State workers get bonus checks
BOISE – Idaho state employees got a one-time check this year instead of raises, and for most state workers, it came to about $400.
“After not having any salary increases for so long, it was at least a little something,” said Ranae Sanders, human resources manager for the state Department of Water Resources.
Ken Miracle, human resources officer for the state Department of Agriculture, said, “It was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, so to speak, but to many of them, we continue to lose people and/or not be able to hire people because of the ongoing issue with compensation.”
At least two state employees, however, pocketed more than $4,000 each – Health and Welfare administrator Ken Deibert and Boise State University head football coach Dan Hawkins. Both are credited with performing well beyond expectations.
State lawmakers set aside no money for raises for state employees this year, instead approving just a 1 percent, one-time, merit-based bonus if state revenues allowed. Last year, they allocated 2 percent for raises, after zero funding for raises the two previous years.
“Personally, I don’t think it’s fair to give people bonuses in lieu of raises,” said state Sen. Mike Jorgenson, R-Hayden Lake, who’s serving on a legislative interim committee studying state worker compensation. “There’s no security there, they don’t know what they’re going to get the next year. Frankly, I think that the state employees have been loyal, they’ve been hard-working, and the state needs to find a way to take care of the state employees better than what’s happened over past years.”
Last year, state studies showed that salaries were lagging 14 percent behind the market on average. That’s slipped further now. “The market moved roughly 3.5 percent, and we had nothing,” said state Division of Human Resources Director Ann Heilman.
The research still is being finalized for this year’s report on state salaries, Heilman said. “But more than likely we’ve lost ground, and we’ve lost ground again. I think we’re going to come out somewhere near 16.5 percent.”
The Spokesman-Review requested information under the Idaho Public Records Law on how the one-time, 1 percent bonus was distributed, and learned that 18,021 employees received average bonuses of 1.1 percent, with the average check totaling $414.66.
The biggest boost – $4,387, or about 5 percent – went to Deibert, a Health and Welfare division administrator who supervises 1,600 employees and three state hospitals and has been heading up a massive new project since 2002, on top of his regular job, that has required almost constant travel around the state.
“The budgets have been tight, and there hasn’t been the opportunity to reward people who really have gone above and beyond,” said Health and Welfare spokesman Tom Shanahan. “This person really has.”
But that boost was an exception – of the 2,683 bonuses given at the department, the average was 1.3 percent, or $442.19, close to the statewide average.
The second biggest bonus, $4,233.63, went to one of the state’s highest-paid employees, Boise State University head football coach Dan Hawkins, who has guided the Broncos to three championship seasons and was a finalist for the 2004 Paul “Bear” Bryant College Football Coach of the Year award.
The smallest bonus was just $3.53. It went to a Water Resources Department retiree who had returned to do some limited fieldwork over the summer. Department spokesman Mike Keckler said that was 1 percent of the worker’s pay. “It was based on the number of hours he worked,” he said.
At the state Department of Correction, 1,297 workers got bonuses averaging 1.2 percent, or $356.27.
“It’s something,” said spokeswoman Melinda O’Malley Keckler. “Our concern is that we are not able to offer a competitive wage when we find qualified candidates, and with security staff, in particular, it is an issue.”
The largest bonus at the department was $700, and the smallest was $100.
Sen. Dick Compton, R-Coeur d’Alene, who also serves on the interim committee on employee compensation, said, “We pay these guys like 11 bucks an hour, and they work in a very threatening environment. … That just isn’t enough money. … We need to be paying those people a wage that is at least halfway competitive in the marketplace.”
O’Malley Keckler said state prisons are having trouble recruiting and retaining prison guards. “Surrounding states pay more, local law enforcement pays more,” she said. “We can’t compete on the open market.”
State Correction Director Tom Beauclair has submitted a budget request for a 10 percent raise for security staff next year – and he’s not the only one.
Health and Welfare Director Karl Kurtz is making improving employee compensation his top priority for the next year, Shanahan said. “We’re having a real difficult time holding on to people,” the department spokesman said. “Our nurses, our social workers, our mental health clinicians – we just are having a really high turnover rate because of the wages. … These are critical positions. We can’t run a hospital without a nurse. … We’re losing them, and then we can’t find people to replace them, so it’s been a real challenge for the department.”
Compton said he sees similar problems at the state Department of Transportation, where engineers are leaving for higher-paid private-sector jobs, then in some cases, returning to work on the same projects as private contractors and making more money. “That’s not the way to run a business,” said Compton, who retired after 32 years as an executive with IBM.
Idaho Transportation Department spokesman Jeff Stratten said everyone who was eligible – permanent employees who met expectations on their performance reviews – got the bonus, and employees appreciated the boost. “But at the same time, employees are struggling to meet the needs of their families,” he said. “Inflation, higher medical insurance costs and minimal raises have eroded their salaries. State employees received a 2 percent raise over the past four years, and inflation over the past four years was 9 percent. These shrinking salaries are hitting home.”
Miracle, at the Department of Agriculture, said his agency is losing people both to the federal government and the private sector. “We’re getting more and more grumbling,” he said. “One of my own staff has taken a second job, working at night. And there’s more and more of that happening.”
Last week, an accountant left the department for a private-sector job paying $10,000 a year more, Miracle said. “Sooner or later, no matter how much you love the place, people start bailing on you,” he said. “It makes it more difficult to recruit people.”
Heilman said state payroll records show that some state employees have received raises despite the lack of funding, when agencies had salary savings due to turnover or other factors and opted to shift them into raises. But that’s happened for only a small number, fewer than 15 percent of state employees, she said, and it was more likely to happen in agencies with funding sources other than state tax funds.
Statewide, most agencies this year gave everyone eligible a bonus of about 1.1 percent. Some gave the lowest-paid employees a little extra so they’d get $200. “The amounts were so small that most agencies didn’t even try to stretch it,” Heilman said. “There were a few agencies who gave people more than 1 percent with the idea that it’s the thought that counts.”
The one-time bonuses cost the state general fund budget just under $5 million.
The legislative interim committee is considering an array of changes to how the state compensates its workers, in hopes of improving the situation. But current law already requires the state to try to pay market wages – it just hasn’t had the money.
With this year’s state budget outlook looking brighter than last year’s, Compton said, “It’s my hope that we will be able to give a reasonable raise to most everybody and also have enough money to fix some real critical areas that we need to address. We can’t bring everybody up to market; the opportunity to do that just isn’t there.”
But the state could at least make a start in that direction, Compton said. “We’ve got, in my opinion, some serious morale problems, and we’ve got some serious business problems.”