The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette shared a fact from the National Conference of State Legislatures in its “Enough Said” piece.  Here’s the link to a nifty little graph:

The growing burden of the state legislators
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08237/906636-109.stm

Their bottom line is that state House and Senate members have more constituents to represent today than before and, thus, “maybe they deserve a pay raise after all.”  (Not that the NCSL is biased or anything.)

This screams for a LTE response, but I’m still in the PG blackout window.  If anyone is so inclined, please feel free to reply.  As a help, I’m thinking of a couple of ways to approach this:

** This doesn’t account for the growth in the state bureaucracy.  I don’t go to my state rep to get my photo taken for my driver’s license.  I go to PennDOT.  This "fact" makes it sound like if we have more road miles to pave, our state legislators are out there paving them too.  I'd bet the "infrastructure" of government grew faster than the number of constituents. 

** With all the bureaucracy there are bound to be bureaucratic screw-ups.  Now state reps come to rescue us from the bureaucracy they created and they want credit for it and more money.  Suppose a surgeon left a scalpel inside you and then had to operate again to remove it.  Does the surgeon deserve more money? 

** Ridicule.  “The growing burden of the state legislators.”  That title says it all. The legislature is, of course, a growing burden. Bonusgate.  Midnight pay raises.  Ghost employees.  Nepotism.  Favoritism. Etc. etc. etc.  This list could easily hit the PG 250 word limit.

Mark