Report: Stipends Not Tied to Legislative Accomplishments

A dozen legislative committees didn’t hold a single hearing - yet their chairs continued earning tens of thousands of dollars in additional pay - as the Boston Globe’s Emma Platoff and Laura Crimaldi reported:

The Globe reported in May that more than one in five committees did little or no legislating, yet their leaders received substantial additional pay. One senator who chaired two committees that did not hold a single public hearing or consider a single bill during the session received $61,000 in leadership stipends. […]

Traditionally, committees are the engine of any legislative body; these smaller groups of lawmakers develop expertise about specific policy areas, gather information via public hearings, and shape bills on those subjects. Still, Massachusetts legislative leaders, and the committee chairs themselves, defended the nonlegislating committees, whose chairs can now earn as much as $44,862 per year in additional pay for leading one of the panels. […]

The leadership stipends legislators earn to chair these panels are larger this year because of of pay increases lawmakers have baked into state law. Pay for committee chairs increased by nearly 10 percent, to either $44,862 or $22,431, depending on the committee. That’s on top of their base pay, which increased from $73,655 to $82,044.

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