Members of the House Finance Committee advanced a bill that would give lawmakers a pay raise starting in 2025, and they advanced another bill that would explore higher wages for state workers in high-cost areas of the state.
The legislative pay raise bill, Senate Bill 740 was the last bill advanced by the Finance Committee just before 8 p.m. Tuesday. The Senate, which already passed the bill, originated it from the Rules Committee, a rarity.
Members of the House Finance Committee discussed the specifics of the bill but did not talk about the merits of raises.
Lawmakers haven’t received a pay raise since 2009. Right now, members of the Legislature make base pay of $20,000 a year.
The new compensation bill would change to an amount equal to the per capital income in West Virginia as reported to the U.S. Census Bureau the prior year. Currently, that’s estimated to be about $28,000.
“The way it is worded, my understanding is if the average wage of West Virginia goes up, our raise would go up; at the same if it went down, our wage would go down,” said Delegate Gary Howell, R-Mineral, seeking confirmation about whether his understanding was correct.
The bill would also increase the amount lawmakers make for duties like special sessions or interim committee meetings.
The basis of the pay raise bill is recommendations by the 7-member Citizens Legislative Compensation Commission, which meets every four years as spelled out in the state Constitution.
Another bill, Senate Bill 593, would require every state agency to develop a locality pay plan for state workers. At this point, it doesn’t require actually implementing locality pay. Agencies would need to report back to the Legislature by the end of the year.
The bill includes findings that some areas of the state are experiencing higher economic growth and more rapid increases of cost of living. It says the state is losing valuable public employees because salaries and benefits are not competitive.
Members of the House Finance Committee voted to send the bill to the full body for consideration, although delegates shot down a similar bill just last week.
“I’ll vote to get this out of committee,” said Delegate Amy Summers, R-Taylor, “but I do think it’s not the salary increases we should be doing because I think that’s going to affect our retirement.
“I think we have to study the housing markets in the area, not the area market rate salaries. We’ve got to do housing allowances so it doesn’t affect retirement. It’s a good start, I just think it’s looking in the wrong direction.”
Delegate Paul Espinosa, R-Jefferson, said delegates should give the policies time to take shape.
“I just don’t see the harm in allowing agencies to try to think through this issue and see how they might be able to address the problem in each of the departments,” he said.