ATTORNEY General Eliot Spitzer, New York’s all-but-certain next governor, said for the first time yesterday that he’s against a pay hike for state lawmakers.
Such a raise is being secretly discussed at the Legislature, insiders say, and many lawmakers expect that it will be approved just after the November election.
Spitzer, who leads his Democratic primary challenger and his GOP opponent by more than 50 percentage points, said the notoriously dysfunctional Legislature’s repeated failure to reform state government disqualifies it from receiving more pay.
“Eliot is opposed to a pay raise and believes it is inappropriate to even discuss a pay raise in the context of this Legislature’s failure to enact necessary reforms,” Spitzer spokeswoman Christine Anderson told The Post.
Spitzer’s position puts him on a potential collision course with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver of Manhattan, his most powerful Democratic supporter.
Silver insisted in an interview with The Post that a pay hike for lawmakers “is well deserved.”
“It’s been 10 years since there has been any kind of an increase,” continued Silver.
Silver wouldn’t rule out passing a pay hike this year, although he claimed, “There’s been no discussion of it.”
He argued that Spitzer would come to see that a pay raise is justified “when he takes office as governor.
“I think he’ll understand that there are many hard-working and talented members of the Legislature who devote full time to their positions and should be compensated accordingly,” continued Silver.
Silver, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer) and other powerful lawmakers are considering a pay hike right after the election, in order to avoid voter resentment at the polls.
State law bars a sitting Legislature from raising its own pay, so lawmakers – whose current terms are all up at the end of the year – must get a raise Jan. 1 or face not having a salary increase until January 2009 at the earliest.
New York’s 212 lawmakers, the second highest paid in the nation, receive a “base” annual salary of $79,500, but at least 150 of them also get extra payments, or “lulus,” which can range up to $41,500 a year.
Lawmakers last raised their pay after the 1998 elections, in a deal under which Gov. Pataki won a substantial pay hike as well as the right to bring charter schools to the state.
Meanwhile, GOP gubernatorial hopeful John Faso, a former Assembly minority leader, said he was also opposed to a legislative pay raise.
Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, Spitzer’s primary opponent, said he had “no comment for now” on the issue.
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Top Democratic insiders say Andrew Cuomo appears certain to win his primary battle with Mark Green for the right to run to replace Spitzer as attorney general.
Green, however, has told Democratic activists that he plans an “all out effort,” built partly around the endorsement he received yesterday from the New York Times, between now and the Sept. 12 primary.