THE POLITICS OF PAY RAISES

One of the interesting developments in the debacle of December’s special session of the legislature was what happened — or, maybe more correctly, what didn’t happen — regarding the proposed pay raises for some public employees.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco included a wide-ranging proposal for pay increases for teachers, support workers, university professors, and fire and police personnel in her call for the special session. The Blanco administration’s floor leaders in the Legislature introduced a resolution that would have taken the existing cap on state expenditures ($10.3 billion) and raised it by $2.4 billion — almost a 25 percent increase in potential spending. One of the wedges used to pressure legislators to vote for raising the spending cap was the proposal to use some of the excess revenues for the pay raises.

The public employees in line for the pay raises were urged to contact legislators and lobby them to raise the expenditure cap. What those employees were not being told was a cold, hard truth: The pay raises could be enacted with a simple majority vote using dollars available below the spending cap.

Pure and simple, the public employees were again being used by politicians. If the administration’s legislative leadership would have brought the pay raises up for a vote before any other expenditure proposal, they would have easily passed both houses of the Legislature with the simple majority vote needed.

But in that scenario, the pay raises would have used up most of the dollars available below the cap. That would have meant that less popular spending proposals would have had to fuel the drive to greatly expand the spending cap, and the powers that be in state government were fearful that would not happen.

So once again, history repeated itself in Louisiana politics. In year’s past, whenever politicians wanted to raise a significant amount of taxes, they would always say the proposal was for “teacher pay raises,” even though most of the money would not be going into the bank accounts of classroom teachers. Those public employees were just a means to an end.

The Legislature will meet again in a few months, and the proposal for pay raises for certain public employees will, in all likelihood, again be used as a wedge to significantly raise the spending cap.

Teachers, firefighters, sheriffs’ deputies and state police officers will again be summoned to fill the legislative chambers to press the effort to bust the spending cap. But before they come to Baton Rouge to do the bidding of those who would be their political masters, they should realize something very important: They don’t have to be used as pawns to get their pay raise.

There is enough money below the cap in the current budget to give them a significant pay increase.

Likewise, there will be enough money below the expenditure ceiling in the next budget to annualize those pay raises.

It only takes a simple majority vote of the Legislature to grant those pay raises with the money available below the spending cap. There are more than enough votes to do that.

For once, the teachers and other public employees should refuse to be used. They should demand that their raises be granted with the dollars available below the cap, and they should be irate if those in power try to use those dollars on other expenditures. Instead of pressuring the legislators who are for fiscal responsibility, this time the public employees should focus their attention on the ones who try to use them to pursue the path of fiscal irresponsibility.

THE POLITICS OF PAY RAISES