The internal workings of a legislative body usually don’t merit much public attention. But taxpayers have every right to be disappointed by what transpired today in the Texas House of Representatives.

The “housekeeping” resolution approved today (HR 3) includes an 8% increase in each member’s office budget, a 5% increase in the maximum salary for House employees, and a 67% increase in the unexpended balance each legislator can carry forward in their operating account before any excess funds are swept.

Granted, the dollar figures involved aren’t that much out of a $170 billion state budget. But the message those state representatives sent to their taxpayers and constituents couldn’t have been worse.

Taxpayers are hurting right now. Small businesses are feeling the bite of the new margins tax as their revenues are being pressured. Homeowners are seeing their property tax bills growing at a much faster rate than their incomes, if they’re getting raises at all. And Comptroller Susan Combs warned just three days ago that Texas would lose 111,000 jobs between now and the end of September.

Taxpayers are looking to their state legislators for relief. What are they to think when they see that their chances at such relief being diminished so that their representative can spend more on themselves? That their representative’s staffers – hard-working and talented as they may be – could be getting pay raises when they’re not?

Also consider that during the upcoming budget process, our legislators will need to tell state agencies to rein in their spending, defer pay raises, and return funds that they haven’t already spent. Such requests lose credibility when those making the budget decisions aren’t leading by example.

I served 22 years in the Texas House. I know first-hand how difficult it is to run an office and keep top-quality staff on a House member’s budget. The changes made in HR 3 are the type of things you do when times are good. But loosening your own belt when everyone else is tightening theirs was wrong on principle and bad form.

– Talmadge Heflin