LegiStorm

As Congress begins to contemplate a massive infrastructure bill, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) has chosen a transportation lobbyist as his first revolving-door hire.

Mara Stark-Alcala is now the senator's legislative assistant handling appropriations and transportation issues. She comes from the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association, where she spent the last year as a lobbyist and assistant vice president for congressional affairs.

Before that, Stark-Alcala was a lobbyist for Chambers, Conoln & Hartwell and for the American Public Transportation Association. She's also worked for the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

After five consecutive years of widening the pay gap between men and women, Senate Democrats now have the worst gender-based salary disparity in Congress.

Senate Democrats pay their female staffers only 92.4% of what men make. That means that the average female staffer took home $4,500 less than men in 2020. The Senate Democrats' pay gap has grown each year since 2015, when what women received reached 99.6 percent of what men did. All numbers come from a LegiStorm analysis of publicly available salary data.

Excluding Senate Democrats, pay gaps have shrunk across Congress over the last decade. Senate Republicans now pay women 98.6 percent of what men make ($800 less per year). Women working for House Democrats make 98.2 percent of what men make ($1,000 less), while women working for House Republicans make 95.7% of men ($2,380 less).

In the Senate, men outearn women in policy, communications and constituent-services jobs. Policy jobs make up the chamber's biggest pay gap, with women making $7,640 less than men. In the House, women in policy jobs actually make about $400 more than men, although they continue to make less in communications jobs and roughly the same in constituent-services work.

For someone elected to Congress for a one-month term, former Rep. Kwanza Hall (D-Ga.) had big ambitions for his staff.

Hall hired a team of 16 staffers plus one paid intern to work the lame-duck session, according to salary data released last week. Eleven of those 16 did not have prior congressional experience.

Among his hires were a "justice reform coordinator" and a "marketing coordinator" - job titles unsual for any congressional staffers, let alone aides whose boss was in office just one month of a lame-duck session. Hall also hired a "media scheduler," though Hall does not appear to have conducted many high-profile interviews during his congressional tenure.

Hall was elected in a special election to fill the final month of deceased Rep. John Lewis's (D-Ga.) term and did not run in the general election.

The Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee has hired a lobbyist as its leader.

Kate Leone comes from Feeding America, where she was chief government relations officer. She lobbied on agriculture issues for the food-bank network.

Now DSOC's staff director, Leone is no stranger to the Senate. Before joining Feeding America in 2017, she was counsel to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), ex-Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and ex-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

House staffers ended 2020 with the biggest holiday bonuses in at least 20 years, according to LegiStorm data.

Representatives gave an average fourth-quarter bonus of 23.4 percent over previous quarters - more than $3,800 per staffer.

End-of-year bonuses are higher in election years and are typically highest among retiring or defeated members. For 2020, four of the five most-generous bosses are no longer in Congress. Ex-Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who lost his primary, topped the charts with an average staff bonus of 99.8 percent more than they'd made in the previous quarters. Aides to retired Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-La.) got the second-highest increase, at 90.1 percent per staffer.

In 2018 and 2016, staffers got an average fourth-quarter bonus of 23.2 and 20.2 percent, respectively.

GOP representatives tend to give higher end-of-year bonuses than their Democrats counterparts, and 2020 was no exception: Republicans gave an average bonus of 25.1 percent, while Democrats averaged 21.7 percent.

Members don't explicitly report bonuses in their quarterly expense reports. To estimate bonuses, LegiStorm compares average quarterly salaries to find payment increases.