One thing is definite: Council salaries

Human nature being the way it is, I expect that once the 24-member council takes office next January, the first thing they will do is figure out how to arrange the furniture - if that hasn't already been done.

The second thing they will do is take a look at their salaries and try to figure out some way of increasing it.

They will point out that their base salary - $25,000 - has not gone up in more than 20 years and that with 24 members instead of 88, each delegate's workload will increase substantially.

So now is probably a good time to nip that kind of talk in the bud and point out that when they take office, members of the council will make out like bandits under the current system. Many of them will wind up with salaries approaching six figures a year.

Before 1960, being a member of the Navajo Nation Council was an honor unto itself and no one thought of making money off of it.

At that time, the council consisted of 74 members and met four days a year - one day each quarter - and each delegate was paid the grand sum of $3 a day. No one expected to receive a salary.

The modern era began with the Paul Jones administration in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By then, the work of the council had increased substantially and delegates were spending as much as 100 days meeting in session and in committees.

At that point, delegates received $26 a day in salary for every day they met and another $16 per diem. It was not until Raymond Nakai took office that the delegates began receiving a salary of $3,000 a year and it wasn't until the 1970s when Peter MacDonald Sr. took office that they began giving themselves periodic raises.

Those who kept in touch with what was going on in the tribal government remember the efforts made by council delegates in the late 1990s and the early portion of this century to give themselves raises. Each effort failed because when they approved the reform laws in 1990, one of the laws included without a lot of consideration required a majority of chapters to approve any increase - which everyone knew would never happen.

Finally, the council members found a loophole and started giving themselves a stipend for every meeting they attended besides their base salary. That stipend is now up to $300 a meeting.

As a result, by 2007, the pay for the average council delegate had risen to about $43,000 a year and those who were on a lot of committees saw their income approach $50,000. The speaker of the Council, who began with a base pay of $55,000, was making close to $90,000 a year by that time.

When the new Council takes power in January, most of the delegates will find themselves representing four to seven chapters, each of which will hold two meetings a month and each of which the council delegate will be expected to attend.

Logically, some of these meetings will be held on the same day so council delegates will be traveling from one chapter meeting to another, much the way rodeo riders travel to two or three rodeos a day. And at each meeting, the council delegate will pick up another $300 for spending an hour here and an hour there.

While those who represent one chapter - like Chinle, Shiprock and Tuba City - will have to scramble to find meetings to attend, the others will be able to pick and choose, limited only by how much money they want to make annually.

The speaker will see his salary sail over $100,000 a year and many delegates will have to figure out ways to spend the $60,000 to $70,000 they will be making annually.

And let's not forget that on top of this each delegate will get deferred compensation. An extra $5,000 will be set aside in their account each year to be turned over to them - with interest - once they are no longer council delegates.

So don't cry for them, Dennehotso. They will do just fine.

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