House committee approves 2 proposals that aim to boost Arizona lawmaker pay

A Republican member of the Arizona House is making a late-session push for lawmakers who live in Maricopa County to get a nearly $200 daily allowance.

That would be on top of their annual salary. Lawmakers who live outside of Maricopa County get about an extra $250 a day for most of the session.

Rep. David Livingston (R-Peoria) sponsored the bill and says it doesn’t matter Maricopa County lawmakers don’t have the same travelling expenses.

"It's not fair. It's discrimination. We do the same work. We need to be paid the same, no matter what it is and how you divide it up," Livingston said.

Another measure approved by the House Appropriations Committee on Monday would effectively double legislator salaries to be about $48,000 a year.

The committee voted 14-3 margin to ask voters to approve an inflation adjustment to their current legislative salary of $24,000. But Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, worded it in a way so the indexing would be computed from 1998 -- the last time voters approved a pay hike.

Lawmakers from both parties have griped for years about low salaries that haven't changed in decades, and until 2021, those same issues applied to daily expense money.

But in 2021, the Legislature passed a bill that boosted per diem rates for those living outside Maricopa County to the federal per diem rate, paid seven days a week when the Legislature is in session. That was a major increase from what they were previously getting in expense money, $60 a day for the first 120 days with a major cut after that.

The boost brought a non-Maricopa County lawmaker’s expense check for the first 120 days from $7,200 to $32,280. If the Legislature remains in session for another 60 days, that pay goes to more than $40,000. And it goes up every year because of inflation adjustments.

But lawmakers who reside in Maricopa County got no such raise, which was stuck at $35 a day, dropping to $10 a day after 120 days.

Livingston also said he was considering boosting pay for statewide elected officials like governor, attorney general and treasurer.

"It's embarrassing how low we pay them to work year round, and they deserve, no matter what side of the aisle they happen to come from, to get paid more,'' he said.

Gov. Katie Hobbs, the highest-paid of the statewide officeholders, earns just $90,000 a year, with salaries of other officers like secretary of state, attorney general and treasurer substantially below that.

And, unlike many states, Arizona does not have a governor's mansion or residence.