(UPDATED to included amendment added that requires vote ratifying pay raise)
The Kansas Senate on Wednesday turned aside an effort to blunt the cost of a pay increase for lawmakers that’s set to start next year.
Republican state Sen. Rob Olson of Olathe tried unsuccessfully to raise salaries for lawmakers to $150 a day from the current level of $88.66 a day.
His proposal was far less than what an independent commission recommended last summer.
He tried to attach it to the state’s proposed $25.1 billion budget, but it was rejected on a 14-19 vote.
Republican state Sen. Dennis Pyle of Hiawatha added an amendment that would require the Legislature to approve of the pay raises. It passed on a 20-8 vote.
Based on a 90-day session, the annual increase proposed by Olson would have risen to $13,500 a year from the current level of $7,979.
He also would have increased the pay during the interim to $604.15 a pay period from the current level of $354.15. Annually, it would have increased to $12,083 from $7,083.
Olson pushed his proposal as an alternative to recommendations made by an independent commission, which called for raising base pay to $43,000 plus per diem pay for total pay of about $57,000 a year.
The pay raise recommended by the commission will start next year after it was adopted when the Legislature didn’t take action on the measure in February.
The Legislature had 30 days from the start of this session to adopt a concurrent resolution that would have set aside the recommended pay raise.
A resolution was introduced this session, but it was never acted on, although there was an unsuccessful vote in the Senate to pull the resolution out of committee.
Olson said the Senate never had a chance to vote on the pay raise recommended by the independent commission.
“I think the body should have to vote on a pay increase,” he said.
“This is not a place where you should get rich,” he said. “What you’ll have is senators and House members who will be here for a long period of time.”
Olson said he has served 20 years for basically the same salary, which gave him enough money to serve in Legislature while keeping a job at home.
“I believe it’s fair for the time that we commit,” Olson said of his proposal.
“Maybe down the road, more needs to be done, I don’t know. I don’t think we should be gold plating anything we do.”
Republican state Sen. Alicia Straub of Ellinwood supported the amendment, saying there needed to be an open debate about a pay raise on the Senate floor.
Republican state Sen. Renee Erickson of Wichita said the independent commission – made of many former lawmakers – was created to take the politics out of legislators voting to raise their own pay.
“It was made up of people who had no skin in this,” she said.
“It was an objective commission,” she said.
“It was a way to get more diverse representation in the Kansas Legislature by making it at least a financial possibility for those of us not in a position or at a point in our lives to be able to afford to serve,” she said.
“By no means is the new raise going to make people wealthy or kings and queens for serving as a public servant.”
