At least one state lawmaker says he'll accept the 5.3 percent pay raise scheduled for 2009-11.

Sen. Alan Lasee, R-De Pere, said he's earned the $2,530 annual increase, to $49,943, which over a two-year period is comparable to increases offered state workers. He also said he has saved taxpayers more than $90,000 over the last 10 years by not spending all of the money allocated to him for office expenses.

"Compared to that, the pay raise is peanuts," Lasee said.

Lasee is the first lawmaker not in a leadership position interviewed on the subject who has said he would accept the raise. Five other lawmakers have said in recent days they will reject the raise or donate it to charity.

Lawmakers have not had a raise since January 2007.

Lasee, elected to the Senate in 1977 after spending nearly three years in the Assembly, also defended the process by which legislative salaries are set.

He supports having an eight-member legislative committee approve or amend the legislative pay  recommendation from the Office of State Employment Relations. When lawmakers had to vote on their own pay raises they would often impose raises that outpaced inflation, he said.

For his part, Gov. Jim Doyle said Tuesday he had no plans to weigh in on the matter.
 
"You're not going to get me in the middle of that," Doyle said in an interview. "They're independently elected. I'm not their boss. They're each going to make that decision on their own."
 
Doyle passed on taking a raise when he was elected and wrote a check back to the state every month, he said.