Chris Powell: With the right pressure would some pols support cannibalism?

A cannibal feast on Tanna, Vanuatu, circa 1885–1889

 Painting by Charles E. Gordon Frazer (1863-1899)

MANCHESTER, Conn.,

For many years the case for raising the pay of Connecticut state legislators has been solid in principle.

Their base annual salary is $28,000. Representatives get another $4,500 and senators $5,500 annually for expenses they don't have to document. There is a mileage allowance. Legislators may get a few thousand dollars more if they are appointed to "leadership" positions, and, predictably enough, while most leadership positions are only nominal, they are so numerous that many legislators get one.

But the average legislator is being paid only $35,000 per year and legislators have gotten no raise since 2001, even as inflation is high.

While legislative sessions seldom last more than six months, those sessions often run from morning to late at night. Quite apart from their work at the Capitol, legislators typically are on duty most of the year dealing with constituents and interest groups. Many legislators attend civic events when they're not on the telephone hearing pleas for help, favors, or patronage.

As a result, being a state legislator is not a practical option for most people, as it offers part-time pay for what is often more than full-time work even as it requires most to hold other jobs to support themselves and their families.

In the old days the Hartford insurance companies and major law firms would give legislative leaders jobs with highly flexible schedules, even "no-show" jobs, though that practice diminished as the conflict of interest was recognized. But still, if legislators are not wealthy or financially comfortable in retirement, they need second jobs with flexible hours. For most, legislative office really is public service, no matter how well or poorly they perform.

So as a practical matter service in the General Assembly is not really open to everyone. Lawyers, financial company employees, and retirees are disproportionately represented in it. Factory workers, truckers, nurses and barbers aren't.

Theoretically, higher and effectively full-time legislative salaries would be more democratic and draw more capable and qualified people to the General Assembly. Legislators often offer such reflections upon their retirement.

But few legislators planning to seek re-election take that position, at least not in public, since they assume that voters would hold it against them and could not be persuaded by any argument in favor of raises.

Indeed, many voters probably would not even understand that the state Constitution prevents legislators from voting to raise their own salaries -- that legislators can't get a raise unless voters re-elect them to it.

But legislative pay raises aren't the only issue that fails to be addressed because of a lack of political courage. State government seldom addresses any issue with courage.

For many years state government has been mainly an exercise in distributing money to the loudest and most numerous bleaters, even as Connecticut's biggest problems -- generational poverty, educational failure, racial segregation, housing prices, criminal justice and such -- have not been alleviated, government's only response to them being to do and spend more on what doesn't work, as long as what doesn't work employs people who will support the regime at election time.

A legislator who merely acknowledged that state government's expensive policies toward those enduring problems don't work might be more courageous than all his colleagues.

Of course , Connecticut isn't peculiar in this respect, just maybe worse because its prosperity has insulated it somewhat from failure. A century ago the writer H.L. Mencken saw the tendency everywhere in government.

“Laws," Mencken wrote, "are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion. They are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle -- a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology, or cannibalism.”

That's why better pay for state legislators might not change anything. For legislators don't elect themselves. Their constituents usually elect and re-elect them without ever noticing their policy failures. To get a better public life you need to get a better public.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.