A week after we learned income levels for South Carolinians had declined by 10.9 percent over the last dozen years, staffers in the S.C. General Assembly took home big fat raises from their “Republican” bosses.
According to a local political blog, nearly three dozen Senate staffers making more than $50,000 annually have received raises ranging from 8.17 to 67 percent since March 2012. This follows a similar pattern of pay raises for top staffers in the S.C. House of Representatives – as well as big raises awarded by S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley to her staff in 2011.
Gotta love these “fiscal conservatives” taking care of their own while the rest of us suffer …
In the Senate, clerk Jeffery Gossett got a $12,463 annual bump in salary. Meanwhile the top attorney for the legislature’s judicial merit selection committee received a 45 percent bump – even though she only works four days a week.
Also getting in on the action? The sister-in-law of Senate President John Courson – who was appointed to her relative’s committee via one of the most shameful displays of nepotism we’ve ever seen in South Carolina.
Courson’s sister-in-law now makes $73,534 annually, not counting benefits.
That’s nice work … if you can get it. Most of us can’t (see here and here).
Sadly, nobody is calling out the “Republican” leaders of the Senate (Courson, finance chairman Hugh Leatherman or “majority” leader Harvey Peeler) for these bonuses.
In fact the mainstream media isn’t even reporting them …
There is a tendency in this state (and we’ve fallen victim to it from time to time ourselves) to exclusively blame politicians for the litany of things that are wrong with the ass-backward banana republic that is South Carolina. But John Courson giving his sister-in-law a cushy government job – and now awarding her an eight percent raise on top of it – isn’t the real problem.
The real problem is literally no one in this state’s political or media establishment with the balls to call him out for it …
Until there is, we shouldn’t be surprised to see politicians continuing to get away with as much as they can.
18 comments
These people work about 20 hours a week, on average. A little less in off session months July-Dec. and little more Jan-June.
Peeler and Leatherman, along with Courson are a disgrace!
Vote Change people or suffer the consequences.
“Republican virtue can be considered in relation to the people and in relation to the government; it is necessary in both. When only the govemment lacks virtue, there remains a resource in the people’s virtue; but when the people itself is corrupted, liberty is already lost.
Fortunately virtue is natural to the people, notwithstanding aristocratic prejudices. A nation is truly corrupted when, having by degrees lost its character and its liberty, it passes from democracy to aristocracy or to monarchy; that is the decrepitude and death of the body politic….”
Maximilien Robespierre
That worked out well the last time it was used.
The investment commission just gave bonuses up to $300,000 per state employee. Makes these overpaid, bloated folks look cheap by comparison.
Once again Fits, why refer to “Republicans,” as if there is something odd here.
These are REPUBLICANS.This is what they’re ALL about.And the SC REPUBLICAN party eats this stuff up as do the majority of South Carolinians who next year and in 2016 will vote to reelect ALL of them!
Blame Barak Obama, democrats and RINOS.
There oughtta be a law…that no one getting a state salary can receive a raise that is larger than what the sorry ass legislature gives to the people working the trenches at the highway department, DMV, DSS. DHEC, etc., etc.
This assininity about thinking they need to be competing with the private sector is absurd. And, the that goes for the really sorry ass agency head commission, too. These people should WANT to be public servant and not maggots on those people in the trenches at the highway department, DMV, DSS, DHEC, etc., etc.
Ha! The Nerve scooped you!
First, haley gave big raises to her staff.
Then Senate gave bigger raises to its staff.
Then Investment Commission gave massive raises to its staff.
What Republican controlled group gets the next raise?
Tom Davis will put a stop to this. Right?
Erin Crawford, previously Chief of Staff of the Senate Rules Committee, is now Research Director/Chief of Staff of the Judiciary Committee.
Erin received the highest pay increase of any Senate Staffer, Erin’s pay was bumped by 67.63% to $100,579 this year.
Senator Larry Martin also moved from prominence in the Rules Committee to Chair of the Judiciary.
well isn’t the pot calling the kettle black….tell us Will, how big of a raise did you get working under Sanford?
Teabaggers do as we tell you and shut up…
I looked up miscreant in the dictionary!
There was Peeler’s picture!
I looked up crater.
There was his picture of his face!
A pathetic skirt chaser just like his brother!
Yep, he and his brother Bob(Clemson trustee and Waste management lobbyyst) are trying to trash the State with all of this out of State trash and human waste.
They should be run out of any position of responsibility, or influence.
The Peeler’s brought their Gaffney scum and womanizing to Columbia.
We hope they all leave the upstate and don’t come back!
Anybody have the balls to call out Treasurer Loftis on the settlement with the Bank of NY? $9 million lawyer fees to Loftis’s fraternity brother lawyer and his associate for $20 million into the retirement fund? To retirees with an annual benefit average of $27,000, that $9 million looks real good. And Curtis fought so hard (by his own admission) to get those attorneys $9 million–as a contribution to economic development!!! Wonder just whose economy he is trying to develop. 1 guess!
political admin 101…..