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Commentary: W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, April 7, 2005
Raise time is finally here for state's employees
About 142,000 state workers, including my wife, are watching lawmakers closely for very personal reasons. They basically wonder if the pay raise drought is over.
Looks like it is.
Legislative leaders say -- without winking, nudging or skipping a beat -- that the budget they're writing will include the first across-the-board raise in four years and possibly the biggest bump, by percentage, since the early 1980s.
If the Senate prevails, think 4.5 percent more money starting in January and another 4.5 percent boost a year later, with employees guaranteed $100 more a month -- lifting Texas salaries toward the average in nine other Southern states.
If legislative results tilt toward the House's position, ponder a 3 percent raise this fall.
The hedge: Workers in higher education have no across-the-board raises under review. They'll probably have to wait until legislative appropriations trickle down to their schools.
Now, before anyone goes out and buys a new rug, remember that lawmakers will be in session through May 30.
Any pebble could derail the pay train, such as the fact that the chambers don't yet agree on school funding or taxes, or that the House's budget lists more than $8 billion in unfunded desires, including $260 million for its suggested raise.
Still . . .
Rep. Carl Isett, R-Lubbock, who heads a subcommittee that reviewed pay issues, said: "We're going to give an employee pay raise. . . . We just have to find the money."
Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said: "We'll have a pay raise in the end for state employees, troopers and judges."
And Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which committed $360 million in the Senate-approved budget to across-the-board raises, said: "We can afford to do it, and we should. I'd like to do more."
He said "more."
Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, was bolstered in his usual pitch for workers by Sen. Tommy Williams, a Republican from The Woodlands, not known for its concentration of state employees.
Williams said he embraced the pay issue in hopes of whittling down employee turnover, which has averaged 16 percent a year since 2000.
Last year, according to the State Auditor's Office, turnover cost agencies nearly $350 million, a figure traced partly to recruiting and training newbies. Williams said: "We have a lot of hard workers statewide. They make state government work for everybody.
"It's only fair that they should be adequately compensated."
Austin economist Stuart Greenfield bemoans the aging of the work force, with 45 percent age 45 or older, compared with 30 percent in the private sector.
Agencies are struggling to attract well-educated young applicants.
"It's the unrecognized crisis in state government," Greenfield said. "Who's going to deliver services to people in the future?"
w_gselby@statesman.com; 445-3644