STATE PAY COMMISSION SERVES NO PURPOSE

The General Assembly's failure to reach agreement on legislation that would have rejected a pay raise for Missouri judges and the lieutenant governor confirms what many suspected before the Missouri Citizens' Commission on Compensation for Elected Officials ever came into being: Politics as usual rules the process of bestowing pay raises upon elected state officials.

Because the Senate rejected a Missouri House proposal that would have blocked the pay raises, the salary increases became effective Feb. 1. There were, of course, no pay raises to be given, because the Legislature hasn't appropriated the money for them, and there won't be any raises unless the Legislature chooses to do so.

Despite the pay commission, the General Assembly still holds the purse strings and, therefore, still decides who gets pay raises, whether it be for the lawmakers themselves or any other elected state official.

The Missouri Citizens' Commission on Compensation for Elected Officials was established by a constitutional amendment approved by Missourians in 1994. The commission is required to review salaries for statewide officers, legislators and trial judges. It submits a pay plan to the Legislature every two years, and the plan is automatically adopted unless the House and Senate both reject it.

Former state representative Larry Thomason of Kennett orchestrated the pay commission plan in an effort to take legislative politics out of the issue of pay raises. It was designed to remove the onerous and unpopular act of lawmakers' granting themselves pay raises. But as long as the House and Senate must agree on the same measure to reject raises and appropriate funding for them, legislative politics is as much involved as it was before the commission came into existence. The only advantage is to Missouri lawmakers: They no longer have to propose raises for themselves -- not when the commission can do it for them.

The entire process is an enormous waste of time and energy by commission members whose proposals are at the mercy of the Legislature. And the lawmakers are simply duplicating the commission's work in debating the pay raise issues the commission puts before them.

Southeast Missouri lawmakers have voiced their discontent with the process, and there is talk among some of asking Missourians to abolish the constitutional amendment that established the pay commission.

The plan was ill-conceived. The commission serves no vital role, and voters should be given the opportunity to do away with it.