PHOENIX — Sen. John Kavanagh wants to give voters a new chance to decide if he and his colleagues are worth more than the $24,000 annual salary they now get for what are supposed to be part-time jobs.
The Fountain Hills Republican is proposing a measure for the 2026 ballot to put in an automatic inflation adjustment on lawmakers’ salaries. If approved, lawmakers would get an annual boost every year tied to the Consumer Price Index.
Unlike the current system, lawmakers would never again have to seek voter approval for future pay hikes.
Kavanagh, the longest continually serving legislator, acknowledged that voters have had multiple chances in the past to conclude that $24,000 figure, approved in 1998, is insufficient. But they turned down each and every effort, most recently a 2014 proposal to set the figure at $35,000.
But he said this is different because it would use the current salary as a base and then make annual adjustments.
Had his proposal been in effect now, the lawmakers being sworn in this coming week would get a $648 raise based on the most recent CPI report, which pegged annual inflation at 2.7%.