PHOENIX — Arizona lawmakers are on track to collect more than $400,000 for doing virtually nothing at the Capitol - and taxpayers are footing the bill.
A typical legislative session ends with marathon votes in May or June to pass a state budget, and then everyone goes home.
Not this year.
The final days of the current Legislature have turned into months.
The schedule, apparently set by Senate Republicans, calls for the Legislature to adjourn for the year in August, after a brief two-day session this week. The schedule is subject to change as soon as Tuesday.
All lawmakers get a daily allowance to cover work expenses while the Legislature is in session. The allowance is formally known as "legislative subsistence" but is commonly referred to as a "per diem."
"The fact that they're continuing to take vacations in the middle of the session means that they're getting per diems every day for not doing any work," Gov. Katie Hobbs told reporters.
Here's what the extended schedule means:
- Lawmakers get the allowance for weekends, and whether they're at the Capitol or not.
- After next year's state budget was passed in mid-May, lawmakers took a month-long break. After this week's two-day session, another break is planned, for the rest of June, all of July and into a brief session in August. The Legislature would then close up shop for the year.
- From May 16 through Aug. 7 (taking a guess at lawmakers' next Capitol sojourn), the Legislature will have been in session for 83 days, with lawmakers doing work at the Capitol for just two days.
- Based on current per-diem rates for lawmakers, from mid-May to August they could pocket an estimated $409,000 among them, according to subsistence rates set by the Legislature.
Lawmakers can opt out of receiving subsistence. It's not known whether any of them have.
The real winners are lawmakers from outside Maricopa County. Their subsistence rate is $119 per day, according to the Legislature's guidelines.
They could receive almost $10,000 apiece during the Legislature's long goodbye.
Maricopa County lawmakers get just $10 a day.
The regular payments stop when the legislative session ends.
To be fair, Arizona lawmakers are paid just $24,000 a year.
Two years ago, legislators raised their per diems with supermajority votes in the House and the Senate. Then-Gov. Doug Ducey allowed the raise to become law without his signature on the bill.
The raise applied only to lawmakers from outside Maricopa County, who remain majority Republican.
Should the Legislature adjourn in early August, its 200-days-plus length would smash previous records, according to Arizona Capitol Times record-keeping.
Arizona politics
Get the latest Arizona political news on our 12News YouTube playlist here.