls having six or seven full-time workers. Nine-term Senate leader Marc Basnight, D-Dare, had nine permanent workers in 2004, growing to 11 in 2009, according to documents.
Brubaker said legislative leaders need partisan staff to consider political implications of policy decisions. […]
Years ago, when my position included regular work around the Puzzle Palace (legislative building), it was clear that a great many of the ”non-partisan staff” were anything but. Most of them were very partisan Democrat hacks, and no Republican was likely to get hired for that ”non-partisan staff”. The Bill Drafting office was particularly partisan, and it was headed by a guy who had been a major anti-war radical protest leader at Chapel Hill in his college days. It was a common complaint from GOP legislators that Bill Drafting was much slower to respond to Republicans and much more likely to screw up their bills. That was part of what was called a ”non-partisan staff”.
We need to get away from this fiction of a non-partisan staff. NC needs to do like the US Congress and have majority staff and minority staff, so it is out in the open what everyone’s real agenda is. There is actually a bigger need for leadership staff because of this illusion of a ”non-partisan staff”. Divide the entire staff between majority and minority positions, and there will no longer be as much need for big leadership staffs.
Brant, I am a bit surprised that you would accept the analysis of the leftwing hacks at the AP as being anything other than leftie political propaganda. You are usually right on the money, but not on this one.
I accept what you state above, I suppose. I do have a big problem with $100,000 plus salaries for any of these positions.
Yo, what’s all the huh-bub? It works out really well for us up here in Raleigh and Washington. Yo money spends so good and there’s lots of it to go around amongst friends. We’ll be asking for more soon so quit complaining. Best part, we get to do whatever we want to with it cause you voted us in. It is as we call it a mandate, who could argue that?. Thanks for the MAHHH-JARRR-AHHH-TEEE its working out great!!! Woot woot!
So what you’re saying Mo Yo is that first they’ll pay themselves first and then ask for more later to fund the necessary functions of the state government. Increase salaries and perks for the insiders, then the faulty bridges get repaired with what’s left over or later when they shake the public down for more. Perks first for them, then public safety addressed maybe later.