Category: Aren

The Texas citizen legislator is a partial myth: few ordinary citizens can afford to be a legislator, especially if they face a competitive race.

Evidence is both empirical and mathematical.

Empirical

99.3% of legislators are not ordinary citizens with ordinary employment. My skimming of biographical data and limited statistical sampling finds that all legislators except one are one or more of:

• Wealthy
• Have spouse with significant income
• Attorney, business owner, high ranking officer, or other career that benefits from prestige of being a legislator or has unusual employment flexibility

One exception: Armando Martinez of Weslaco is a firefighter and paramedic.

Source: House of Representatives Biographical Data and individual legislator biographies when the prior reference was not clear.

Mathematical

Why so few ordinary citizens? The math explains.

Prima facie evidence suggests legislators are well paid despite their $600 monthly salary. Include the $168 per diem for the 140 day regular session, and you get gross pay of $37,920 for the 2 year term. An annualized equivalent (divide by 140, multiply by 365) is $98,862. Not bad.

But the mathematics can skew:

Living expenses. The per diem‘s intent is for living expenses incurred while attending a  legislative session. Fortunately, the Texas Ethics Commission allow campaign funds to cover these expense (source). This is critical: if all the per diem had to go to legislative-related living expenses, that would slash the salary to $14,400, or an annualized equivalent of $37,542. But you still must have a substantial campaign fund to pull this off. That takes a lot of work.

Special sessions. The complexity of issues facing the Legislature are challenging its part time status. For example, the 78 legislature (2003-2004) had four special sessions.

This skews the equivalent annual pay math. Additionally, each special session increases the number of days a legislator can’t work his regular career.

This chart illustrates the pay effect of special sessions, expressed in annualized salary:

Other events outside of session. Legislators may need to attend occasional committee meetings and other events outside the legislative session. I don’t know if the legislator gets per diem compensation for these, but their effect is to further dilute gross annualized pay similar to special sessions.

Campaigning. This is the killer. If you’re in a competitive district or have a tough nomination fight (or both!), you will probably dedicate a few months just to campaigning. That means you can’t work your “real job.”

I philosophically oppose public campaign financing, so I’m not calling for any official remuneration. Public financing allows too much state control over who can run for office, and raising private money is a good test of one’s support.

The Texas Ethics Commission could help by allowing campaign funds to cover wages and benefits lost while campaigning. Candidates shouldn’t starve, and COBRA is costly!

Without that, it looks like you have to rely on personal funds to compensate for lost wages and benefits.

Conclusion

I admit it: I’d love to be in the legislature. But it’s tough since I’m not in one of the privileged categories. However, it’s not impossible.

Last night, I was unanimously* elected to a third term as president of Lake Park Estates Neighborhood Association, Inc.

That quarterly meeting went well: I did little talking. I had people lined up for each of these tasks:

• Community policing representative from our local police substation (arranged by our crime watch chair)
• Discussion of Volunteers In Patrol program initiative by our crime watch chair
• Discussion of a nascent crime camera committee by its chair
• Report on our membership drive by our treasurer (we’re at 33% of the neighborhood, the highest I have ever seen it since I lived here!)
• Running the election (two people I appointed at the last minute)
• Room arrangements made by our VP
• Snacks arranged by our Welcome Committee chairwoman

It was a well oiled machine for a small neighborhood association.

I know that the “textbook answer” to leadership is to help people be motivated to take on projects. However, when talking about small volunteer organizations, translating that into practice is an art. Small nonprofits have scarce resources and limited zones of success (too many parties to please), and we compete for volunteer attention. In other words, you have to provide an unusual amount of motivation and direction to achieve success.

I wrote “art” because leadership techniques vary wildly depending on personalities, the organization’s mission, community support, etc.

I really appreciate people who are given direction and take off with it. At the meeting, I recognized three people who did a fantastic job:

• A lady who started a pet watch program from scratch.
• A lady who revived a defunct welcome committee.
• Our treasurer who provided exceptional support for our membership drive.

The award is sincere but has a farscial title: YOU WILL RESPECT MY AUTHORITY. Here’s what it looked like:

The reference is from a South Park episode named Chickenlover. I did a bad imitation of Cartman’s “authority” line, making a fool of myself. The attendees enjoyed it even though most didn’t get it.

*One person wrote in Cartman for president but scratched it out and voted for me. Oh, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I was the only nominee for president.