Watch the Rochester skyline disappear as snow squall blankets the city.Shawn Dowd

LINKEDINCOMMENTMORE
ALBANY – New York's governor and state lawmakers are set to become the highest paid in the nation under a new plan that would boost their salaries for the first time in 20 years.
The state's 213 lawmakers would see their base salary jump from the current $79,500 to $130,000 in 2021 — a 64 percent increase — under a plan approved Thursday by the state Compensation Committee, a panel of current and former comptrollers tasked with examining salaries for top state officials.
The increase would be phased in over three years, first with a jump to $110,000 in January.
But the pay hikes, which will take effect Jan. 1 unless lawmakers step in and change them before then, would come with significant strings attached for state legislators, who would be forced to limit their income from outside, private sources to 15 percent of their base salary starting in 2020.
Previously: Pay raise for New York lawmakers? It's back on the table
Stipends for committee posts and leadership positions, which currently range from $9,000 to $41,500 a year, would be eliminated except for the very top lawmakers, according to former New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson, a member of the committee.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo's $179,000 salary, meanwhile, would increase to $250,000 in 2021 under the plan, though that part would have to be approved by lawmakers in January.
The committee voted to approve the basics of its recommendation at a meeting Thursday in Manhattan, with a full report to follow by Monday.
"We looked at comparables and New York does not compare well to other jurisdictions and there haven’t been raises in 20 years," said H. Carl McCall, the SUNY Board of Trustees chair and former state comptroller who led the committee.

Highest in the nation



The planned salary increases would move New York to the top of the national pay scale for state government.
California pays its state lawmakers a base salary of $107,000, the current highest rate in the nation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
New York's plan would surpass California in January.
California Gov. Jerry Brown's $201,680 salary is the current highest in the country.
Under the new plan, Cuomo would surpass Brown in two years, assuming Brown's salary stays stagnant or increases by a few percentage points.
The committee recommended increasing Cuomo's salary first to $200,000 next year and $225,000 in 2020 before hitting $250,000 in 2021.
Other statewide elected officials and agency commissioners would be in line for a raise, too.
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul's pay would increase from $151,500 to $220,000 over the same time period.
Those governor and lieutenant governor's salary increases would have to be approved by a resolution from lawmakers, unlike the committee's other recommendations.
The attorney general and state comptroller's salaries would increase from $151,500 to $220,000 by 2021, according to the committee's vote.
Agency commissioners, who make between $90,000 and $136,000, would see their pay increase at a similar rate to lawmakers, with top commissioners making $220,000 in 2021.

20 years of stagnation



The planned pay increase would mark an end to two decades of wrangling over whether New York's lawmakers, commissioners and statewide elected officials should get a raise.
For years, state lawmakers had been wary of voting to increase their own pay out of fear it would be used against them on the campaign trail, knowing it would be unpopular with the general public.
The last pay increase came in 1999 as part of a deal the previous year with Gov. George Pataki that included the first authorization of charter schools in New York. 
Since then, the lawmakers' pay remained stagnant, as did the salaries of agency commissioners who saw their deputies earn more than they did over the years.
In 2016, the Legislature voted to create a commission that would ultimately decide whether to award raises. But the effort was scuttled by Cuomo's appointees to the panel, who declined to back a pay raise without limiting lawmakers' outside pay.
The Legislature and Cuomo tried again this year, creating a new panel that spelled out the exact members and required them to issue a plan by Dec. 10.
That effort culminated with Thursday's vote, where the committee threw its support behind the planned pay hikes with the limit on outside income, which Cuomo has long favored. (State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, a member of the committee, recused himself from voting on the increases for statewide elected officials, which includes himself.)
Thompson, the former New York City comptroller and committee member, said he believes it's clear that state legislators and statewide elected officials "do excellent work, do a yeoman's job."
"I think in looking at the fact that they haven't had a raise in 20 years, when you talk about issues of fairness, it is not the right thing to have gone that period of time," he said during the meeting.

Strings attached

While state lawmakers are likely to be pleased with the pay bump, some are less likely to accept the committee's decision to limit outside pay.
New York has long allowed its lawmakers to earn unlimited amounts of income from outside sources, with some padding their salary with legal clients or private work.
Proponents of the practice says it maintains the idea of a citizen legislature, where lawmakers come from all walks of life and have viewpoints shaped by their work. 
The state Legislature, however, has seen plenty of scandal over the years, with more than 40 lawmakers hit with legal or ethical charges since 2000.
Database: New York's troubled lawmakers