Exactly this. As Dwight Eisenhower once said: "The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity." They're giving themselves a pay raise while we have chronically underpaid educators from grade school all the way up to SUNY, not to mention the healthcare workers who are threatening to strike due to unsatisfactory pay. It reeks of self-interest and a lack of integrity.

Legislators should be the last ones to get a pay raise and only when pay raises across the state have been addressed. As that old Marine adage goes (which has been monopolized by that annoying motivational speaker Simon Sinek): "Leaders eat last."