I can kind of understand the union exemptions...it's been fairly common in this time of salary increase freezes/reductions to leave the unions alone. If you have agreed to a contract, you need to live up to that contract...the lawmakers not touching their own salaries was explained away because there is an independent citizen led 'salary commission' that determines their salaries.
Sometime in June, some members of the Legislature got cute, and added a Section 2 to the Salary Reduction bill. Section 2 ordered the Office of Financial Management to create a form by which elected state officials could voluntarily offer to have their salaries reduced, starting July 1st.
Cool. As of August 6th, 12 of the 147 elected officials in the state had put in the paperwork to do so. For the bold 8% that have done so...congratulations. The list includes Governor Gregiore, the Lieutenant Governor, and several congressmen and senators, who have sacrificed between 3-5% of their salaries. Attorney General Rob McKenna(running for Governor) has not elected to have his pay cut, instead saying he will donate his percentage to charity. I hope he follows through.
More elected officials are signing up every day...and for me, the fly in the ointment of this feel good story is this:
Many lawmakers also said they hadn’t waived their pay sooner because they didn’t know about bill language that created a pay waiver form at www.salaries.wa.gov
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