transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Support for Purplish comes from the Colorado Hospital Association. Almost 7 in 10 Colorado hospitals are at risk financially. Increased costs and a growing number of uninsured patients are among the many challenges. Learn more at cha.com.

Speaker 2:
[00:18] Colorado, like most states, has a part-time legislature. For four months, from January to May, wellmakers pause their regular lives to be at the Capitol.

Speaker 3:
[00:28] I'm a farmer, a rancher and an auctioneer. So I do auctions and I run cattle and I have hay and winter wheat and corn.

Speaker 2:
[00:38] 100 lawmakers from all parts of the state, all walks of life and very different day jobs.

Speaker 4:
[00:46] I train people to shoot firearms and to get their concealed carry permit.

Speaker 5:
[00:51] My wife and I own a couple of businesses that we run. One is a rental business, one is a consulting business, and then I'm also the general manager for my father's oil and gas business.

Speaker 6:
[01:00] I am running my boutique in Colorado Springs in my district.

Speaker 7:
[01:03] It's called Your Favorite Fashionista. It's a clothing boutique.

Speaker 2:
[01:07] One lawmaker is an ER nurse, another a funeral home director. There is a physical therapist, a flower shop owner, and plenty of attorneys.

Speaker 8:
[01:17] Being a lawmaker pays about $47,000 a year. That's not much to live on in our high-cost state. Some lawmakers have flexible enough jobs to be able to take four months off. But for others, legislating is their main gig.

Speaker 9:
[01:31] This is actually my full-time job.

Speaker 10:
[01:33] I'm blessed to have married up. And my wife is retired military and also still works.

Speaker 9:
[01:39] That's how we make ends meet.

Speaker 10:
[01:41] I don't know what I'm going to be doing after the session because I had to resign from my position at the state of Colorado. And of course, this is my only job right now.

Speaker 7:
[01:49] Really, I've been digging into my savings. I was a wildland firefighter. I was a small business owner. It's been really difficult to be able to do other work when I'm really trying to focus on legislation.

Speaker 2:
[02:05] How much lawmakers earn is a politically thorny issue. If they make too little to live on, then the range of people who can afford to serve in office gets narrower and narrower.

Speaker 8:
[02:16] At the same time, lawmakers approving raises for themselves or at least appearing to is not a great look politically, and there could be something lost in the legislative process when politics become a full-time job.

Speaker 2:
[02:30] All of this creates a balancing act that some lawmakers say can be tricky to maintain. This is Purplish from CPR News and the Colorado Capitol News Alliance, a show about Colorado politics and policy. I'm Bente Birkeland, and joining me for this episode is KUNC's Lucas Brady Woods. Hey, Lucas, thanks for being here.

Speaker 8:
[03:00] Hey, Bente, happy to be here, as always, and it's been a minute.

Speaker 2:
[03:03] We're glad to have you back.

Speaker 8:
[03:07] In this episode, we're getting into the prickly debate of lawmaker pay, what they make, what kinds of benefits they get, and how that impacts who runs for office and what it means for policymaking.

Speaker 2:
[03:17] The idea for this episode actually started with a Purplish listener. Sarah Fraser lives in Denver, and Lucas, she heard the episode we did last year when we profiled two freshmen lawmakers.

Speaker 8:
[03:29] Cool, that was an interesting one for sure. A good window into the humans behind the legislature.

Speaker 2:
[03:35] Yes, definitely. Well, hearing that story, it got Fraser wondering about the types of people that become lawmakers.

Speaker 6:
[03:42] Do they have some kind of job that lets them take four months off, or do they not work the rest of the year and are somehow independently wealthy enough to cover all of their other living expenses? I know that some legislators are traveling for, don't live near Denver, and so I've wondered how their family is doing without them, if they have kids, or other family members that rely on them.

Speaker 8:
[04:05] It's a great question because if I told my boss at KUNC that I was going to need a third of the year off every year, that would be a very short conversation.

Speaker 2:
[04:13] Yeah, exactly. We heard at the top how some lawmakers make this work. I would say I think the easiest balance is if you happen to be retired or independently wealthy.

Speaker 8:
[04:25] But if those people are the only demographic that can afford to be lawmakers, then there are going to be a lot of perspectives missing from the table.

Speaker 2:
[04:32] I talked to lawmakers about this topic from across the political spectrum. They all agree that it's best for the state to be governed by people from different backgrounds, income levels. But they have very different ideas about how to ensure that type of representative group. Should it be a shorter session, a longer session, a higher salary? No changes at all and kind of let people muddle through it.

Speaker 8:
[04:59] It is a demanding job. Sure, session is only a third of the year, but during that time, there can be a lot of late nights and long hours. There are hundreds of bills to get through, and even once they adjourn each spring, lawmakers are still meeting with constituents and stakeholders and crafting the next year's legislation. I've definitely heard the argument that the pay really doesn't reflect all of those demands.

Speaker 2:
[05:22] I think that could be true with some of the late nights. I mean, it could be two, three in the morning. There's been certain sessions where it was day after day like that. It's a very unpredictable schedule, to say the least. I think there is one wrinkle people should understand though when we get into this. The base salary we've been referencing, 47,000 a year isn't the only money lawmakers get for doing this work. They're entitled to collect a per diem.

Speaker 8:
[05:51] That's basically a daily allowance they can collect for the 120 days of session, any interim committees they serve on, and any special legislative sessions that come up. Legislative leadership can actually get an even higher per diem.

Speaker 2:
[06:05] The per diem rate varies depending on where a lawmaker lives. Let's use an example of a lawmaker who doesn't live near the Denver metro area, and the threshold for this is 50 miles to get to the Capitol. If a person claims per diem every day of session, and that includes weekends, it would add up to an additional $33,000.

Speaker 8:
[06:26] That's some real money. If you put that together with the base salary, you're talking about some lawmakers making about $80,000 a year. And that's an income I think a lot of people would be pretty happy to have.

Speaker 2:
[06:38] I think so. You do have to remember that these out-of-metro lawmakers do have some extra costs. They're either driving at least 100 miles a day, or they're renting a place in Denver for this session. Republican Representative Larry Don Sucla, the farmer rancher, his home is about 7 miles from Cortez.

Speaker 3:
[06:59] I live almost an hour closer to Phoenix, Arizona than I do Denver, Colorado.

Speaker 8:
[07:05] I actually lived in Cortez for a few years, and I can attest to how far it really is from the state capitol.

Speaker 2:
[07:11] Yes, for sure. He stays in Denver most of the session. He rents a place. He still maintains his home in Montezuma County. He said he tries to go back a handful of times or so. The state does pay for non-metro lawmakers to do one round trip per week. They get reimbursed. And for the metro members, there's a daily travel reimbursement for their commutes. Plus, I do want to add that lawmakers also get benefit packages like health insurance, pensions. It's the same as what state employees get.

Speaker 8:
[07:46] This all highlights some of the things that make this job unique. Lawmaking is stressful and expensive, and lawmakers are under a microscope in the public eye. And even with the per diem and benefits, a lot of people doing this job say it's just not paying what it needs to in order to make life manageable for the people doing it.

Speaker 2:
[08:04] The thing is, lawmakers are going to get a pay raise soon. We'll get into why that's happening in a bit, but the boost comes at a time when, frankly, the optics aren't great.

Speaker 8:
[08:27] Benta, before we get into what could be coming for lawmakers, I want to go back, way back, to how the legislature was set up in the first place. Because it feels like this question of how much lawmakers should earn is really tied up in the decision to have lawmaking be something people do in addition to their regular jobs instead of as a profession itself.

Speaker 2:
[08:46] I looked into this a bit, and the idea of a part-time legislature goes back to statehood, so 150 years ago.

Speaker 8:
[08:53] Shout out to the sesquicentennial.

Speaker 2:
[08:56] I'm glad you had to say that, not me. I could never say that word.

Speaker 8:
[08:59] I think I said it right this time.

Speaker 2:
[09:01] I think you did, yes. But anyway, back at the time of statehood, a lot of Coloradans were involved in farming and ranching. The idea was lawmakers would just meet in the winter and early spring when there's less to do on the land.

Speaker 8:
[09:15] There are still a few farmers and ranchers in the legislature, to be clear, but it's definitely not the dominant sector anymore.

Speaker 2:
[09:22] Yeah, that's true. I mean, Zucla is one of the few. And then another fun fact, early on, the legislature was even more part-time than it is now. So for a long time, it met every other year. And some states still do this, like Texas. And also, the number of days in Colorado's session has fluctuated over time. That was until the 1980s. And that's when voters approved a 120-day session, and they put that in Colorado's Constitution.

Speaker 8:
[09:51] And it's a pretty hard thing to do to change things in the Constitution. But that is exactly what some people think could help with the pay issue.

Speaker 2:
[09:59] Exactly. On one side, you have people who say the solution to the pay problem is just to make this job less time-consuming, particularly Republicans. They say it would make it easier for more people to serve if session, let's say, lasted a month or 90 days.

Speaker 11:
[10:18] I feel like that we have good solutions to problems, and maybe it wouldn't take, you know, 120 days to figure some of these things out.

Speaker 2:
[10:25] This is Republican Representative Brandi Bradley. She especially doesn't like that things seem to be heading in the opposite direction, with lawmakers starting to spend even more than 120 days at the Capitol each year. She has four sons. They're in their middle school, high school, teenage years, juggling a lot, and she's also a physical therapist.

Speaker 11:
[10:45] We've been called in to special session, what, three years in a row now, and that's extremely frustrating too for people that are going back to work to have to then take off work again, or find child care, or do extra things, and miss sporting events again, being called back in to special sessions.

Speaker 8:
[11:06] Some lawmakers might hear that and point out that Bradley's recent action led them all to work a weekend. That's when she had the entire state budget bill read at length. But on a larger note, it makes sense that a party that supports less government and fewer regulations would support cutting back on how much time lawmakers can spend passing new laws and regulations.

Speaker 2:
[11:27] Yeah. And don't forget Republicans are in the minority. So they're not necessarily fans of all the laws Democrats are proposing.

Speaker 8:
[11:34] That's for sure.

Speaker 2:
[11:38] On the other side though, I've heard people say Colorado should have a full-time legislature, which some states do have. They argue the demands don't end with session, and that way pay could increase to reflect that reality.

Speaker 12:
[11:52] My constituents' problems don't stop at the sine die. My constituents need help year-round. And if one is being responsible with this job, they are doing it year-round.

Speaker 2:
[12:04] That's former state senator Daphna Michelson-Ginay. She's a Democrat. And she actually resigned earlier this session, in part because of what she considers low pay. So she served at the state house for 10 years, and she told me she really valued the work she did. But she said she had to start saving for retirement and get out of credit card debt. And she thinks it's hard for most people to serve as a lawmaker at this pay rate.

Speaker 12:
[12:32] Unless they are independently wealthy, this is a challenge for them. And maybe if they don't have dependence, it's less of a challenge, but it is a challenge working at that salary at the rate that we really need to work to represent the state.

Speaker 2:
[12:50] Michaels and Sinead thinks increasing pay would make it more competitive.

Speaker 12:
[12:54] Other people who can't afford to even think about running for office would be able to think about running for office and be able to serve in a meaningful way.

Speaker 8:
[13:05] What may get lost, though, if Colorado went to a full time, this is your only job type of legislature, is the diversity of experience people have right now. A lot of people think it's good to have lawmakers that aren't professional politicians who have other things they're doing work wise.

Speaker 2:
[13:22] It's been really interesting talking to lawmakers about their day jobs for this. You see people all the time at the Capitol, and I don't know what everyone does. For instance, I didn't know we had a funeral home director. Another lawmaker says she works at county fairs, does house sitting and pet sitting. Then we heard up top from Republican Representative Ava Flannell. She's a firearms instructor from Colorado Springs, but her biggest source of income is actually as a social media influencer. She does sponsored posts for firearms companies, ammunition companies. She told me that since she joined the legislature, and this was her first session, she was appointed to a vacant seat in the fall. Flannell says she's lost a lot of money because she doesn't have time to post. She estimates it's $50,000 to $100,000.

Speaker 8:
[14:15] Wow. I did not know there was an influencer in the state legislature or that she could make that much money doing that.

Speaker 2:
[14:21] Your next career move, Lucas.

Speaker 8:
[14:23] Maybe. So to wrap up some of what we've been talking about here. But realistically, the length of session isn't changing anytime soon. So what are they considering doing? We'll get into that next.

Speaker 2:
[14:39] This is Purplish from CPR News and the Colorado Capitol News Alliance.

Speaker 1:
[14:45] Support for Purplish comes from the Colorado Hospital Association. Almost 7 in 10 Colorado hospitals are at risk financially. Increased costs and a growing number of uninsured patients are among the many challenges. Learn more at cha.com.

Speaker 9:
[15:02] You love podcasts to keep up with the news. Now, there's an easy way to find out what's happening in Colorado every day. The Colorado Today podcast is new from the same trusted source that brings you Purplish. You'll get the top stories, on-the-ground reporting and moments of curiosity. Follow Colorado Today for the statewide news you need each weekday on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2:
[15:32] This is Purplish from CPR News and the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. We've heard the argument from some lawmakers on why a pay raise might be necessary. Voters, however, might not like hearing lawmakers are getting a pay raise, especially with everyday affordability at the top of everyone's mind. We are time and again in polls and surveys, and just when I'm out interviewing people, high costs for things like housing, health care, child care, just about everything, are the top issue and you hear this across the political spectrum.

Speaker 8:
[16:10] Right. I think it's safe to say people don't really like seeing those in power giving themselves raises. It is worth noting though that lawmakers can't actually change their own salary during their term. The law requires that any raise can't take effect until a future term.

Speaker 2:
[16:27] The bad optics around increasing pay make it hard for politicians to do what some of them say needs to happen. But a few years ago, it looked like they'd hit on a solution. The legislature voted to set up this independent commission, and a new commission would meet every four years to study elected official pay and make changes based on what it finds.

Speaker 8:
[16:50] The first report came out last December. In it, the commission said salaries in Colorado are inadequate, quote, considering the significance of the work performed.

Speaker 2:
[17:00] The commission said Colorado legislators make less than lawmakers in similar states, when you factor in the cost of labor. But just looking at raw numbers, the average legislator pay nationwide last year was nearly $48,000. This is according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and they collect all this data. And there is a big range. Guess what New Hampshire pays their lawmakers, Lucas?

Speaker 8:
[17:27] I don't know. You know, tens of thousands of dollars.

Speaker 2:
[17:31] $100 a year.

Speaker 4:
[17:32] Whoa.

Speaker 8:
[17:33] $100.

Speaker 2:
[17:35] Yeah, exactly. So essentially a volunteer legislature. And then New York State has the highest salary, $142,000.

Speaker 8:
[17:44] New York though is a year-round legislature, right? When you look at states with part-time legislatures like Colorado, Colorado is actually on the lower end. In Minnesota, they get around $51,000, and in Washington state, they get between $60,000 and $62,000 depending on the chamber.

Speaker 2:
[18:02] It is hard to do apples to apples. So other part-time legislatures pay less than Colorado, but maybe cost of living is lower there, for instance.

Speaker 8:
[18:11] Right. That's an important point.

Speaker 2:
[18:13] Getting back to Colorado's commission, the commission didn't just look at lawmakers. They were tasked with reviewing other state-level officials. These are the statewide offices. And the commission determined they should all get pay bumps, and it was more than legislators, and some were pretty major. The commission wants to raise the next attorney general's salary 45 percent, so the attorney general would earn $170,000 a year. The governor would get an 11 percent boost, secretary of state 26 percent. And the commission recommended a more modest raise for lawmakers, a 6 percent increase. I don't know about you, Lucas, I'd happily take a 6 percent raise.

Speaker 8:
[18:54] Yeah, I'd be very excited to see that in my paycheck.

Speaker 2:
[18:57] Lawmakers would be making nearly $51,000 a year as that base pay starting in January. I should add that back in 2017, the legislature passed a bipartisan bill to index future legislative salaries to inflation. That's just started going into effect. So it means legislators' pay would be adjusted based on inflation every few years anyway.

Speaker 8:
[19:22] But as we've mentioned, this is a less than ideal time for lawmaker pay raises. The legislature is trying to fix a $1.5 billion shortfall in the state budget and just voted to cut cost of living increases for state employees and to cut Medicaid provider rates by 2 percent. Given that backdrop and all the other cuts they're making in all sorts of programs, some have said that it feels pretty tone deaf for lawmakers to get any kind of pay increase right now.

Speaker 2:
[19:48] True. The way lawmakers set up this commission, though, the recommendations take effect automatically. So the only way that raise doesn't happen is if lawmakers run a bill to stop it or modify it.

Speaker 8:
[20:01] I haven't really heard of any lawmakers talking about this though. Do you think they're aware?

Speaker 2:
[20:06] I don't know that all of them are. Remember this passed in 2024, so we do have new lawmakers. Democratic Representative Nikwita Ricks sponsored the underlying bill. When we talked, she was under the impression the recommendations for these pay raises would only go into effect if lawmakers passed a bill. That was her understanding. She told me she didn't think anyone would run a bill to do that.

Speaker 13:
[20:32] Once the study comes back, the general assembly will have to vote to say that they want to adopt those salaries or not. And so there will be more debate about that, especially when we're possibly in a budget crunch. The whole thing was, how does this look, you know, or they're giving themselves big salaries. And it's not about that.

Speaker 2:
[20:57] I dug a little deeper and I talked to nonpartisan legislative staff about the Pay Commission. And it turns out Rick's understanding isn't accurate. The commission's recommendations automatically go into effect in January. And they stay in place until the next commission meets in another four years. So lawmakers don't have to pass a bill.

Speaker 8:
[21:17] Okay, they don't. These pay raises will currently, as things stand, go into effect next year.

Speaker 2:
[21:23] Yes. And I talked to Rick's about the underlying bill. And she said she never had a set salary increase in mind. But she's been at the Capitol for a number of years now. And she said she really wants to pave the way for a lot of different types of people to run. She's Liberian, she's a mortgage broker, and she wants to see more people from her community and different parts who feel like it's not such a huge financial strain to serve.

Speaker 13:
[21:49] I think people should get paid what they work for. You know, the work should be commensurate with the pay. And so hopefully the study will show us something that will make more people be attracted to public service and want to serve here in the General Assembly.

Speaker 8:
[22:05] Okay, but pay isn't the only part of being a lawmaker that the legislature has been debating and re-considering lately. They've also tried to make it a more flexible place to work.

Speaker 2:
[22:14] Yes, and I think the biggest change along those lines was the introduction of remote work. This happened during the pandemic. Fast forward to now, each chamber has a big screen. And if a lawmaker is sick or has some other reason that leadership agrees to, they can participate in floor votes from home. And lawmakers can also take paid leave. For instance, if they have a new baby close to session or some other personal situation. And that was another pretty big and pretty recent change.

Speaker 8:
[22:44] There's another proposal out there this year to try to make it easier to be a part-time lawmaker. It would require an employer to give a lawmaker paid or unpaid leave for the legislative session, basically protecting their job while they're away at the Capitol. It has bipartisan support in the Senate and passed easily, but it hasn't proved as popular in the House.

Speaker 2:
[23:05] Right. Lawmakers in the House made it optional for an employer to offer this, which means the bill doesn't really do anything at all different from current law. Zooming out and going back to this larger idea of the citizen legislature, it does have this kind of noble goal behind it, to have laws drafted and passed by people who would feel the impact of those laws. People just kind of living their daily life, doing so many different types of jobs, and you bring that diversity of experience under the gold dome to carry out this vision.

Speaker 8:
[23:46] Honestly, the philosophy behind it seems to make a lot of sense. But I suppose some would say in practice, it does get trickier, especially as things like the cost of living has gone up in the state over the last 20 years or so.

Speaker 2:
[23:59] It is a delicate dance. Lawmakers aren't alone in navigating rising costs, stagnant wages. We hear Coloradans say, as we've said all the time, they're worried about affordability. I think this balance will be an ongoing debate at the Capitol. It's kind of this never-ending tension of how to make lawmaking attainable for more people. But when does that pay raise tip the scales in a way that feels unjust?

Speaker 8:
[24:24] But Bente, do you think there is more diversity in the legislature than when you first started?

Speaker 2:
[24:29] Anecdotally, I think so. I think we have more younger members, maybe less retired lawmakers, and people with different types of work experience. I think everyone agrees that's a good thing. I don't want to take away that you'll have retired lawmakers who've had incredible careers and done really interesting things in their lives. Just because someone's retired, they still bring value to. It's getting all those different ages and experience together that can make it just a really cool experience at the Capitol. Remember that leave bill you brought up earlier?

Speaker 8:
[25:01] I do.

Speaker 2:
[25:03] During that floor discussion, it brought up a lot of members talking about the hardships of the job and the pay. I want to end this episode on what I think is the boldest proposal of the session related to this topic. It wouldn't change the length of session. It just proposes a huge pay bump. And it comes from an unlikely person, maybe, just a Republican. Representative Matt Soper, and he's from Delta. He thinks Colorado lawmakers should get paid the same as members of Congress. He said, quote, it's not JV and varsity.

Speaker 14:
[25:40] We are on equal footing. From a legal perspective, the average Coloradans life is more impacted by what we do here in this building than what a member of Congress can achieve in Washington, DC. On top of that, the average time that Congress is in session is roughly 120 days. That's interesting. We're in session 120 days.

Speaker 2:
[26:06] Now, members of Congress earn $174,000 a year. I think we can agree, Lucas, that that is just not in the cards for Colorado.

Speaker 8:
[26:15] Definitely not.

Speaker 2:
[26:16] Yeah. Matt Soper, he's term-limited, and I'll add that he may get a little more money if he gets the next job he's owing.

Speaker 8:
[26:25] He's running for Delta County Commissioner, and they earn more than $100,000 a year.

Speaker 2:
[26:30] One of the great ironies in Colorado, for state lawmakers, a step out of state office often comes with a step up in pay. So I guess term limits at least give them something to look forward to. That's it for this episode. Purplish is a production of member-supported Colorado Public Radio and the Colorado Capitol News Alliance.

Speaker 8:
[27:02] The CCNA is a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and the Colorado Sun with support from news outlets throughout the state. Startup funding for the alliance was provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I'm Lucas Brady Woods.

Speaker 2:
[27:19] And I'm Bente Birkeland. Our producer is Stephanie Wolf. Sound Design and Engineering by Shane Rumsey. Our theme music is by Brad Turner. And our executive producer is Megan Verlee. Rae Solomon contributed additional reporting for the episode.

Speaker 8:
[27:36] Purplish will be back in your feeds next week. Subscribe now so you don't miss an episode.

Speaker 2:
[27:47] This is Purplish from CPR News and the Colorado Capitol News Alliance.

Speaker 1:
[27:56] Support for Purplish comes from the Colorado Hospital Association. Almost 7 in 10 Colorado hospitals are at risk financially. Increased costs and a growing number of uninsured patients are among the many challenges. Learn more at cha.com.