Kendrick Wilson

Quality applicants sought. Starting salary: $155,000. No experience necessary. Minor scandals tolerated. Must be sympathetic to developers, billboard mongers, and car dealers. All interested, please schedule an interview with Don Diamond, Karl Eller and Jim Click.

Campaign manager for Matt Salmon? No, this is actually the governorship itself. At least, thatās what the Commission on Salaries for Elective State Officers unanimously supports.

The commission voted 4-0 on Thursday to recommend the governorās salary be increased from $95,000 per year to $155,000, a 63 percent increase. I guess Gov. Jane Dee Hull wonāt be added to the list of victims of this yearās budget cuts. This is ironic, as Hull demanded that the Legislature make drastic budget cuts and refused to consider any type of tax increase.

Ordinarily, when pay raises for elected officials are on the ballot, I usually vote with the minority, in favor of pay raises. I tend to agree with the argument that we get what we pay for. Arizonaās Legislature is a perfect example of what can happen when elected officials are paid too little.

More like a circus act than a governing body, the Legislature has become a playground for special interests and incompetent elected officials. I still remember several years ago when an entire day went by with the Legislature in full session, and nothing managed to pass except a requirement that people not verbally degrade Arizonaās produce. Never mind the fact that urban development was swallowing up farmland by leaps and bounds at the time and was a much bigger threat to Arizonaās farmers than people who speak out against eating citrus fruits and pecans.

Not to overlook the great people who have served in our Legislature like Ruth Solomon, Herschella Horton and the late Andy Nichols, who did more to help children and the underprivileged than any members of Congress I can recall, but the Legislature as a whole seems to have more than its share of ineffective non-leaders who are loyal only to special interests.

Nonetheless, the current proposal for pay raises for the stateās top officials has come at the worst time possible. The Legislature just finished slashing more than $1 billion from the stateās budget, the majority of which was balanced on the backs of children and the underprivileged. State employees will also not receive the modest 5 percent raise they were promised.

With the Legislature pressuring school districts to minimize spending, teachers in Tucson Unified School District are likely to be denied even the smallest pay raises this year. Nonetheless, TUSD Superintendent Stan Paz gladly accepted a generous $6,000 pay raise, bringing his salary to $174,720. Beginning teachers in TUSD, one of the better paying districts around Tucson, earn a pittance of slightly more than $28,000. The average TUSD teacher makes only $37,448.

In a time when the budget is being slashed from nearly every corner ÷ although it seems all too convenient that no drastic cuts for agriculture and mining subsidies have taken place ÷ giving the governor a six figure income sends a terrible message.

Anyone who understands the state budget would realize that providing a $60,000 pay raise wonāt noticeably affect the final numbers. My argument against giving the governor a pay raise is not out of fear for budget deficits, tax increases or further spending cuts. It is because everyone in the state government should suffer equally from the results of these budget cuts.

Arizona needs a tax raise so badly that our state government will bleed from the wounds caused by this yearās budget cuts for many decades into the future. But, Governor Hull and the Legislature, bent on preventing any tax cuts in the name of economic security, refused to do anything but cut. Forget the simple reality that UA, possibly the biggest victim of budget cuts, is Tucsonās largest employer, and that Tucsonās economy will feel the effects of UAās budget cuts far more than it would a modest tax increase. But, we get what we pay for, and it comes as no surprise to me that our leaders cannot grasp this concept. I cannot support pay raises for the governor and other state leaders until they can approve a budget in which raises are possible.