Salary increases for several top state officials are under consideration during the legislature’s lame duck session, with possible raises for staffers in the governor’s office and the legislature, cabinet members, judges, and some elected officials, the New Jersey Globe has learned through conversations with numerous people involved in the process.
Gov. Phil Murphy’s staff, along with the aides to legislative leaders, are in the discussion phase right now, with a possibility of getting this done before the new legislature takes office on January 9.
The conversation is in the early stages.
“Professional salaries are an essential requirement of having professional staff,” said Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “It’s the price of admission if we want to be able to rely on a high level of competence.”
Because of potential political ramifications – newspaper editorials which once had more influence, or the fear of political opponents making a pay hike vote into a campaign issue — lawmakers are typically reticent to approve raises for public officials.
Some government officials go years without a pay raise, sometimes forcing them to leave. Supporters of a salary increase package say that if New Jersey wants to remain competitive at senior-level positions, the state needs to offer competitive salaries. The last pay raise package was six years ago.
“I had a very talented young person come work for me. A real star. But I lost that person after a year because my hands were tied and I couldn’t offer a fair wage,” said one lawmaker. “In the end, I got outbid by a trade association, and the government lost a very smart staffer.”
Rasmussen said the private sector places a premium on the skills of navigating government.
“We’ve invested in developing these skills and expertise, and it would be worthwhile if we could retain it for longer,” he said.
The measure will require bi-partisan support. Democrats are not willing to be tagged with raises in salaries of political appointees without Republicans giving them cover.
“If they want their staff to make more money. If they want the next governor, Democrat or Republican, to be able to offer better pay for their own people. If they want raises themselves, then they have to step up and vote yes” said another legislator. “They can’t pontificate first and then take the money.”
Also being discussed is an increase in the governor’s salary, which is currently $175,000, but Murphy would not take any raises, and the new salary would begin with the winner of the 2025 gubernatorial election.
The state last raised cabinet member salaries in 2018 for the first time in sixteen years. The current wage could go up from $175,000 to anywhere from $205,000 to $225,000.
Murphy is leaving legislative pay raises to the legislature and will likely support them if requested. New Jersey has not increased legislative salaries in more than 20 years.
“How many people go that long without a pay increase?” Richard J. Codey, a former governor who was first elected to the legislature in 1973, asked in February when he floated increasing the current legislatve salaries. Legislators currently make $49,000 annually.
Part-time legislators in New York make $142,000, and they’re paid $103,000 in Pennsylvania.
One former legislator blamed the media for sensationalizing salary increases.
“These guys, who complain that their newspapers don’t pay reporters enough, are they’re first ones to grip about government people getting raises,” he said. “They know legislators spent more than 40 hours a week on the job. Nights, weekends, holidays. And not all of us are rich enough to do this. The legislature shouldn’t just be a place for rich lawyers.”
That legislator added, “Sometimes I want to tell them to shut the fuck up. People in public service, especially the staff, they work so hard and they are so smart, they can all make more money outside government, and then what are we going to do, lose all the institutional knowledge like the geniuses at the newspapers did?”
Legislators are constitutionally barred from taking another job if they voted to raise the salary of that position during the current legislative session.
Increases for judges could help coax more lawyers away from the law firms and onto the bench.
“Recruitment is a pretty obvious contributing factor to the backlog of judicial vacancies,” Rasmussen said.
Judges currently make about $200,000 annually after three consecutive $8,000 increases from 2018 to 2020, followed by court consumer price index increases roughly 2%. The last CPI increase in January, at which point the salaries would be frozen again. County Prosecutors make the same as judges.
The timing could be good since 31 legislators are serving their final weeks in office and have little to lose by supporting a pay increase measure.