Most Elected State Officials to Get 4% Pay Hike

California’s elected state officials received a 4% cost-of-living increase Monday from a special compensation board created by voters in 1990.

The raise, which takes effect Dec. 1, 1997, covers all state constitutional officers from the governor on down, and all state senators and Assembly members except for three leaders in each house.

It would make Gov. Pete Wilson the nation’s highest-paid chief state executive at $131,040, just ahead of New York--except that Wilson has refused recent raises and collects only $114,000.

“We haven’t had a chance to look at this and we’re not going to comment,” Wilson’s press secretary, Sean Walsh, said after the vote.

Legislators’ salaries will rise to $78,624, maintaining them as the nation’s highest paid. Six legislative leaders who now receive premium pay got no increase, however.

The pay for the attorney general and superintendent of public instruction will rise to $111,384, and the other offices to $98,280. The insurance commissioner and Board of Equalization members may get slightly smaller raises to bring them to the $98,280 figure.

A bare majority of the seven-member California Citizens Compensation Commission heeded Chairman Claude Brinegar’s warning that putting off a raise would force them to grant a larger increase in future years.

The commission also voted for a more comprehensive review next year of the relationship between state offices--the lieutenant governor, for example, now receives 75% of the governor’s pay--and per diem allowances for legislators, who receive an extra $105 a day during sessions.

Both issues drew partisan sniping from Republican commissioners, with Nicholas Bavaro taking special aim at the lieutenant governorship--now occupied by Democrat Gray Davis, a possible 1998 gubernatorial candidate.

“The duties of the lieutenant governor, quite frankly, are to see if the governor is alive the next morning,” Bavaro said.

The commission has increased salaries of most elected state officials by nearly 50% since it was created in 1990.

The commission was created by California voters in 1990 when they approved Proposition 112. The idea behind the commission was to take authority for granting pay raises away from the Legislature and give it to a commission appointed by the governor.