Legislators putting pay before panel of citizens

CARSON CITY – Rather than raise their own pay, legislators decided Monday to create a citizens commission to study it.

"We aren’t going to do anything terrible that can be hung around our necks," Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, said. "We don’t want to spend more money on ourselves when state employees are on furloughs and teachers are being laid off."

Lawmakers moved to draft bills that would create the citizens committee to study their pay, switch to annual legislative sessions and make other changes in their operations.

Under the Nevada Constitution, legislators are paid for the first 60 days of their 120-day, every-other-year sessions. They receive $8,777 per session – $146.29 a day – plus a $154 a day living allowance. One clause gives them another $60 per session for items such as postage, newspapers and stationery. Their cellphone bill? When the constitution was approved by voters in 1864, the telephone had not been invented.

Neither Segerblom nor members of his Committee to Study the Structure and Operations of the Nevada Legislature offered many specifics on what the citizens group should review or even how its members would be chosen. Segerblom and Assemblyman Lynn Stewart, R-Henderson, will meet with staff lawyers and draft the bills or resolutions that would create the commission.

Next year, the Legislature would decide whether to create the commission. If it does, then the citizens commission – the first created by lawmakers in 25 years – would make recommendations that would go back to the Legislature in 2015. Any recommendations that would change the constitution would require approval of voters, and that could not be scheduled before 2018.

In 2006, a proposed amendment to pay legislators for every day they work drew support of 29 percent of state voters. On the same ballot, 44 percent of voters favored legalizing marijuana.

Sen. Greg Brower, R-Reno, questioned whether creating a citizens commission was necessary because legislators must decide what to put before voters.

Earlier, former Sen. Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, said legislative pay must be increased.

"You have got to pay them more," he said. "Otherwise you won’t get qualified legislators or compete with (the pay of) local governments."

During the hearing, Segerblom, a state Senate candidate, said the power of the Legislature has been reduced by term limits, which prohibit legislators from serving more than 12 years in each house.

He said he wishes all legislators could meet for three days at least three times a year, outside of their biennial session, to discuss economic problems and issues. Some meetings should be in Las Vegas, he added.

Las Vegas resident Knight Allen had urged legislative committee members to tie their pay to the average worker in Nevada. With the average pay at just under $42,000 a year, legislators would make $13,900 for their one-third-year of work under his proposal.

Legislators could ask the citizens commission to consider Allen’s plan, favored by a governor’s committee that looked at pay in 2000.

Contacted at his home, Allen said he cannot understand why legislators want to hide behind a citizens commission rather than just approving his pay plan themselves.

He contended they would not receive any voter backlash by adopting his plan because voters would approve linking legislative pay to their own wages.

Nevada legislators make more than lawmakers in some states, less than others.

New Mexico pays its legislators no salary and gives them a $159 a day housing allowance. Utah, which has a slightly larger population than Nevada, pays its legislators $5,200 a year and a $185 a day living allowance. Texas pays $7,200 a session.

California legislators receive the most, $95,291 a year and a $173 a day living allowance.

Contact reporter Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901.