Kansas Senate sidesteps attempt to derail legislator pay raises scheduled for 2025

TOPEKA — A bipartisan group of Kansas senators failed to summon enough support Wednesday for a maneuver that could have led to a vote to nullify salary and compensation increases in 2025 for members of the Kansas Legislature that were recommended by a special commission.

A state law approved last year said the commission’s pay plan, in which rank-and-file legislators would have annual compensation increased from about $29,000 to $57,000, would be implemented unless a majority in the House and Senate voted to reject the package by Feb. 7.

If the plan was defeated by the Legislature, the nine-member commission would have authority to craft an alternative for consideration.

The motion to withdraw the package from the Senate Ways and Means Committee and add it to the Kansas Senate’s calendar didn’t receive the minimum required 24 votes, but did draw support from 18 Republicans, two Democrats and one independent. Three GOP senators voted to let the measure stay on idle in the budget committee. Sixteen senators didn’t vote on the motion as four were absent and a dozen decided to pass.

There was no public debate on Senate Concurrent Resolution 1615, which was sponsored by seven Republicans. Even if there were 24 votes in the Senate to draw the measure away from the budget committee, a supermajority of 27 senators would be subsequently needed to force Senate leadership to call a vote on the commission’s plan.

In the House, comparable steps would be necessary to enable representatives to weigh in on fate of compensation adjustments scheduled to start in 2025. The entire House and Senate is up for election in November, meaning anyone receiving a raise next January would have to survive a primary and general election prior to the near doubling of compensation for members of the Legislature.

Under the pay plan adopted by the commission, Republicans and Democrats in leadership positions would receive elevated salaries. The Senate president and the House speaker, for example, would have salaries climb to $85,000 a year from the current $44,000.

The salary increases could raise retirement benefits for legislators enrolled in the Kansas Public Employee Retirement System.

Commissioners defended the compensation adjustments as an attempt to address complaints about the difficulty of recruiting candidates for the Legislature and the goal of bringing more diversity to the Legislature.

The 2023 Legislature approved and Gov. Laura Kelly signed into law a bill linking salaries of statewide elected officials in Kansas to changes in the salary paid to members in Congress. Under that scheme, the governor’s salary was reset to $174,000, the attorney general would be paid $169,650, and the secretary of state, state treasurer and insurance commissioner were to be paid $160,950 annually.