North Carolina’s state motto is “To Be Rather Than To Seem,” and the state has prided itself on its legislature comprised of all its citizens. The original settlers of the colony explicitly wrote against class divisions in the state. However, most of our politicians are wildly wealthy when entering public office. This travesty is the result of a poorly designed pay structure for legislative work. Salaries for North Carolina legislators are so low that only the rich can afford to hold office.
There are three types of state legislatures: full time, hybrid and part time. North Carolina claims to be a part-time legislative body, a so-called citizen legislature, whose legislators work part time for the General Assembly and spend the rest of their time working in their home districts. The purpose of this was to keep legislators tied directly to their districts and their prosperity.
In reality, North Carolina has emerged as a hybrid legislature according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and is keeping legislators away from their home districts longer and longer every year.
In a hybrid legislature, legislators spend around 2/3 of the time that a full-time job would require on their legislative responsibilities, for which their annual salaries are around $41,100 a year. In part-time states, the time commitment is closer to 57%. The pay is reflective of that at an average of $18,449 each year. Full-time legislators generally spend 84% of their time and make an average of $82,358. As shown by Ballot Pedia, North Carolina legislators make $13,951 a year, despite acting as a hybrid legislature.
According to the United States Census, North Carolina is the ninth-most populous state and, with a divided government and a growing budget, legislators have stayed in Raleigh for increasingly lengthy sessions. This last session is the longest in North Carolina’s history, lasting 199 days. By comparison, the U.S. House and Senate were both in session for just over 160 days in 2021. U.S. House and Senate members make $174,000 per year, much more than those in North Carolina.
For the amount of time they have to spend in Raleigh working, legislators should be making more than what they currently are. This low wage is less than the average for part-time legislatures, and far below the average for hybrid legislatures. Yet the amount of work required for the job exceeds that of hybrid legislatures and even some full-time legislatures.
These sessions, which have no official start and end date through Constitutional Amendment or chamber rule, serve to indirectly disenfranchise North Carolinians. The time expectations of the modern General Assembly keep regular, working-class citizens from being able to represent their state if they so choose, especially in districts far away from Wake County. The only people who can truly be legislators under our current system are those who are already wealthy or have extreme leniency from their employers.
In other words, the elites are fully in charge of a state that ranks 20th in income inequality, with a median household income of just $56,642 and 12.9% of people living in poverty as shown by the Census. In our current structure, the citizen legislature that was intended has become anything but. Of the 170 members that make up the General Assembly, 35 are retired, with another 83 working in high-paying roles (attorney, business executive, etc.) or owning a business. With more legislators becoming retirees every session, only the wealthy can seem to afford to be a legislator.
To make representation more accessible to North Carolinians across class, race, gender or geographic location, we need to enact one of two things. Whichever option we go with should also come with serious campaign finance reform in order to make campaigning a possibility for all.
Our first option is to raise the amount we pay our legislators to reflect the amount of work we expect from them. Making the job more affordable will be one of the first steps toward making the position available to all. In my view, that would mean making the wage at least equal to that of the median household income in North Carolina ($56,642/year) so that legislators who might have to travel far away from home can still support themselves when in Raleigh.
Our second option is passing a law restricting the length of Assembly sessions. If we are going to have a truly part-time legislature, we need to enforce that part-time element. In addition to this, legislators would need legal protections barring employers from firing their employees because of their responsibilities to the state. With this rule will come the expectation of quicker decisions and far less stalling and postponing.
If you aren’t wealthy, retired or have deep connections as a result of your employer, it is nearly impossible to feasibly work as a state legislator. This becomes even more difficult the further away from Raleigh you are. Political power cannot be handed to one class. We need to go back to the egalitarian roots of North Carolina and make our citizen legislature truly comprised of all citizens.
