Editorial of The Times: Reject a Raise for New York Lawmakers

The first public hearing of the special committee that will determine whether New York’s state legislators get a salary increase demonstrated on Friday what a shoddy arrangement it was — and why its members should tell the lawmakers they won’t be getting a raise.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature established the committee in a typical bit of Albany guile this year when the lawmakers were reluctant to do the dirty work of raising their own salaries.

The panel must issue a decision by Dec. 10, and unless the Legislature rejects it, what the panel says will become law on Jan. 1. The $79,500 salary has not increased in 20 years, so a raise is in order, but only as long as the senators and members of the Assembly forgo outside income and ban what are known as lulus, the stipends for committee chairmen and chairwomen that leaders use to hold sway over members.

Many in Albany seem to believe, questionably, that the committee — made up of State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, former State Comptroller H. Carl McCall, City Comptroller Scott Stringer and former City Comptroller William Thompson Jr. — can decide only on salary, not the two other issues. In concession, supporters of the raise have said that the Legislature could consider banning outside pay and lulus in its new session next year.

But Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie made clear in testimony before the panel Friday that there was no reason to believe that would happen.

“I think the Legislature would take what you say, your recommendations, seriously,” Heastie told the committee, saying he understood why the idea was popular. But, he said, “to agree to a specific piece of legislation in exchange for compensation is not something I’m even comfortable in doing.” He gave no reason to expect that anyone else in power would be more comfortable doing so.

“I can’t at this point tell you what I think people would be willing to do,” said Heastie, who, along with the incoming state Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, is one of two people who can say exactly what people in the Legislature will and won’t do.

We have already said exactly what the committee needs to do: reject any pay raise unless the Legislature bans lulus and outside income in a special session before Dec. 10, or approve a pay raise along with those two bans. If lawmakers object to that latter possibility, they can reject the report and do what they should have done to begin with — enact the changes themselves.

But after Heastie publicly renounced his responsibility to enact reforms — a tremendous disappointment as Democrats are about to take control of both houses for the first time in years — maybe the committee should just say, forget about it.