Texas legislator wants voters to decide if legislators deserve a pay rise

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Texas legislators are among the lowest paid in the nation, but one state legislator is trying to change that by tying future legislators’ salaries to the average public school teacher’s salary.

The current average teacher salary is $58,887, while legislators receive $7,200 a year, a salary that hasn’t changed since 1975. By comparison, the median salary in Texas is $67,321.

In November, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick made raising teacher salaries one of his legislative priorities for the current session.

Many state legislators work other jobs when they are not in session because the Legislature meets for 140 days every two years. Most of them work as lawyers or business owners, including State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, an attorney.

“There are colleagues who believe [being a state legislator] should be a part-time job, essentially a volunteer position. I think it was a noble feeling, maybe a hundred years ago,” she said. “Today, this means that only those who are independently wealthy or own their own business can take five or six months off work every two years.”

Hinojosa recalled talking to a group of young people about being a state legislator and feeling like a “fraudster” because she knows most Texans can’t afford to work for $7,200 a year.

“There is an old-fashioned notion that we should not be paid a salary; it just doesn’t work in 2023,” she added. “It was wrong to keep talking to young people about how they too can grow up to do what I do when there is such a barrier.”

Hinojosa’s bill would set lawmakers’ salaries at the average teacher salary and would only apply to future state lawmakers’ salaries—current lawmakers would continue to receive $7,200 a year. Her bill was filed as an amendment to the state constitution; if passed by the Legislature, this would allow Texans to vote on the proposed amendment.

Hinojosa said she thinks being a state legislator is a full-time job because it comes with year-round duties.

“The fact that we are not at the session does not mean [that] we are not working,” she said. “We take this intermediate time [between legislative sessions] meet with constituents, meet with stakeholders, develop legislation, and conduct research on legislation. This work is what you do; For me, it’s a full-time job.”

Sharon Navarro, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said any attempt to raise lawmakers’ salaries is hampered ahead of next year’s elections.

“It will be very difficult to sell to voters when you have inflation and people are suffering in their wallets,” she said. “They don’t want to know that someone else got promoted.”

Texas isn’t the only state where lawmakers are considering raising their wages. In New Mexico and Nebraska, which, along with Texas, are at the bottom of the payrolls of lawmakers in the US, lawmakers are also pushing for higher wages.

In New Mexico, where lawmakers aren’t paid, lawmakers recently tried to give themselves a paycheck, more than 30 years after New Mexico residents voted against the idea.

Meanwhile, Nebraska lawmakers are seeking a $12,000 pay raise just over a decade after voters rejected a state constitutional amendment to raise their pay.

Hinojosa said that many of her colleagues in the Legislative Assembly oppose the idea of ​​higher wages because they still believe that working in the Legislative Assembly should be a part-time job.

“We started talking. It will take time to get there,” she said.

As a former school board president of the Austin Independent School District, Hinojosa said she believes tying legislators’ pay to teachers’ pay will open their eyes to the challenges teachers face.

“Hopefully their personal experience of living on a teacher’s salary will help them better understand the cost constraints our teachers face,” she said. “And maybe convince them to become a little better with the help of our teachers.”

Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, agreed.

“Having a majority [legislators] have to spend a month trying to figure out how to make it for the average teacher salary – I think [it] help give them an idea of ​​what it’s like,” he said.

“It would be nice if these legislators replaced the school for a day or two,” he added. “I think most of them would have run out of the school screaming and kicking.”

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