RALEIGH – Sure, state legislators in Raleigh are more than willing to enact major reforms of lobbying and the legislative process this year. They just want to be paid for it.

No, I’m not accusing the General Assembly en masse of behavior befitting Duke Cunningham or Jim Black. What I mean is that while many lawmakers –Democrats and Republicans, insiders and outsiders, leaders and followers – will admit that the process is deeply flawed, they look at the prospect of reform with dread. It isn’t that they fear it will fail. They fear it will succeed. That it will eliminate a cherished part of their compensation.

Meals, trips, and other gifts from lobbyists and their principals have become a way of life in Raleigh partly because so many state legislators sincerely believe that they are paid far too low for the work they do for the public. They have come to feel entitled to the freebies, to view them as essentially a privately funded package of supplemental pay and benefits that makes being a legislator financially feasible.

You’d think that this was the unspoken subtext of the debate about lobbying restrictions and legislative reform. You’d be wrong. Lawmakers have become quite explicit about this point, emphasizing it during a recent hearing about Wisconsin’s “no cup of coffee” rule banning gifts from lobbyists. Wisconsin’s legislators are paid far more, they said, and so the relevance of its lobbying rules is weak.

Two propositions are worth discussing here. First, when lawmakers complain about their $14,000 base salary, they aren’t painting the whole picture. Their compensation includes an allowance of $104 a day, which is tax free in most cases, as well as funds for other expenses and benefits. In odd-numbered years, when the General Assembly meets for many months out of the year, the compensation package can add up to a tidy sum. In 2003, admittedly an extreme case, House members received an average of $56,034, while Senate members received $50,333. This was an average; members of the leadership made substantially more, rank-and-file members less. In other years, the numbers typically ranged in the high $30,000s and $40,000s.

I’m not suggesting that these figures are staggering. Far from it. Most (though not all) members of the General Assembly could earn quite a bit more money if they were working full-time in their respective occupations. Also, members who represent districts far from Raleigh do have substantial costs to shoulder, including travel and lodging. But let’s not pretend that lawmakers are paid $14,000.

Second, there is a case for paying lawmakers more for the work they do. It is not in the interest of taxpayers to skimp in ensuring that talented, dedicated people step forward to serve their state. The budget of the General Assembly is a tiny fraction of overall state spending. However, I think it would be disastrous to move North Carolina towards the model of a full-time legislature, which the evidence shows would likely mean higher taxes, higher spending, and more intrusive regulations emanating out of Raleigh.

My recommendation would be to raise the base salary substantially, reduce the expense payments substantially, and place firm limits on the lengths of legislative sessions. That way, lawmakers would get more hourly pay but North Carolinians wouldn’t lose more of their hourly pay.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.