A few of the legislators who aren’t seeking reelection say it’s time to raise the pay for those who’ll be serving in the Iowa General Assembly next year.
Republican Representative Phil Thompson of Boone got his colleagues to laugh when he brought up the subject earlier this month. “Today I get to deliver my retirement speech at the age of 33,” Thompson said. “Unfortunately for me, I have to make up for all the money I lost these last six years and probably won’t get to do one of these ever again.”
The current salary for an Iowa legislator was set 18 years ago. “You all know how hard we have to work just to get here — all the doors, the events, the fundraisers, the parades. It’s a grind. My wife and I really did enjoy it most of the time. It was a fun run, but honestly we just can’t afford to do another round of it with our first kiddo on the way. I owe it to her to put my head down, earn and be a super dad,” Thompson said. “As rewarding as this work is, it really isn’t cut out for working age families. You guys should really fix that if you want a representative government.”
Sixty-four-year-old Representative Brian Best, a Republican from Glidden, is not seeking reelection after serving 10 years in the Iowa House. “I’m leaving, so it’s easy for me to say this,” Best said during his retirement speech. “What we pay you, me and those who will be elected — maybe we should think about paying a little bit more because it does really leave it to a really small portion of our population that can run for the Iowa House because of the wages that we pay.”
The six lawmakers who have leadership roles in the House and Senate are paid a salary of $37,500 a year. The other 144 legislators are being paid $25,000 a year. Most legislators get over $17,000 in expense payments each year as well to cover things like mileage and renting hotel rooms or apartments in Des Moines during the legislative session. Polk County lawmakers get less since they have homes near the Capitol. Polk County Representative John Forbes, a Democrat from Urbandale who’s not seeking reelection, said serving in the legislature has become a full-time job and he wouldn’t have been able to make it work financially when he was younger. “I would hope that the legislature looks at a salary increase at some point in time,” Forbes said, “to make sure that people who really want to run have that opportunity and not making salary a barrier for running for public office.”
The governor’s annual salary of $130,000 was set in 2005. More than a thousand state employees are paid more than Governor Reynolds. The salary for Iowa’s attorney general is about $123,000. The salaries for the four other statewide elected officials is just over $103,000.