After reading with interest your articles on the pay raises for state legislators and their claims that this is a full-time job, I would like to put their actual salary into perspective.
Using the salary of $81,050 you published in your editorial "Pay-jackers: Don't forget them" (July 19 and TribLIVE.com) and legislators' number of actual work days at 77, that means that each year they work slightly less than 35 percent of the average citizen's 230 days.
If you take 77 days' pay at $81,050, or $1052.60 per day, and add the $128 per diem, it comes to almost $1,200 per day of actual work. Calculate that out to 230 days, and the average citizen would have to make $276,000 to match the legislators' pay.
Sounds fair to me. I'd love to find a "part-time" job paying $1,200 a day. And as far as the claim they work full time, when was the last time you tried to contact one of them other than at a fundraiser, let alone get a straight answer when you do get them cornered?
These guys are poster boys for term limits. November '06 can't come fast enough!!
Robert R. Taylor
Clarksburg
