A total of $1.67 million per year is the annual estimated price tag for the base salary hikes given last week to each of the state’s 40 senators and 160 representatives.
Gov. Maura Healey announced that the 200 members of the Legislature will receive an 11.39 percent hike in their base pay for the 2025-2026 legislative session that began January 1. The hike will increase the base salary of each senator and representative by $8,391 per year— from the current $73,655 to $82,046.
Healey is required under the state constitution to determine the amount of a pay raise or cut that state legislators would receive for the 2025-2026 session. All Massachusetts governors are obligated to increase or decrease legislative salaries biennially under the terms of a constitutional amendment approved by the voters in 1998. The amendment, approved by a better than two-to-one margin, requires legislative salaries to be “increased or decreased at the same rate as increases or decreases in the median household income for the commonwealth for the preceding two-year period, as ascertained by the governor.”
Healey said she used the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to determine that median household income for Massachusetts for the 2023-2024 period increased by 11.39 percent.
Supporters of the hike said that this automatic system was approved by voters by a two-to-one margin in 1998 and has worked well for 26 years. They noted that there have been years when this system resulted in a pay cut for legislators. They said it is also important that this system takes away the power of the Legislature to raise its own members’ salaries and eliminates any accusations of conflict of interest.
Critics were quick to respond. “Statehouse elected officials should not be receiving an automatic 11 percent pay raise,” said Paul Craney, spokesperson for Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. “Not many workers in Massachusetts get that kind of a pay bump automatically. Legislative leaders set up a system in 2017 so that they don’t have to vote for any future pay raises. If lawmakers care about transparency, they should vote on their new pay raise.”
Craney continued, “Before the Legislature accepts their pay raise, they should accept the results of the audit the Legislature ballot question. This legislative session should not start with lawmakers further enriching themselves and then rejecting the will of the voters. It’s a broken legislative system at the Statehouse and their actions over the next week will demonstrate how corrupt it’s becoming.”