The Minnesota Senate has proposed increasing the pay for representatives, senators and other government officials. I wanted to write to let you know I am strongly against this proposal. Those of us in the Minnesota House have not put forward any proposal to raise our pay, and there is absolutely no plan to do so.

This session, the House has focused on investing in education, creating jobs to strengthen our economy and providing property tax relief for middle class families. All of this is being done while fixing a $627 million budget deficit left over from last session and paying back $854 million still owed to our public schools. It’s a challenge that we knew we needed to address when we started our session in January and it’s far more important to me than raising pay for government officials.

During a time of economic recovery for our state and our country, I feel it’s inappropriate for legislators to be considering raising their own pay. We are not planning on taking up any kind of pay increase in the House and even if we did, I would be strongly opposed.

While at the Capitol, I will continue to work hard to represent the views of our district. That’s what I was elected to do, and I’m certain our district feels the same way I do when I say we don’t need legislative pay increases.

 

Shannon Savick
state representative
District 27A
Wells