Legislator Pay Cut on the Way?

   The front page headline in the Daily Oklahoman on Wednesday, October 18 screams "Lawmakers' 'performance' could trigger a cut in pay". Dale Denwalt, the author of the article, goes on to report "The panel in charge of setting legislator salaries said it will meet again soon to talk about lowering the compensation paid to the state's 149 representatives and senators", in January. This bit of news is absolutely hilarious for public school supporters everywhere, for several reasons:
1) LOL - Corporate legislators have been screaming for years that teachers' pay should be performance based. They believe 'when students fail, teachers fail', so bad teachers should get a pay cut or be fired, and good teachers should get a pay raise. The only problem with this scenario is that corporate lawmakers want to be the judge of which teachers are good and bad.
2) LOL - Corporate legislators have been screaming for years that teachers can't get a pay raise because of high administrative pay. They want the public to believe that if we consolidated schools and reduced school administrative costs, teachers could get a pay raise. The fact is that school administrative costs average about 3% of total school expenditures, and could not be reduced by cutting schools or administrators.
3) LOL - In December 2016, I posted that Oklahoma Legislators should receive a pay cut, because they're not doing their job and they make too much money ($62,000 per year including per diem and benefits). My suggestion drew the ire of one corporate legislator, not to be named, who has sponsored several school consolidation bills. Double LOL!
 
   My only suggestion for legislative 'performance' pay is to pay less for bad performance - voting for illegal and unconstitutional bills (2016 Budget Bill), voting for bills that do nothing (all school consolidation bills), and voting for corporate bills which funnel tax dollars away from state public services, and towards out-of-state and international corporations.
   State Representative Bobby Cleveland (C), a documented corporate lawmaker (He introduced House Bill 1065x, which consolidates all public schools, but not private and corporate schools, with less than 1000 students.) said "As far as I'm concerned, it wouldn't bother me, but I think it would have an impact on the quality of people who decide to run." This is also an LOL statement. Does Cleveland mean "higher quality" Oklahomans will run because of the pay cut? Or does he mean "lower quality"? Oklahoma Lawmakers' salaries are ranked 17th in the nation, among all fifty states, which is now relatively high. It can be legitimately argued that because of the high pay, the quality of lawmakers is low. It can also be argued that if lawmaker pay was cut, higher quality Oklahomans would run. In the opinion of many - Oklahoma lawmaker pay is high and the reason we have so many attorneys holding state office. Some consider attorneys "low quality" lawmakers, LOL again, so if legislator pay is cut, maybe fewer attorneys will run for office. If legislator pay is cut, higher quality candidates may run for office. Only those citizens wishing to serve, like teachers, may run. No highly paid attorneys would even think of running for office if Oklahoma legislator pay matched the salary that Texas lawmakers bring home (about $8000 per year). If Oklahoma lawmaker pay was cut in half, we would have more constituent lawmakers and fewer corporate lawmakers...