State Sen. Bob Wirch, D-Kenosha, has taken a barber’s stance on Wisconsin’s estimated $4.3 billion budget deficit over the next two years. The first thing he wants to do is take a little bit off the top.
Legislative pay increases were automatically set for this session of Congress to increase 3 percent, but Wirch asked Senate Chief Clerk Donald Schneider Tuesday to return his pay increase, which amounted to $1,336, to the state general fund.
“Gov. Jim Doyle is right by saying that this deficit is everyone’s problem. By returning my pay increase, I am offering a small personal sacrifice to help solve the problem,” Wirch said.
When Doyle took office, he included a pay increase for many of his cabinet appointment. He has said he offered it as a small incentive for his cabinet members to consider leaving the private sector to join his administration.
“With health-care programs and our education system facing anticipated cuts next biennium, now is not the time to accept a pay increase,” Wirch said.
John Witte, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin and director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs, said Wirch’s gesture was respectable.
“If there ever was a time to do this, it’s now,” Witte said. “The idea of giving back the pay increase is an honorable one.”
Witte said he felt Wirch’s intentions are admirable because it is a gesture of good will and demonstrates that Wisconsin’s lawmakers do not want to seem greedy.
“Wisconsin is not at all out of line with some of the more progressive states when it comes to government payroll,” Witte said.
Witte said Doyle’s sentiment about his cabinet could be extended to state legislators.
“If you add up the total amounts the majority of these legislators make, it’s not very much,” Witte said. “The demands on their time is extreme, and in many cases these people would be making more money if they weren’t doing this.”
Witte said simply campaigning often takes legislators’ time and money away from lucrative careers as businessmen, lawyers and doctors.
Wirch created controversy in November when he wrote then-Governor-elect Doyle calling for the sale of the Executive Residence, the governor’s mansion in Maple Bluff, as a symbolic gesture in light of the abysmal budget situation.
Critics of the request said such a sale would only raise $3 million at the most and that Doyle was not in a position to sell the house, as it is owned by the state.
“It’s a public building. It’s so public, in fact, that I think some governors would rather live elsewhere, because there’s often very little privacy,” Witte said.