Governor Sanford Thanks House for Revisiting Pay Raises

HOUSE VOTES TO RECOMMIT BILL GRANTING
BACK-DOOR PAY INCREASES

Columbia, S.C. - April 9, 2008 - Governor Mark Sanford today issued the following statement, thanking the House of Representatives for agreeing to revisit their vote yesterday in favor of backdoor pay increases for themselves:

"I want to thank everyone in the House - and in particular Mick Mulvaney who made the recommit motion - who agreed that this issue of backdoor pay increases needed to be revisited," Gov. Sanford said. "As this bill goes back through the committee process, we believe the first order of business should be to strip out this legislative pay perk. While we still have a number of concerns about the rest of this bill as well, today's vote showed that a majority in the House have enough respect for taxpayers to put the breaks on this terrible idea. If this provision does, however, somehow survive the committee process again, we believe that at a minimum House members need to take a recorded vote on the matter so that taxpayers can hold them accountable for their actions."

The measure would have increased legislators'; already generous pensions - which are already three times more generous than that given to the average state employee - by an automatic 2 percent each year. The vote came a day after the state's Board of Economic Advisors voted to cut the state's revenue estimates by $90 million this year and $90 million in the coming year.