ALBANY - New York's 213 state lawmakers are in line for a pay raise in each of the next three years, but it will come with significant strings attached.
It's set to make them the highest paid state lawmakers in the country.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is likely to receive a significant salary hike, too, but lawmakers will ultimately have the final say.
It will all be laid out in a yet-to-be-issued report due Monday, the broad strokes of which were approved by a four-member state panel Thursday.
Confused? We're here to help.
Here are five things to know about the pending pay increases:
1) Three years of raises
The short version is this: New York lawmakers, statewide elected officials and agency commissioners are set to receive three years of annual pay increases beginning on Jan. 1.
The raises were put forward Thursday by the state Compensation Committee, a panel of current and former comptrollers created by the Legislature and Cuomo in April to decide the always-thorny issue of whether state officials should see their salary increase.
• State lawmakers, who currently make a base salary of $79,500, are set to see their pay rise to $110,000 in 2019, $120,000 in 2020 and $130,000 in 2021.
• Agency commissioners are currently paid between $90,000 and $136,000. Under the new plan, the top-paid commissioners will see their pay gradually increase to $220,000 in 2021.
• For the state attorney general and comptroller, their salaries are set to hit $190,000 in 2019, $210,000 in 2020 and $220,000 in 2021. It's currently $151,500.
The raises will take effect Jan. 1 unless lawmakers step in to stop them before then — which is unlikely, since the Legislature isn't scheduled to return to the Capitol until January.
2) Governor raise, too? It's likely
The committee also recommended increasing Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul's salaries, too.
But that's not totally a done deal, thanks to the state Constitution.
The panel's recommendation was that Cuomo's $179,000 salary increase to $200,000 in 2019 and increase $25,000 in each of the two following years, hitting $250,000 in 2021.
Hochul's raise, meanwhile, would mirror the attorney general and comptroller's raises.
The Constitution, however, requires that the governor and lieutenant governor's salary be set by a joint resolution of the Senate and Assembly. So Cuomo and Hochul's raises won't take effect unless lawmakers act.
In the past, lawmakers have generally raised the governor's salary when their own salaries have gone up.
3) First raises since 1999
Assuming the raises hold up, it will be the first salary increase in 20 years for lawmakers and other top state officials.
That is one of the primary reasons the Compensation Committee cited for approving the raises, pointing to two decades of inflation that has increased costs while legislative salaries haven't kept pace.
The committee approved the basics of its plan at a meeting Thursday in Manhattan. It is required to issue a full report by Monday.
"In looking at the fact that they haven't had a raise in 20 years, when you talk about issues of fairness, it's not the right thing to have gone that period of time," former New York City Bill Thompson, a member of the committee, said Thursday.
4) Strings attached
Yes, lawmakers would see their base pay increase by 64 percent over the next three years, which would make them the highest paid state legislators in the country.
But it's more complicated than that.
The committee voted to all-but-eliminate a system that saw lawmakers who serve in a leadership posts or chair a committee receive thousands of dollars in stipend payments each year.
Those stipends ranged from $9,000 to $41,500 a year. Under the committee's plan, only a few top leadership positions -- the Assembly speaker and Senate majority leader, for example -- would retain a stipend.
That means the dozens of committee chairs or lower-level leaders would see their base pay increase offset, in part, by the loss of their stipend.
Another string attached: Beginning in 2020, lawmakers would see their private income limited to 15 percent of their public salary.
That's something Gov. Andrew Cuomo and government-reform organizations have long been pushing for. And it's likely to anger lawmakers who hold outside jobs, some of whom are paid sums that surpass their legislative pay.
5) Is it legal?
That may ultimately be a question for the courts.
First, the question of whether it's constitutional.
The state Constitution says members of the Legislature are entitled to a salary "to be fixed by law." By delegating their power to set their salary to a committee, some have questioned whether it complies with the constitution.
A second legal question is whether the committee has the ability to attach strings — such as the outside-pay limit — to any pay increases.
The law creating the committee granted it the ability to come up with pay increases and cost-of-living adjustments for lawmakers, while noting any incremental pay hikes would be "conditioned upon the performance of the executive and legislative branch" and ensuring that the state's budgets are passed on time.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, D-Bronx, has suggested tying strings to the pay increase is beyond the committee's scope of power.
The committee, however, claimed Thursday it is within its legal right. It's expected the committee will explain its legal rationale in its report due Monday.
JCAMPBELL1@gannett.com
