Memo Says a Touch Too Much on Legislators’ Pay

In the world of politics, the hit piece takes on the form of high art. It’s well planned and researched to touch nerves, and it’s perfectly timed to wreak the most damage to a politician’s rival.

So when Controller Kathleen Connell convened a news conference earlier this week to announce, among other things, that she would not be paying legislators until they approved a state budget, it made some sense that she would detail how much lawmakers are paid.

In the packet she handed out to reporters was a single page titled “Your tax dollars at work.” It broke down in exquisite detail exactly how much lawmakers make.

Monthly salary: $6,300. Benefits: $1,377. Each legislator’s car: up to $400 a month. Their per diem, the tax-free expense allotment they get for showing up at work: $110 a day.

To help reporters, the controller’s staff even did the math. Daily cost per legislator, $379.23, or, viewed another way, $45,507.60 a day for 120 legislators, or, in even grander terms, the monthly cost of all legislators, $1,365,240.

Then, in the coup de grace, the release ended by saying, “$1,365,240 per month for what?”

Needless to say, legislators were not pleased.

Legislative aides were contemplating the fallout. Perhaps a cut to Connell’s multimillion-dollar budget of, say, $500,000. Maybe a detailed audit of the controller’s operation. Sandy Harrison, spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer, was set to let loose with a retort.

Then a legislator called Connell to ask her about the hit. Turns out, she said, she never intended for any such document to be part of the media handouts. Moreover, she said, it was never reviewed by her senior staffers, and she had never seen it.

“It’s one of those times when you wish you could set the clock back,” said Connell, a possible Democratic contender for governor, adding that she intends to get to the bottom of the mix-up. “It certainly wasn’t planned.”

Harrison relented: “I will not offer you the snotty quote I was going to offer you. We’ll just take her at her word.”