With lawmakers currently in the fourth special session, legislators have seen a boost in what is supposed to be a part-time, side income.
CrackerClips/Getty Images/iStockphoto
mrt
Sana Ameer, Staff writer
The Texas House and Senate both adjourned at the end of May when the 2023 regular session ended, but lawmakers were pulled back into four special sessions this year, adding a boost to the annual legislator income that is generally regarded as part-time compensation.
"Keep the 9-to-5 job that pays the mortgage and feeds the family and, for 140 days every two years, come to Austin and legislate on behalf of your fellow citizens," the Texas Tribune describes time spent serving in the state legislature.
The Texas Constitution says lawmakers make $600 per month, or $7,200 per year, plus a per diem of $221 every day the legislature is in session. That adds up to $38,140 a year for a regular session that consists of 140 days, with the total pay for a two-year term being $45,340 since the legislature only meets every other year.
Now into a fourth special session to work on school vouchers, school safety and border-related bills that did not pass in the third special session, lawmakers are seeing per diem pay increase.
According to Greg Cox, the writer of Texas policy developments newsletter Regulated Discourse, lawmakers have made closer to $58,000 this year.
Texas voters have constantly turned back various attempts to turn legislator jobs into full-time jobs with full-time pay, but that doesn't mean the role can't be lucrative in the long term.
Texas lawmakers who retire are eligible to tap into their pensions after eight years of credits if they are over 60 or after 12 years of service if they are over 50, which would yield annual payments of $3,220 per year of service. That's because the benefits aren’t based on the $600-per-month paycheck, but on the base salary paid to state district judges, which was $140,000 in 2022. The amount that makes up a base district judge's salary is also set by the same legislators whose pensions depend on it.
So the eight-year lawmaker would get $25,760 annually starting at age 60, while the 12-year lawmaker would get $38,640 annually starting at age 50.
Lawmakers who have served more than 43 years are even eligible to collect an annual pension payment of $140,000 from the Employees Retirement System of Texas without having to leave office, thanks to a law passed at the end of the 2021 legislative session.
Currently, only three state lawmakers qualify for the perk: Sen. John Whitmire and Rep. Senfronia Thompson, two Houston Democrats who first entered office 50 years ago in 1973, and Rep. Tom Craddick, a Midland Republican and former House speaker who has been in office for 54 years. Whitmire, who is running for Houston mayor, said last year he turned down the benefit when he became eligible in late 2021. It's unclear if Thompson and Craddick have taken advantage of the benefit.
Public administration experts call this practice double dipping and have raised concerns on the ethics of this system, arguing lawmakers usually have other avenues to save for retirement from their high-paying day jobs in law, engineering and medicine, compared to the average state employee who usually earns less money than they would receive for the same job in the private sector.