A new report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the legislature’s watchdog agency, strongly suggests that it’s time for Virginia to boost legislative salaries for the first time since 1988, either through the budget or tying pay to external benchmarks, such as median income or inflation, so that lawmakers do not have to take politically uncomfortable votes repeatedly on their own salaries.
Virginia senators earn $18,000 a year and delegates receive $17,640 — lagging the cost of living by 169% since 1988, when Gerald Baliles was midway through his term as Virginia’s governor and George H.W. Bush was elected president.
Read the full story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
