A change to daily subsistence pay in 2021 has been a windfall to some lawmakers, but status quo for most
JIM SMALL
Arizona Mirror
What was originally sold as a way to ensure state legislators from rural Arizona wouldn’t have to go broke trying to do the job now appears to go far beyond paying living expenses for lawmakers who have to travel to Phoenix — and has created a gigantic pay gap at the Capitol.
Thanks to a massive bump in subsistence pay granted to rural lawmakers in 2021, legislators who don’t live in Maricopa County are now earning several times more than their colleagues who live in the metro Phoenix area.
According to the Arizona Mirror’s analysis of legislative pay records, there were 35 legislators who hailed from outside Maricopa County in 2023. They collectively were paid more than 4 times as much in per diem subsistence payments than the 59 lawmakers who live in the state’s most populous county.
The average per diem payment to Maricopa County lawmakers for the year was about $5,700. Lawmakers from the other 14 counties were paid more than $45,500 on average. That’s on top of the $24,000 salary that all legislators earn.
There were 30 lawmakers who earned at least twice as much in subsistence and mileage pay in 2023 than they did in annual salary.
“It has to be addressed,” said GOP strategist and lobbyist Chuck Coughlin. “You can’t have two classes of lawmakers.”
