Assemblyman Goedhart: The Only Legislator to Lead by Example

(Chuck Muth) – Earlier this year, lawmakers rejected Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons’ recommendation to cut state worker salaries by 6 percent, opting instead for 24-day furloughs that will reduce salaries by 4.5 percent for two years,” reports Anjeanette Damon of the Reno Gazette-Journal this morning.

“But while most of the state’s constitutional officers, including Gibbons, volunteered to reduce their pay, only one lawmaker followed suit. Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, R-Amargosa Valley, wrote a check to the state for $526.65, representing a 6 percent pay cut, according to records obtained by the Reno Gazette-Journal.”

“It appeared to me we were asking the state’s workers to bear some sort of sacrifice, so I felt it was only fair if I did the same,” Goedhart told Damon.

Not even the Queen of Bleeding Hearts, liberal Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie (D-Woodstock), led by example and shared the pain with the government workers she so shamelessly claims to champion.

And Assembly Speaker-in-Waiting John Oceguera (D-Las Vegas) called the idea of taking the same cut as other government employees “crazy.”

In addition, Sen. Barbara Cegavske (R-Las Vegas) complained that “You have to get paid something to get something from something.”

But as Damon points out in her article, when you combine lawmakers’ salaries with a per diem they receive along with reimbursements for travel, lodging and moving expenses, “lawmakers collected an average $45,307 in pay” for the 120 days they were in session this year.

Let’s see: divide by three, multiply by seven, carry the five. I think that comes to $377.56 per day. Oh, the humanity!

Bravo, Assemblyman Goedhart, for being the ONLY elected legislator to have put your money where your rhetoric was. Literally.