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By ROBERT T. GARRETT
The Dallas Morning News
April 8, 2005
House passes 2-year budget plan
AUSTIN – A two-year budget package that easily won House approval early Thursday left thousands of state employees and Department of Public Safety troopers wondering if they'll see a pay raise in coming months.
Weary from an 18-hour debate, House members sent their $139.4 billion spending outline to the Senate after rejecting almost every Democratic proposal for more education and social spending. The final vote was 102-41, with about 15 Democrats joining the Republican majority.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, called it lean but compassionate.
However, in a brief wrap-up before the vote, Mr. Pitts pledged to seek new revenues – not through general tax increases – that would allow the state to restore coverage to some poor Texans lopped off the rolls of health insurance programs because of cuts approved two years ago.
The "top priority" cited by Mr. Pitts, though, was pay raises for state employees – who haven't received a raise in four years – as well as DPS troopers and judges.
"I feel like we will be able to find the money for that," said Mr. Pitts, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
Last month, the Senate unanimously passed a $139.3 billion, two-year budget that includes more than a half billion dollars for public employee pay raises.
Senators approved a 4.5 percent across-the-board increase for 143,000 state employees, nearly 14,000 of them in North Texas .
It would take effect Jan. 1 and be a minimum of $100 a month. An identical raise would follow a year later. Longevity and hazardous duty pay also would increase.
Under the Senate plan, another 4,000 or so DPS officers, game wardens and alcoholic beverage control agents would see an improved salary schedule and stipends for education and bilingual ability.
State employee groups say low pay is causing high turnover. Troopers say DPS can't recruit promising talent because pay is below that of big city police departments in Texas , while the years of credit they earn toward pensions can't be transferred to municipal retirement plans.
City officers get to keep their years of service as they jump from one department to another, said Sgt. Brian Hawthorne of Houston, president of the DPS Officers Association.
"The Senate, they seem to take our pay issue a little more serious than the House does," he said.
Andy Homer of the Texas Public Employees Association, a group that is not a union, voiced optimism that pay raises for state workers would emerge from a House-Senate conference committee on the budget. The panel's 10 members are expected to be appointed next week.
"We think that Chairman Pitts, Speaker [Tom] Craddick and the leadership of the House is fully supportive," Mr. Homer said.