Some have been squawking lately about Saskatchewan MLAs receiving an automatic, inflation adjusted pay raise.

Politician pay is always a tricky issue, but what Saskatchewan does is better than what some other jurisdictions have done in the past, That of course doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement though.

Consider that in 2008, an Alberta legislative committee met, and with the stroke of a pen, MLAs decided to give themselves huge pay raises. Cabinet ministers saw their pay jump by 30%, the Premier saw a 34% increase and the leader of the opposition also saw a sizeable jump in pay as well.

In that situation, politicians decided to dip into the cookie jar and help themselves to more than their fair share. No doubt, in other situations in the past, politicians may have taken less than their fair share, recognizing that any helping may still be deemed to be too generous by some in the public.

Thus, letting politicians decide on their own puts them in a conflict of interest that they may or may not abuse. In that respect, it’s good that Saskatchewan politicians are not involved in deciding their pay; indexing it to the province’s inflation rate is a good independent mechanism.

However, by simply adjusting their pay for inflation does not take into account what is happening with the common man’s pay. For that reason, the CTF has recommended the Alberta government increase pay by the lower rate of either inflation or Statistics Canada’s average weekly earnings forecast. Saskatchewan should also enact such a change.

That way, if the average taxpayers’ income goes up by less than the inflation rate, then MLAs would feel the pinch too.

It wouldn’t make much of a difference for 2012 as the Leader Post reports a 2.8% increase in MLA pay and a rise in average weekly earnings of 2.7 per cent. However, the gap could certainly be much higher in future years.

Whenever you can connect politicians to the struggles of the average taxpayer...well, that’s a good thing.