State raises leave some wary

BOISE – Some state employees remained skeptical on Wednesday about the 1 percent one-time raise the Legislature and Gov. Dirk Kempthorne authorized, saying they’ll believe it when they see it.

It was unclear whether Idaho National Guard military employees will get any raise, and bonuses will likely be delayed for all of the state’s higher education institutions.

Executive Budget Director Brad Foltman issued a memo earlier this week directing the payment of bonuses to state employees meeting specific criteria.

State controller Keith Johnson said Wednesday that raises are planned for 13,753 workers, not including those who work for the universities, which oversee their own payrolls.

The payments may begin as early as Aug. 27. According to Foltman’s guidelines, employees must have worked for the state since April 1 without any ongoing disciplinary action and must have a “meets expectations” performance review.

Past employee bonuses have been allocated to department heads for their dispersal among staff as they saw fit, a practice that has left some employees wary of the current plan.

“In some departments – not ours – if you’re not buddy-buddy with the higher ups, then you don’t get the good raise,” said Joyce Boyle, who has worked for the Department of Education’s accounts payable office for the past six years.

“I understand how the apprehension got started,” Foltman said. “They think it’s going to go to the people who always get raises and they’ll get nothing. But this is based on an individual’s 1 percent of salary. That’s not how it’s been done before.”

The raises were triggered when state tax collections exceeded projections by more than $5 million at the end of June. Lawmakers came up with the measure last winter following two years of failing to give state employees even cost-of-living pay raises.

The total cost to the state will be about $8.8 million, with the $3.8 million difference coming from federal money or fees and special taxes like those financing the Fish and Game and Transportation departments.

The bonus is a one-time benefit and is not part of the base salary, so it is not expected to be included in next year’s salary calculations.

Johnson said he did not know how many state employees would be excluded from the bonus, but “there are still a large number of state employees who don’t meet eligibility.”

School district teachers and employees are not covered under the raise package, because they are not state employees.

The status of members of the National Guard has been clouded by the activation of 2,000 for duty in Iraq.

“They are not active state employees because they were taken off the state payroll system and put onto the federal system, so we have to look at that differently on how we are going to address that,” Foltman said. “We’re not ready to say what they’ll get, when they’ll get or if they’ll get.”

A 1 percent raise would mean an employee making the $34,000 average state salary would get a check for $340.

Boyle said she was confident she personally would receive her bonus and planned to use it to pay medical bills.

“But with $200-some-odd dollars, I don’t think it’s going to go very far,” she said.