Projo Politics Blog

The perennial proposal to take Rhode Island’s legislature full time has resurfaced, and this year’s incarnation would pay each lawmaker $85,000 a year. Pay for the House speaker and the Senate president would be $145,000 a year. The pay rates would be adjusted annually “to reflect changes in the cost of living, as determined by the United States government,” and lawmakers would continue to receive state-paid health insurance.

Sen. Frank A. Ciccone III, D-Providence, introduced the proposal Tuesday. It would require a constitutional amendment, so it would have to be put before voters in a statewide referendum.

Ciccone said a full-time legislature would eliminate conflict-of-interest allegations that arise when lawmakers write, introduce or vote on bills that affect industries in which they work.

Lawmakers are currently paid $13,089 a year — and the Senate president and House speaker twice that — plus fully paid health insurance. They meet three nights a week, for about six months a year. Most have day jobs.

Some have argued that the advantage of a part-time legislature is the expertise lawmakers bring from their jobs. Ciccone said full-time lawmakers would still bring their previous employment to the table as experience.

“Somebody that was employed — let’s say as a newspaper person — just because they switch their field from newspapers to the arena of politics, do you lose your entire background and perspective on what you did previously?” he asked. “I don’t think so.”

The proposal would make Rhode Island’s lawmakers the second-highest-paid in the nation, second only to California, according to research by Common Cause of Rhode Island.

Common Cause hasn’t yet taken a position on Ciccone’s proposal. However, its executive director, Christine Lopes, noted that a state representative in California represents 450,000 people, and a state senator 950,000. Compare that with 13,000 in Rhode Island per state representative and 26,000 per state senator, absent any changes in the number of seats and the redistricting that would prompt.

House Speaker William J. Murphy has said the issue is worth looking at, even though it would force him to cede his seat: Given the choice between the Assembly and his thriving criminal-law practice, he has said he would choose to practice law, rather than make it.

Ciccone says many lawmakers do put in hours approaching or surpassing those of a full-time job, especially in the session’s final weeks.

“In a way, I would say the pay doesn’t reflect the amount of time that’s put in,” he said, “but on the other hand we are elected to perform a service.”

Ciccone is among a group that has come under fire recently: lawmakers whose day jobs are with labor unions. Freshman Rep. Douglas W. Gablinske, D-Bristol, has assailed that group in particular as essentially being paid lobbyists for their industry without being subject to the same restrictions and reporting requirements as lobbyists.

As a field representative for the Rhode Island Laborers’ District Council, Ciccone says it’s his job to “deal with the business managers of the different locals when they have problems.”

“I’m not a full-time lobbyist,” he said. “Four or five individuals” in the legislature “work for labor unions,” he said. “Find out where the rest work and what they do. If anything, we’re in the minority.”

--By Elizabeth Gudrais and Katherine Gregg

Journal State House Bureau

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