Patricia Murphy: Giant raises in tough times?Welcome to the Georgia State Senate.

“NPR and PBS can hate us on their own dime,” she said.

Following a vote in the U.S. House this month, Medicaid could soon be on the chopping block, too, while other federal jobs and programs hang in the balance. It’s all a part of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s plans to slash $1 trillion from the annual federal budget this year, which is certain to have wide-ranging impacts in Georgia, too.

It’s a case of curiously terrible timing for Republicans in the state Senate, who moved this week to give hefty pay raises to Georgia’s top brass, including Gov. Brian Kemp. My colleague David Wickert crunched the numbers and noted that the plan would give Kemp a 37% salary hike, to $250,000, while Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ pay would more than double, although Jones has said he would donate his raise to charity.

Also getting big boosts would be the Georgia attorney general, the speaker of the House, the secretary of state, the state superintendent of schools and the commissioners of agriculture, labor and insurance. Those statewide officials, who are all Republicans, would have their pay automatically set at 80% of the governor’s pay in perpetuity.

For a group of GOP leaders who talk a lot about “hard workin’ Georgians,” it makes you wonder how hard working Georgians feel about giving the bosses that kind of coin.

The legislation to make it happen came from state Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, who argued Thursday that jobs in the private sector pay much more than the salaries for Georgia’s top roles. “Even with this raise, compared to the private marketplace, they would be woefully underpaid,” Albers said.

That may be true, but it all depends on who in the private marketplace we’re talking about. The U.S. Census reports that the median salary for Georgians last year was $55,252, about 80% less than the governor’s proposed pay.

Although the bill is meant to make salaries compete with the those in the private sector, one feature of the business world that did not make its way into the legislation was the usual way a person gets a raise, namely by going to the boss and asking for it. What if lawmakers just used a ballot measure to ask voters, “Do you want to give politicians a fat pay raise?” I think we all know how that would go.

“Have any of these people come to a committee hearing and asked to have a raise?” state Sen. Lee Anderson, a Republican from Grovetown, asked Albers during the debate.

No, Albers said. There had not been a hearing on the measure at all.

State Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, further asked Albers if he’d spoken with Kemp, Jones or any of the other statewide officials who could soon get raises for their final years in office. Albers said he had talked to some of them, all of whom liked the idea, but didn’t want to say who he’d spoken with, “so they don’t get thrown under the bus.”

“They just want us to do it, would that be true?” Brass asked. “That would definitely be true,” Albers said.

The transparency in the process, or lack thereof, is something to behold. The measure came in the last days of the legislative session, as an amendment to a separate bill meant to boost state judges’ pay, which is an easy idea to get behind.

I’ve also written before to advocate for lawmakers to have their pay raised. In 2022, the salary in the House and Senate was a measly $17,342, only enough to ensure that nearly everyone in the General Assembly was losing money by holding the office. Their pay has since been boosted to just over $24,000, along with a daily stipend for expenses.

It’s important to say here that the state budget, unlike the federal budget, has to be balanced by law. So the increase for salaries for the top officials will either come from existing programs, the state surplus or your tax dollars.

And the competition for those tax dollars will get stiffer soon. State Sen. Blake Tillery, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, warned this week that lawmakers need to adjust to the fact that the days of the federal gravy train of COVID cash infusions to Georgia are quickly coming to an end.

“The sugar high is ending,” the Vidalia Republican said.

In the end, the votes for and against the amendment were bipartisan. But the “nays” might have been the most instructive, since more than a dozen of the most ambitious senators are indeed considering runs for those statewide offices in 2026. And as was well established in the debate Thursday, voting for your own huge pay raise, courtesy of hardworking Georgians, may not really be a good idea right now.

On Friday, the state House rejected the idea of raising the governor’s and others salaries, and sent a bill raising only judges’ pay back to the Senate for another try. The effort to pay our top politicians significantly more will have to wait for a better time.