SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) —An appointed citizen panel voted Wednesday to give Gov. Jerry Brown and other top elected officials 4 percent pay raises, marking the fourth year in a row that their salaries have been increased after cuts were made at the height of the recession.
The Citizens Compensation Commission approved the salary and benefit increases on a 4-0 vote after less than an hour of discussion, bringing Brown’s pay to about $190,000 a year and the heads of the state Senate and Assembly to nearly $120,000.
Commission Chairman Tom Dalzell says even with the increase, lawmakers’ salaries are still below their rates at the start of the recession, when the panel voted to cut pay by about 18 percent.
“This will bring it up to about 90 percent of where we were in 2007, simply a restorative measure, incremental,” Dalzell said in an interview after the vote. He said while other state employees were furloughed during the recession, none had their pay cut as extremely and all the wages have since been restored.
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