Many people agree that salaries for state legislators and other elected officials are out-of-date but there lacks widespread agreement on how to fix that. (Ben Botkin/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
If the Oregon lawmakers who crafted Measure 116 had done their homework, they wouldn’t be asking voters to create a “Commission of Unanswered Questions” to deal with the important, and always contentious, issue of how to set pay rates for themselves and other elected officials.
That’s my takeaway from reading through the text of the measure, tracking its legislative history and researching the experience of other states related to Oregon’s constitutional amendment that would terminate the Legislature’s authority to set salaries for elected office holders and give that authority to an appointed commission.
I’m sympathetic to the problem that Measure 116 is trying to solve. Salaries for state legislators and other elected officials are clearly out-of-date, and efforts to update them have fallen by the political wayside even after years of record state revenues. So why not let an independent commission take on this job? States like California and Washington have done so. Why not Oregon?
If the lawmakers had taken a closer look at those other states and at Oregon’s own statutes for setting public employee salaries, they could have given us better answers to those questions.
First, there is the issue that is having a moment in our politics today: democracy.
Proponents assert in the Voters’ Pamphlet that Measure 116 will be “good for democracy” because “it will remove lawmakers’ power to set their own pay.” That’s arguable, since that power is now exercised by representatives accountable to their voters rather than by an appointed commission that will become a power unto itself.
Under current law, if the Legislature enacts salary increases that appear excessive, opponents have the constitutional right to pursue repeal of those changes by taking them to the voters for final approval. But Measure 116 will place the commission’s decisions beyond the reach of the referendum process, which is limited to laws enacted by the legislature.
Washington’s constitution allows decisions of its Citizens Commission on Salaries for Elected Officials to be subject to voter referendums. But that’s not part of the language that Measure 116 will add to Oregon’s constitution.
Oregon lawmakers should have foreseen this problem and provided some mechanism for review of the commission’s decisions, either by a super majority of votes of the Legislature or by access to the ballot by means of citizen referendums. Even if they are never used, mechanisms of that kind have a sentinel effect on public bodies. Just the knowledge that voters can have the final say on decisions can keep decision makers mindful of public opinion.
Second, there is the perennial issue of accountability – another principle invoked by supporters who assert, with Orwellian logic, that Measure 116 will be “an improvement for accountability.”
There are no fiscal controls in Measure 116 that will prevent the proposed commission from raising legislators’ salaries during budget shortfalls when pay freezes or pay cuts are imposed on the state workforce.
California voters approved that state’s Citizens Compensation Commission via a constitutional amendment in 1990. But they then had to amend the state’s constitution in 2009 to allow the commission to reduce salaries for lawmakers when most of the state’s workforce was taking pay cuts and unpaid furloughs. This should have been a lesson learned for the lawmakers who drafted Measure 116 to align the commission’s powers with the state’s budget realities.
Those same lawmakers also ignored Oregon’s approach to setting salaries for public employees. Prior legislatures have placed strict guidelines for handing off decisions on public employee salaries to third-party arbitrators charged with resolving contract impasses for public safety workers. These guidelines include consideration of “the interest and welfare of the public” and “the reasonable financial ability of the unit of government to meet the costs” of any contract (ORS 243.746). But Measure 116 sets no such criteria to guide the commission in its decision-making.
Washington’s salary commission, which has powers similar to those proposed in Measure 116, follows processes and criteria to be used in making its decisions that were enacted by the state’s Legislature prior to seeking voter approval of the commission (ESHB 1331). Washington voters knew what they were voting for when they approved the creation of the state’s salary commission in 1986.
It’s not clear whether similar rules and criteria can be established by the Legislature under Measure 116 or whether the commission will do so under its own constitutional authority. What is clear is that voters would have been better able to judge the merits of the measure if these questions had been answered in advance.
Measure 116 may be well-intended, but it has not been fully thought through. Nor has it been well-presented. Simply asserting that the measure will promote democracy and ensure accountability uses Orwellian rhetoric to distract from its flaws and omissions. The Legislature should have done a better job of clarifying how the commission will exercise its power before asking the voters to enshrine a “Commission of Unanswered Questions” in the state’s constitution.
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