The head of the California Citizens Compensation Commission said Friday that he's not bothered by a legal challenge to his panel's spring decision to slash state lawmakers' pay and benefits by 18 percent.
Commission chairman Charles "Chuck" Murray said in a telephone interview that state legislators have the right to challenge anything anybody does in California, including decisions by his own panel, adding: "That's their job."
The Legislature's top administrators recently asked Attorney General Jerry Brown to decide whether the pending cuts in compensation were legal, suggesting the commission had exceeded its legal jurisdiction.
Murray said that while he doesn't mind the lawmakers appeal to Brown, he still thinks it's a bad idea given the state's troubled finances.
"It makes no sense whatsoever for them to be doing this," he said.
The Governor appoints all seven members of the commission. Murray cited the state's dire financial condition when in May members of his panel voted to cut lawmakers' pay by 18 percent, beginning in December 2010 after the next round of elections.
Later, the commission also slashed lawmakers per-diem payments, car allowances and medical and other benefits by an equal amount - effective December of 2009.
Murray acknowledged that the state Department of Personnel Administration gave him a legal opinion stating that his panel didn't necessarily have a 100 percent right to cut per-diem and car allowances. "But that's just one opinion," Murray said.
Murray said he secured additional verbal legal opinions from an unidentified judge and four Southern California attorneys. They all told him he had authority to order all cuts, he says.
Before voting to make the cuts, Murray said, he went even further and consulted a retired lawmaker and reviewed historical legislative and archival bill files on the issue.
Murray said his own review convinced him that his commission was meant to have the power to cut both pay and fringe benefits. Per-diem and car allowances fit that bill.
Torey Van Oot and the Bee Capitol Bureau report on the people and politics of California government. Get 
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