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Retired Rep. Dave Obey, the Wausau Democrat who was known for running a lean congressional office, left office after giving a nice taxpayer-funded gift to his staff in the form of an 84 percent salary bonus. Obey ranked eighth among all 435 members of the House of Representatives in his fourth quarter generosity to staff.

The practice of jacking up fourth quarter salaries for staffers is something that several members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation – led by Republican representatives Thomas Petri (Wisconsin’s 6^th District), F. James Sensenbrenner (5^th Dist) and Democrat Gwen Moore (4^th Dist.) – have engaged in over the last decade.

dave obey

The “4th Quarter Bonus,” as it has been called by Capitol insiders, is now documented thanks to the researchers at LegiStorm, an organization that catalogues and categorizes Congressional financial data. Congressional salary data is reported quarterly and was released March 1. In every year, there is a pronounced spike in fourth-quarter staff salaries that averages 20 per cent among members of the House of Representatives.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, fueled by bonuses that were largely fed by departing members – mostly retiring or defeated Democrats like Obey – congressional staff salary expenditures exceeded $200 million for the first time, totaling $201.7 million. LegiStorm reported that bonuses were nearly twice as large for staffs of departing House members as they were for continuing members.

So it was for Obey, whose $319,893 payroll for the fourth quarter was up by more than 84 percent from his usual $177,276 quarterly salary expense. This was a glaring change from his past behavior: In the nine years previous, Obey’s fourth-quarter staff salaries ranged between 1 per cent higher (2003) to 10 per cent lower (2001) from the average of the first three quarters, so you could say the final bonuses were a welcome change for Obey’s staff. (Obey could not be reached for comment.)

All told, Rep. Petri appears to have been the Santa Claus of the state’s congressional delegation, routinely doling out double-digit holiday bonuses to his staff, until his inner Grinch halted the practice abruptly last year.

From 2001 to 2009, Petri’s office staff’s fourth-quarter paychecks averaged 51 percent higher than in the first three quarters. But in 2010, however, the “bonus” was less than one per cent.

tom petri

According to Petri’s spokesperson, Niel Wright, “Rep. Petri never considered the bump in fourth quarter earnings to be bonuses in the classic sense.” Rather, Wright says, the increase was “deferred compensation… the office budgeted the total compensation in January, but held money back in case there were unexpected costs.  The money was then paid out toward the end of the year when our total expenses were known.”

Why then has Petri stopped handing out the big fourth quarter salaries?  “Because the benefits of holding the cash back for emergencies weren’t worth having to explain all this,” Wright wrote in an email response. Wright added that the overall increase for Petri’s staff salaries resulted “from cost of living adjustments in line with the rest of the federal government.”

The only member of the state delegation who came close to Obey’s one-time and Petri’s commonplace bonus practices was Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen, who showed a flourish of generosity in 2008 when his staff got bonuses of about 68 percent.  But for the fourth quarter of 2010, when the defeated Kagen could have afforded more, seeing as his political capital was at a discount, his staff actually got a pay cut of 1.5 percent. Nice knowing you, Steve.

Rep. Sensenbrenner, the famed fiscal conservative and Menomonee Falls Republican, has a long history of generous fourth quarter payments to staff: He averaged bonuses of 33 percent from 2001-2008, and like Petri suddenly changed his practice: His payouts were 11 per cent and 13 per cent in the fourth quarter of the last two years, a third of his average bonuses.

Q4 salary “spikes” (click for graphs)

His fellow fiscal conservative Republican, Rep. Paul Ryan (1^st Dist), has fashioned a “road map” for the country which calls for big cuts in government spending but has yet to apply that philosophy to his staff: his staff fourth-quarter bonuses averaged 13 percent from 2001-2008.

However, in 2009 his end-of-year payout declined to 1 per cent and was 2 per cent in 2010.

Milwaukee Democrat Rep. Gwen Moore is newer to the office and has less practice but averaged 22 percent fourth quarter bonuses for the 2006-2008 years. (Moore’s 2005 data is missing from the file.) Her bonuses dropped into the single-digits in 2009 (6 percent) and 2010 (8 percent).

Do we see a pattern here of everyone dropping their fourth quarter bonuses in the last two years? Perhaps that’s when watchdogs like LegiStorm began their scrutiny.

As for past members of Wisconsin’s delegation, Milwaukee Democrat Rep. Jerry Kleczka gave 24 percent bonuses to his staff when he retired in 2004, but these were in line with his practice in previous years.  Republican Rep. Mark Green, who left his seat in 2006 to run for governor, also left his staff with 10 percent bonuses in his last two years, but in the years prior to that, he had typically handed out fourth quarter bonuses in the 20 percent range.

gwen moore

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who was redistricted out of his seat in 2002, saw his staff budget decline 2 percent in his last year as a Democratic congressman. In 2001, the only other year for which data is available, Barrett’s staff got a 4 percent bonus.

Senate salaries are released in hard copy every six months. The next release of salary data is expected around Memorial Day, according to LegiStorm.

A note from LegiStorm on its methodology: “The House does not publish staff bonus data per se. Instead, bonuses must be inferred based on the increased salary payouts made in the fourth quarter of the year, when bonuses are traditionally given for House member and committee staff. To ensure that the inflow and outflow of staff played as small a role as possible in the numbers, LegiStorm pro-rated the salaries of staffers based on how long they served during the year and calculated the increased salary on a prorated basis.”

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