Editorial: Obstructing legislator pay raise subverts will of voters

Minnesotans who voted in November to empower an independent commission to set state legislators’ salaries may have been surprised to learn that the raw politics they’d hoped to transcend never went away.
Last month, when the newly appointed Legislative Salary Council approved a 45 percent salary increase for the state’s 201 legislators, the leader of the Minnesota House pounced.broadstreet.zone(48036);
In a March 16 letter, Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, instructed the House controller not to fund the pay increases, scheduled by law to take effect July 1.
Depending on his appetite for brinkmanship over the issue, Daudt risks plunging Minnesota into a state constitutional crisis. He has already, in our opinion, subverted the will of the voters.
In a landslide, 76 percent of them voted in November for a constitutional amendment creating the Legislative Salary Council, whose statutory duty is to “prescribe” legislative salaries by March 31 of odd-numbered years. The amendment struck from the

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