SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
"I bet you that cost me my job," West Virginia Senate president, Republican Mitch Carmichael, jokingly told colleagues in April when he voted for a new measure that would expand broadband competition in his state.
Just over a month later it turned out to be true, when he was fired from his job as a sales manager at Frontier Internet, despite having recently been given a significant raise.
Frontier Internet is the state's largest high-speed internet provider and it was implacably opposed to the measure that Carmichael voted in favor of: one that allows up to 20 families or businesses to form a co-op to provide broadband in areas that are currently poorly served. It also lets cities and counties band together to build municipal networks.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10 2017, @11:10AM (6 children)
It is astounding that he had a regular job and was not a career politician. But of course Charleston is not Washington.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 10 2017, @12:39PM (5 children)
I wouldn't exactly call it "astounding." There are a lot of state legislatures that are part-time gigs and often meet for a few months out of the year. Salaries [ballotpedia.org] in such situations are often nowhere near enough to live on the rest of the year. A lot of "career politicians" who start in local or state governments start off as only part-time.
West Virginia pays its state reps $20,000/year, with a $131/day per diem when the legislature is in session. And keep in mind that state reps don't often keep residences in capitals, so if they can't commute every day that per diem often goes significantly toward hotels, meals, etc.
California has highest state legislator pay at $104,000/year. The lowest is New Hampshire, which pays $100/year (no -- not $100k: one hundred DOLLARS) and no per diem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10 2017, @06:27PM (2 children)
Hmm makes me wonder why they haven't legislated themselves higher salaries. They tend to be rich enough not to need to? Or they legislated themselves more money indirectly (from supporters etc)... ;)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Saturday June 10 2017, @07:16PM
It would increase competition for their positions.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 10 2017, @07:27PM
Wow... I love how the immediate reaction to such things is conspiratorial.
In many states (particularly those with part-time and low salaries), serving in the legislature is viewed not as a "career" but as a sort of act of being a civic volunteer, sort of like serving as a volunteer for a small-town fire department or serving on the board of a local charity or arts center or something. People do it for all sorts of reasons, though in most such states with part-time legislators, those with "ambitions" generally quickly discover that no one really cares about who they are outside of the statehouse.
It's pretty clear that the highest corruption rates for state legislatures come in states with high pay and full-time positions, which create more "career politicians" and allow a kind of lobbyist network to become entrenched. One of the reasons many states face STRONG backlash for proposing higher pay is because of the fear that full-time paid politicians will lead to more problems.
What's more likely in such states than corruption is just a generally skewed perspective toward those who have the means or situation that allows them to take a couple months per year and serve as reps. That means in many states you tend to get a lot of retirees, in some cases more women that typical in other leadership positions (whose husbands are bringing in money for the household), people with specific sorts of careers that allow them flexibility, etc. It's often hard for a working-class wage earner to get time off to serve.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10 2017, @07:03PM (1 child)
So are the politicians in non-fulltime parliaments mostly representatives of the companies they depend on for a living?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 10 2017, @07:55PM
Yes, this can be a problem. There's a lot of debate around the value of full-time vs. part-time legislatures and how they impact stuff [publicintegrity.org] like conflicts of interest, lobbying, etc. But just because one isn't a full-time employee of a company doesn't mean you can't receive compensation or other benefits -- lobbying happens no matter what. The vast majority of states have policies that are supposed to prevent legislators from voting on something where there's a conflict of interest, but enforcement varies a lot.
Bottom line is in states where being a legislator is a part-time job, representatives are likely to bring conflicts of interest from their employment directly. In states where being a legislator is a full-time job, they bring conflicts of interests based on their former employers, businesses who pay them speaking and "consulting" fees, etc. Full-time legislator pay often tends to lead to more elaborate campaigning, which means more money flows in from donors, who have their own interests.
There are ALWAYS conflicts of interests. It just depends on what form they take.