Freedom’s Barry Smith proposes doubling state legislators’ salaries:

.. I think legislators need to be paid better.

I think significantly increasing their salary would help attract a different breed of candidate. We have a lot of retirees in the General Assembly. There are more than a few lawyers and some business owners.

A lot of the people in the legislature who aren’t retirees have to juggle their personal business life with their legislative work. They usually either delegate while they’re away in Raleigh, or their business associates take up the slack.

That leaves a lot of people who could offer a lot to the political debate in North Carolina out of the loop. Let’s face it. Most people who have middle-management jobs couldn’t afford to take off six or seven months one year, and two or three months the next year to go to Raleigh and do the people’s work.

I’ve followed and he always seems very reasonable, but I see this —-right along with publicly-funded campaigns —- as yet another artificial means of controlling the legislative process, as opposed to simply holding legislators accountable.