Being a Utah legislator involves sacrifices, perks

What do you think your state senator and representative are worth?

A special legislative pay commission recommends a 7.7 percent salary hike for Utah's 104 part-time legislators, starting in 2009 and lasting for two years. That would be a 3.85 percent salary hike for 2009 and 2010.

It would raise lawmakers' daily salary from $130 to $140 a day.

Legislators are paid each day during the 45-day general session, which runs in January and February each year, Saturdays and Sundays included.

They are also paid for any special session or veto override days in session. And they are paid for at least one day a month — April through November — for interim study days.

But lawmakers also get some financial perks, as well.

Each legislator, whether they stay in a hotel during a "legislative day" or not, gets $90 a day for a hotel room. Each legislator also gets $54 per day in what's called per diem — a reimbursement for anticipated expenses, like meals. And each legislator gets 48.5 cents per mile in travel expenses, as well.

Add up the new $140-per-day salary during the general session, take in the $90 a day most legislators take for hotel expenses but stay in their own homes and commute to the Capitol, and the $54 per diem, remove Saturdays and Sundays during the general session (to get a fair per-workday total), and you end up with most legislators getting nearly $400 per workday during the 45-day session. Add in what they make in mileage and they are probably just over $400 a workday during the general session for those who don't stay in a hotel.

That sounds like a fair wage. And most Utahns would gladly accept it, since it would work out to just over $100,000 a year.

But in reality, lawmakers work much more than the 60 or 70 days a year that they are actually paid for. By their own accounts, which I don't question, many legislators are spending nearly as much time on their legislative jobs as they do for their real, daily professions.

Of course, this is not the case for all of them.

A legislator's compensation, with generous health-care benefits, is a great job for a retired person or a person who for whatever reason is not also holding down a full-time job.

Several legislators have come to an agreement with their private employers, who want them to serve in the Legislature and so give them much time off from their regular jobs — even pay them their salaries during the general session and other days they are at the Capitol.