A year after boosting pay and pensions in hopes of better compensating legislators, a House panel on Tuesday began reviewing a bill to increase retirement benefits for lawmakers by another 50%.
The measure — if passed — would double what lawmakers could receive when they retire from what it was at the beginning of 2022.
The House Retirement Committee voted to move forward with a financial study on the cost of House Bill 823 by Rep. Patty Bentley, D-Butler, a necessary first step for the legislation to be considered during the 2024 session.
It would likely cost taxpayers little to nothing because the Legislative Retirement System has more than enough money to pay out benefits right now and lawmakers contribute part of their salaries to the fund.
“It is going to benefit all of us in the room at some point,” Bentley told the committee.
For more than a decade, lawmakers avoided raising their pay or pensions because they feared a public backlash from voters.
But legislative leaders said that meant the General Assembly was largely filled with the wealthy, with business owners who could take three months off for the session, retirees, and with people who could get by on the low pay.
During the 2021 session, state lawmakers were paid $17,342 a year. They received a $173 daily allowance when they were in session, in committee meetings, or doing other authorized legislative work. Their pension was $36 a month for each year they served in the General Assembly.
Lawmakers also get highly coveted state health insurance benefits.
Last year, the pay was boosted to $22,342 a year, the per diem was $247, and the pension was increased to $50 a month per year served.
This session, lawmakers approved another pay raise for state employees, so their salaries will go to $24,342, and under Bentley’s bill - if approved in 2024 - the pension would increase to $75 a month for every year served when they retire.
With the changes approved in the past two years, the average Georgia lawmaker will collect in the range of $36,000-$41,000 a year in pay and per diems, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution calculation based on figures released by the state fiscal office, an arm of the General Assembly.
That’s far less than the base pay in Alabama, where lawmakers earn about $54,000, while in other surrounding states, lawmakers are paid similar to those in Georgia, or less, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The state pensions lawmakers are paid in Georgia aren’t huge. Before the change last year, a lawmaker who served 20 years and retired would get a pension of $8,640 a year when they were eligible to collect. If Bentley’s bill passes in 2024, that would be bumped up to $18,000 a year.
Being a state legislator is considered a part-time job with part-time pay. But after passing laws for 40 days in Atlanta each winter, legislators go home to a world of meetings, speeches, constituent services and local politics.
The low pay is often cited by younger and mid-career professionals when they quit the General Assembly after a few years. They say they can’t afford to serve while raising a family. Many wind up lobbying their former colleagues, making 10 or 20 times what they earned making laws.
Opponents of increases say lawmakers knew what the pay and benefits were when they decided to run for office. They stress a desire to maintain a citizen General Assembly, where legislators meet in Atlanta, pass laws and a state budget, and then go home to their communities, their jobs and lives.
The 54,000 retired state employees who have lobbied for years for cost-of-living pension increases wish they were in the same boat as lawmakers. While the legislative pension system has more than 100% of the funds needed to pay benefits, the Employees Retirement System has been more in the 70%-75% range in recent years. The ERS board, which manages the funds, recently gave a larger cost-of-living increase to beneficiaries of the legislative retirement system than the ERS beneficiaries
“We just wish there was additional funding in ERS so we could partake (in the increases),” said Chuck Freedman, a former state budget official who lobbies for the Georgia State Retirees Association. “I wish it was there for the rest of us.”
WHAT GEORGIA LAWMAKERS EARN
Annual base pay: Will be $24,341 with the recently approved cost-of-living raise for state employees.
Daily allowance: $247 a day during the session or when they are in committee meetings or doing other authorized state work
The base pay for legislators in surrounding states in 2022, excluding per diems, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures:
Alabama: $53,956
Florida: $29,697
North Carolina: $13,951
Tennessee: $24,316
South Carolina: $10,400
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