Compensation Committee Releases Report; Group Files Lawsuit

December 17th, 2018

The New York State Compensation Committee, which was tasked with making recommendations with respect to adequate levels of compensation, non-salary benefits, and allowances for state legislators, statewide elected officials, and state agency heads, released its full report last week.

On December 6, Committee members said on that they would recommend that state legislators’ salaries increase from their current $79,500 to $110,000 on Jan. 1, 2019, then to $120,000 in 2020 and to $130,000 in 2021.  But they also said that lawmakers would face new restrictions on their ability to earn outside income and substantially limit the number of legislative stipends (commonly known as “lulus”) that many lawmakers receive.

The Committee’s report recommends significantly limiting legislative stipends to three leadership posts in each conference, and the chairs and ranking minority members of each chambers’ fiscal committee and Codes committee.

The cap on outside income was modeled after congressional rules. Outside income would be capped at 15 percent of their legislative salary, and lawmakers would be barred from being “affiliating with or being employed by a firm, partnership, association, corporation, or other entity that provides professional services involving a fiduciary relationship, except for the practice of medicine.”

The recommendations also provide that. In order to receive the pay increase, lawmakers must have approved the state budget by April 1 of the preceding year.

The committee’s recommendations become law on January 1, 2019 unless the Legislature rejects them.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie criticized the Committee’s recommendations, saying that the legislative intent was for it to only consider salaries, and not to consider limits on outside income.

Last Friday, the Government Justice Center, “an independent, not-for-profit legal center that provides pro bono representation and legal services to protect the rights of New Yorkers in the face of improper action by state or local governments,” announced that it is filing a lawsuit to block implementation of state pay panel’s report, including the pay increase.  One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is Assemblyman Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Suffolk County).