HARRISBURG -- Two bills to prevent state officials from getting automatic cost-of-living increases in December or January won't be needed, thanks to a sour economy.

"The recession did what the (citizen group) reformers couldn't do," that is, stop the cost-of-living pay raise for legislators, judges and some executive branch officials, Gene Stilp of Taxpayers and Ratepayers United said yesterday. He has frequently brought a huge, inflatable pink pig to the Capitol to protest raises for state officials.

The Legislature in 1995 approved a law that grants automatic cost-of-living adjustments to legislators each Dec. 1, and to judges and executive branch members each Jan. 1, based on the rise over the past 12 months in the Consumer Price Index (aka the inflation rate) in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. But federal officials said yesterday the cost index declined over the past year.

In every previous year since 1995, an automatic raise has always gone into effect, usually in the range of 3 percent to 4 percent. Last Dec. 1 the increase brought rank-and-file legislators' salaries to an all-time high of $78,300. If there had been a 3 percent increase this Dec. 1, that salary would have topped $80,000.

Last fall, a new legislator, Rep. Barbara McIlvaine Smith, D-Chester, introduced a bill to repeal the annual adjustments permanently. She got a lot of flak from both Republican and Democratic colleagues.

"There were a lot of members on both sides of the aisle who don't want to repeal the COLA," she said yesterday. Her bill never even came up for discussion in committee.

Then in the last few days another legislator, Rep. Marguerite Quinn, R-Bucks, tried a less severe measure, a bill to stop the adjustment just for this year.

Ms. McIlvaine Smith said that for the most part, having the economy doing so poorly is a bad thing. But the fact that it stopped the pay raises "is a good thing. We (state officials) shouldn't be taking extra money in this economy."

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