Governor signs pay raise into law
BOISE – Idaho state employees are about to get raises, and the state is on track to sock away $70 million in its rainy-day fund – both key pieces of Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s legislative agenda.
“This is a nice way to start the legislative session, and I think it’s going to be an excellent session,” Kempthorne said after he signed the pay-raise bill into law in a room crowded with supportive legislators.
He called it unprecedented to be signing such major legislation just over two weeks into the session. “We’ll just keep things rolling,” he said.
The House voted 68-1 less than an hour earlier to deposit $70 million from the state’s projected budget surplus into the budget stabilization fund, a savings account for bad economic times. That was slightly more than the governor had asked them to set aside, but Kempthorne applauded the move. That bill, HB 409, now moves to the Senate.
The pay-raise bill, SB 1263, gives state employees immediate, permanent, merit-based raises averaging 3 percent starting Feb. 1. It passed the Senate unanimously last week and cleared the House with just two “no” votes on Monday.
Lawmakers have granted state employees only 2 percent in permanent raises in the past four years, and state worker pay now lags more than 16 percent behind market wages.
Rep. Robert Schaefer, R-Nampa, cast the only House vote against the $70 million savings plan Tuesday, saying some of that money should go to state workers. “The fact is, we should be putting more money to state employees,” Schaefer said.
He noted that he also didn’t vote for the pay-raise bill – like seven other state representatives, he missed the vote. “It’s not enough,” Schaefer said. “We should be at least at 4 percent, should maybe have 5.”
Schaefer co-chaired an interim legislative committee that studied the state’s employee compensation system and recommended major changes. He said he’s planning to introduce legislation giving state employees an additional 2 percent in the fiscal year that starts July 1.
House Appropriations Chairwoman Maxine Bell, R-Jerome, reminded the House that the rainy-day fund was drained during Idaho’s economic downturn. “We’re finally to the point where we can stop robbing and start putting something back,” she said.
The $70 million, if approved by the Senate and signed into law, would bring Idaho up to its statutory cap for the budget stabilization fund of 5 percent of the state budget. That would end large, automatic deposits into the fund each year that are triggered when state revenues are strong.
Rep. Jim Clark, R-Hayden Lake, who wrote the legislation that set up the fund, said he’s working on a bill this year to raise that cap to 8 percent.
“I contend that next year we’re going to have another surplus. I would like to have a place to put the money,” Clark said.