Kentucky lawmakers consider proposal to give up pay during special legislative sessions

Pro bono lawmaking: Candidates offer to work free

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Some lawmakers want to change state law to bar themselves from getting paid for working extra days when they can’t pass the state budget on time.

Republicans say the proposal to work for free during certain special legislative sessions will be a top priority when the state’s General Assembly convenes again in January. While they won’t have the chance to work on the bill until then, their pro bono offer comes during a crucial stretch of campaigning before November elections.

“It’s time we acknowledge that if we don’t do our job, we shouldn’t get paid,” Kentucky House Republican Floor Leader Jeff Hoover said Tuesday.

A handful of Democrats already returned their pay from a special session held in May.

Voters have shown they’re fed up with career politicians they blame for out-of-control government spending. That sentiment helped boost Republican Rand Paul over an opponent favored by much of the GOP establishment in Kentucky’s U.S. Senate primary over the summer.

Western Kentucky University political scientist Scott Lasley said offering to work for free during a special session isn’t a bad political move.

“It taps into the sense that people don’t think legislators from the state to the federal levels have done the best of jobs over the last several years,” Lasley said. “It taps into that frustration. I think it plays well with voters.”

T.J. Pickerrell, an hourly worker at Reynolds Laminating in Louisville, said the notion of politicians forgoing wages is appealing. “Yeah, I’d be for that,” she said.

However, Pickerrell, a member of the United Steelworkers of America union, said she’s far more concerned about electing politicians who understand the need for creating and keeping private sector jobs and for protecting Social Security for retirees.

Six Kentucky lawmakers — all of them Democrats — returned more than $7,000 combined to the state treasury in recent months, refusing to be paid for a weeklong special legislative session held in May. Gov. Steve Beshear had called lawmakers back to Frankfort to pass a state budget after they failed to do so during a regular legislative session that ended in April.

Some taxpayer advocacy groups had urged lawmakers not to accept their pay for the special session. Democratic state Reps. Jim Wayne of Louisville, Melvin Henley of Murray, Sannie Overly of Paris, Leslie Combs of Pikeville, Carl Rollins of Midway and Jeff Greer of Brandenburg were the only ones out of 138 lawmakers who have returned their wages to the state treasury, according to a listing obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday through an open records request.

The Legislative Research Commission estimates the cost of a special session in Kentucky at about $63,000 a day. Lawmakers met for six days in May to pass the budget, putting the overall cost to taxpayers at more than $300,000.

Hoover, flanked by dozens of legislative candidates, said Republicans will push to change the law, even the state constitution if necessary, to see to that lawmakers aren’t paid when they’re called back into special session to pass a budget that they should have enacted in a regular session. That would be the only situation in which the pro bono proposal would apply.

“It’s time for a new day,” Hoover declared. “It’s time for a new direction.”