At the end of this four-year term, the legislators will have earned less, by ¢20 million colones, than they would have, thanks to the passage Thursday of a new pay scale bill.
Contrast this with the obscene pay hike that the legislators in the 2010-14 term were prepared to vote themselves before their chairs were scarcely warm in 2010.
A new wind appears to be blowing through the halls of the Legislative Assembly that puts country over self and voluntarily cuts back on the taxpayer’s burden. It will also reduce the burden on the beleaguered pension funds, while former teachers from the old congress are still trying to get legislator pensions tacked on to their pensions.
The measure reduces their automatic increments of salaries to two during the term, both of 5% which was last year’s inflation figure.
Legislator Otton Solis of Citizen Action Party (PAC) calculates that it will slash salary costs by more than a billion colones over the four-year term. That means, say the legislator, that each legislator will pass from earning 184 million colones to ¢164 million.
The new law also puts a cap on annual pay hikes of 10%. At the end of four years, the reform will save taxpayer ¢312 million on the 57 legislator’s salaries. (During this year’s first quarter, inflation, measured in the prices consumers pay for goods, was 3.68%.)
PAC legislator Laura Garra told La Nacion, “This Legislative Assembly has this promise, willingness and loyalty to make the change that Costa Ricans demand. The public’s message was clear … we renounce having privileges in management of our own reimbursement.”
This is indeed, the clear wish of the public as measured in polls for a long time. Apparently, the 2010-14 Legislature was out of touch with the public mind and placed its own selfish desires for enrichment above the wishes of the taxpayers. The press and public raised such a protest that the bill was never presented.
Source: iNews.co.cr, reposted with permission
