Assemblymember Corey Jackson, D-Moreno Valley, has proposed what can only be described as a terrible idea: bringing back pensions for legislators.
Assembly Constitutional Amendment 2, introduced on Dec. 2, would “require the Legislature to establish a retirement system for Members elected to or serving in the Legislature on or after November 1, 2010.”
The pension would apply to legislators who served 10 or more years. Those who serve fewer than that would be granted pensionable credits that could be applied to other public employee pension systems.
Yes, because, you know, isn’t it a shame that all of these politicians aren’t able to collect a pension for all of their years running the state into the ground?
Assemblyman Jackson, though has quite the spin on this proposal, dubbing it the Legislative Diversification Act. “This is really about continuing to find ways to diversify the state Legislature and ways to make sure that we break down barriers for younger people to be able to be public servants,” he told the Sacramento Bee.
Yes, according to Jackson, rewarding state pensions to longtime politicians is really about helping younger people and promoting diversity.
As part of his proposal, Jackson wants the Legislature to agree: “These individuals are among the state’s most committed public servants, and they should have the opportunity to earn pension credit for their years of service, as is afforded to most other state officials and employees.”
Yeah, no.
Members of the state Legislature receive salaries of $132,703 plus a per diem of $211. That’s well above the median household income in California. It’s plenty generous from the taxpayers of California.
If a lawmaker can’t figure out how to set aside money for their own retirement off of a six-figure salary, they probably shouldn’t be a lawmaker.
The biggest barriers to diversity in the Legislature are the tremendous power of public sector unions in crushing critics and the insatiable need of longtime politicians to hop from office to office.
A lack of a pension for politicians? That’s not a problem anyone should care about.