While the Capitol continued to buzz about progress on budget deliberations, a state court decision garnered a lot of attention from lawmakers. The decision from a state Supreme Court judge in Suffolk County found a state law limiting the outside income of lawmakers constitutional. The law limits the amount of money that a lawmaker can make outside of his or her legislative salary to no more than $35,000 annually.
The law was to have gone into effect on January 1st of this year, but had been blocked by a lawsuit brought by Republican lawmakers and their constituents. The lawsuit asserted that the law’s limit on outside income was unconstitutional. The judge’s decision is the latest in a five-year effort to limit the outside income of lawmakers.
First some background on the tortured path to impose such a restriction. In 2018, a state commission reviewing the salaries of top members of the executive branch and the state Legislature issued a report that called for a dramatic increase in lawmakers’ salaries.
From the period 1999 through 2019, lawmakers hadn’t seen a raise in their base legislative pay. The creation of the commission was a way for the governor and legislative leaders to circumvent the way in which pay has historically been raised. Previously pay raises were approved like any other piece of legislation – being introduced, considered in committee, and then voted on the floor before being sent to the governor for final approval.
But even under those rules pay raises for lawmakers were a difficult vote to cast, one that challengers could use as a political weapon to great effect in future campaigns. Pay raises for lawmakers is a political loser in many parts of the state. That’s why two decades had passed since the last one.
Establishing a commission to determine the appropriate level of compensation for lawmakers and top members of the executive branch was a way to get around taking a tough vote -- or at least allow them to point to the compensation determination having been made by an outside entity.
The commission decided, among other compensation-related issues, to approve pay raises in three phases. The first was to go into effect on January 1, 2019 with an increase in lawmakers’ base salaries from $79,500 to $110,000. The following year, the salary would go up to $120,000. Finally, one year later there was a jump to $130,000. That salary would have put New York not only far above the national average, but the highest in the nation.
That earlier limit on outside income was challenged in court, with the final ruling that the salary boosts could go into effect, but the outside income restriction could not. As a result, lawmakers in December 2022 passed a new law, one in which they took the tough vote to place a limit of $35,000 on outside income; but they threw in a sweetener: Legislative salaries would be increased to $142,000, far-and-away the highest in the nation.
New York’s new law raised salaries immediately, but delayed the new outside limit restriction until January 1, 2025 since lawmakers who ran for the 2023-24 legislative session did not know of the new restriction. Thus, waiting until January 2025 for the outside income restriction to go into effect would give lawmakers and challengers a better understanding of the compensation structure when deciding whether to stand for election for the 2025-2026 term.
In mid-2024, some lawmakers sued again and got a preliminary court action to stop the restriction on outside income. The final decision came down earlier this month and opponents of a limit on outside income lost. The restriction is going into effect. Warning of “chaos,” opponents now are asking for a postponement of the decision and have said that they will appeal it – which they are, of course, entitled to do.
The legal back-and-forth ignores the rationale for the restriction in the first place. The 2018 commission report joined with reformers when it clearly stated that it “determined to limit outside earned income to ensure that Legislators devote the appropriate time and energy to fulfilling their Constitutional obligations and to also minimize the possibility and perception of conflicts.” The concern is not theoretical: New York has seen its share of scandals in which lawmakers have used their public positions to enrich themselves personally.
The five-year-long foot-dragging needs to come to an end. When lawmakers first accepted those gigantic pay increases starting five years ago, they knew that it came with some strings attached. One of those strings was that if you wanted the highest legislative pay in the nation, you must forgo significant outside income.
For most lawmakers, this is no big deal. The vast majority of lawmakers have no significant outside income. Media reports state that perhaps as many as 38 of the 213 legislators would be impacted by the law.
Those who ran in 2022 and then in 2024 knew that there was a distinct possibility that if they won, they would face a limit on outside income. Five years of delays are long enough. New Yorkers deserve state lawmakers who serve only one “master”: the public that they are sworn to serve.
Blair Horner is senior policy advisor with the New York Public Interest Research Group.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.