It may sound like a crazy idea, but I’m questioning whether we should be paying our state legislators down in Juneau. I just discovered that most states pay less than we do, and New Mexico doesn’t pay its legislators at all. It makes me wonder, given the poor job our legislature does, should we pay them?

Defenders of our current system will argue that since 60 of our fellow Alaskans (20 state Senators and 40 House members) dedicate a significant portion of their time to representing us, they deserve to be well compensated. This might seem like a good argument, but most states don’t agree.

If you look at the salary range, you can see that Alaska pays the fifth-highest amount of any state in the union at $84,000 for the annual 120-day legislative session in Juneau. The average salary for legislators around the country is less than half of that at $41,193/yr.

Earning 84 grand for three months’ work is a pretty good deal that a majority of Alaskans would be happy to accept. Most of us wouldn’t have an issue paying this much money if our legislators were delivering excellence to the state, but are they? Look at it this way, if you went to an expensive restaurant, and had poor service and were given burned food, would you be happy to pay for your meal? Probably not, and we should use the same logic for our state government.

The members of the Alaska House and Senate are public servants who work for us. As their employer, we get to decide what they will be paid. Like any employee, they should be compensated according to the value they deliver to us.

Looking at their recent performance, they haven’t been doing a particularly good job. They consistently mismanage our state’s financial resources. It has been years since they have been able to deliver a balanced budget without raiding one of the rainy-day accounts, and have more recently resorted to stealing a portion of your Permanent Fund check just to keep the doors open on schools. That isn’t delivering excellence in governing; it is demonstrating incompetence, yet we pay our public servants one of the highest salaries in the country to do so. As citizens in an owner state, we are being foolish and irresponsible if we continue to allow this to go on.

I propose a simple solution. Prorate the salaries in the legislature to the statutory PFD payment. When citizens get a full statutory PFD payment, the legislators will receive 100% of their salary. When the PFD is reduced to pay for our inefficient state government, the salaries of every legislator will be reduced by the same percentage. If they take all of our annual PFD checks, then the legislators will get to chip in with 100% of their salary. Fair is fair.

Critics of this idea will say that it is impossible because a change like this would require legislation to pass the House and Senate, and it is unlikely that the legislature will willingly do so. That is probably true, but there is a way to get this done, or at least get the members of the legislature to go on record opposing it. We could ask our next governor to introduce legislation tying the salary of the legislators to the statutory PFD. This is possible because Alaska is unique in that our governor is able to introduce bills to the legislature through the rules committee in either the House or Senate.

Since we are in the midst of a gubernatorial campaign, I would love to see one of the candidates adopt this issue and promise if elected, to introduce legislation that would codify this idea into law. If he or she submits this idea through the rules committee in both the House and Senate, it would force the legislature to either move this bill out of committee or demonstrate that they hate the citizens who elected them. Even better, I’d love to see the members of the full House and Senate be forced to vote on this idea. Most of them would probably vote against it. In doing so, however, it would show us who the snakes are down in Juneau, as if we needed any help figuring that out.

The views expressed here are those of Greg Sarber. Read more Sarber posts at his Seward’s Folly substack.

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