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"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, @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.