Legislature(2005 - 2006)CAPITOL 106
04/20/2005 08:30 AM House RULES
| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| HB123 | |
| HB121 | |
| HB98 | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| HB 123 | |||
| HB 98 | |||
| = | HB 121 | ||
HB 98-NONUNION PUBLIC EMPLOYEE SALARY & BENEFIT CHAIR ROKEBERG announced that the final order of business would be HOUSE BILL NO. 98, "An Act relating to the compensation of certain public officials, officers, and employees not covered by collective bargaining agreements; and providing for an effective date." 9:11:52 AM CHAIR ROKEBERG explained that he calendared this bill to discuss potential amendments and to review whether legislators should be included in the bill. 9:13:05 AM MIKE TIBBLES, Deputy Commissioner, Department of Administration, presented HB 98 to the committee. He stated: House Bill 98 matches the statutory pay schedule for partially exempt and exempt employees in legislative, judicial, and the executive branch of government, and provides the same wage adjustment that was recently negotiated by the supervisory unit in the public employees association. We have a two-step process that's required to provide wage adjustments to our state employees, and one is through the collective bargaining process where we submit the monetary terms to the legislature, and that has been done and included in the House budget. We have a significant amount of increase this year in wage adjustments. ... We have submitted monetary terms last year and this year to the legislature and so far in the process those haven't been approved in the budget. The second step to provide the wage adjustments for state employees is to introduce legislation similar to what you have in front of you now. That covers the partially exempt and exempt employees. MR. TIBBLES continued: We feel this bill is really important for a number of reasons. The first reason is just basic equity. Our statute requires us to pay our state employees like pay for like work. And [in the case of] the failure of the passage of this bill, we will see a 9 percent difference between the employees of a particular range ... under the collective bargaining agreement and the statutory schedule. And that does ... cause us problems because I don't believe we'd be meeting our statutory obligations. ... The second concern that I have is an issue regarding recruiting qualified managers. We're asking our managers to do more and more, and when we get to such a disparity between the contracts, I feel that we really place a heightened burden and challenge on our ability to hire qualified managers. And the third concern I have is that we have a difficult time getting people to move up into some of the senior management positions. You have supervisors or supervisors that are paid on a statutory schedule and it doesn't take long for the supervisor of the supervisor to make less than the people that they're supervising. MR. TIBBLES turned attention to some charts in the committee packets. He stated that the last page shows an example of the last scenario mentioned above. 9:16:55 AM REPRESENTATIVE BERKOWITZ remarked that he hoped this bill will inspire the consistent application of this line of reasoning by the administration: the desire to recruit and retain, and the desire to have competitive pay. He said, "I hope that you'll keep those thoughts in your mind as you review changes to the [Public Employees' Retirement System (PERS)/Teachers' Retirement System (TRS)] system, because all of those issues are right there too." 9:17:34 AM CHAIR ROKEBERG inquired as to how this would play out with senior commissioners. MR. TIBBLES replied, "The commissioners are a unique situation; their statute is set at a particular range and step in the statute, ... 28E." He explained that a 28E yearly salary would be about $91,000. He noted that many people have to take a pay reduction to take a position as commissioner. CHAIR ROKEBERG shared an anecdote in which an deputy city attorney [outside of Alaska] was making more money than Alaska's attorney general. He remarked that many who take on a commissioner role give up substantial compensation for the leadership position, and many times a commissioner has to maintain homes in Southcentral and in Juneau, which is a financial burden. 9:20:20 AM MR. TIBBLES noted that the salary of the governor of Alaska is $85,700 and that of the lieutenant governor is $80,000. CHAIR ROKEBERG remarked that these elected officials were making less money than the appointed commissioners. 9:21:12 AM REPRESENTATIVE MCGUIRE asked Chair Rokeberg if he planned to take amendments to the bill at a later time. CHAIR ROKEBERG explained that his intention is to add to the bill, not change it. He remarked that he thought there should be a public debate regarding whether commissioners' wages should be raised. He noted that he'd like to look at an amendment to the schedule for commissioners offered a few years ago by the previous administration. He commented that the [committee] needs to act relatively quickly, as there is similar legislation in the Senate Labor and Commerce Standing Committee. He said, "It seems obvious to me that we are in a very difficult recruitment position here." 9:24:36 AM PAMELA VARNI, Executive Director, Legislative Affairs Agency, paraphrased from the following written testimony [original punctuation provided]: In the 80's and again in the 90's, the Executive Branch received a raise, which legislative employees did not receive. Currently, legislative employees lag roughly 5% behind their counterparts in the Executive and Judicial Branches with the exception of partially exempt employees. This bill should be passed as a matter of fairness and to eliminate any suggestion that employees doing similar work are not paid equally. It is long overdue. You want to retain the best and the brightest employees. We have lost many employees to the Executive Branch because they can take a position at the same range and step and make more money - or they accept positions at a higher range and receive an additional 5% increase in pay. We need to stay on an even par to retain attorneys, programmers, personnel assistants and probably most important to each and every one of you are the staff working directly for you. It is interesting to note the drain of legislative assistants. In budgeting I do not see the higher longevity steps that we used to have in the legislative branch. Also, we have had difficulty over the years in rural areas hiring our teleconference moderators. The private sector wages are higher and we have trouble competing to attract people to come and work for us. It is difficult for our staff at the lower ranges to keep up with the cost of living. To give you some idea of the difference between the cost of living increases and our legislative pay increases - the CPIU increased from 1988 to 2003 (15 years) a total of 41.4% - legislative pay increased 14.72%. We are 26.68% lower than the CPIU. It is a significant difference. To give you some comparisons to other State Legislatures on how their salaries have changed over the last five years. New Mexico increased 14.5% Louisiana increased 30% Indiana increased 12.7% Virginia increased 11.8% Rhode Island increased 12.3% Alaska increased 5% Thank you for your time and as a manager and previous personnel officer I urge you to pass HB 98 to be fair and equitable to all employees in the Legislative Branch whether we are talking about an analyst, janitor, programmer, legislative assistant, secretary, etc. 9:29:31 AM MS. VARNI, in response to Chair Rokeberg, explained that legislators were equivalent to a Range 10A in 1991, but now are down to about a Range 8. CHAIR ROKEBERG asked Ms. Varni to prepare information for the committee regarding the possibility of raising that range level up to a 10A or 15A. MS. VARNI noted that a fiscal note had been prepared. 9:30:43 AM KARLA SCHOEFIELD, Deputy Director, Accounting, Legislative Administrative Services, Legislative Affairs Agency, explained that there is a $1.6 million fiscal note. She opined that it is important for this bill to pass this year. She noted, "The legislature has over the last few years lapsed over $3 million each year, and if it were the will of the legislature and the ... committees in charge of the money were willing to redistribute their funds and salaries from all of their components, the legislature as a whole could probably absorb this in FY06." 9:31:38 AM CHAIR ROKEBERG pointed out that "other discussions have been going on about other adjustments" in order to retain staff. 9:32:08 AM CHRIS CHRISTENSEN, Deputy Administrative Director, Alaska Court System, paraphrased from the following written testimony [original punctuation provided]: I would like to thank Governor Murkowski for including the employees of the Alaska Court System in this legislation. First, a little background. We have about 733 permanent employees. 62 are judges appointed by the governor, 39 are magistrates, and most of the rest are clerical employees. We absorb less than 2% of the operating budget; that makes us smaller than a number of individual departments in the executive branch. While we are small, more private citizens come though our doors every day than any other entity, other than perhaps the university. Unfortunately, many of those people are angry or scared, they are going through the most traumatic experience of their lives, and they don't understand how the system works. These are the people that our employees work with every day. These people were involved in over 150,000 new cases filed last year. Court employees work hard under very stressful conditions. However, I have often heard from employees that they are proud of the work they do, they believe that what they do matters, and most of them do it for a low salary. 70% of our employees are compensated at Range 15 or below. Low salaries result in a high turnover rate (approximately 50% before 5 years, and as much as 100% in some rural courts where we compete with higher salaries or benefits offered by the local Native corporations or boroughs), and a large percentage of court system clerical employees have second jobs. The legislature has historically given non-judicial court employees a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) equal to the COLA it has approved for union employees in the executive branch. The last time it failed to do so was in 1993. Shortly thereafter, non-supervisory court employees voted to join the IBEW. MR. CHRISTENSEN continued: In 1996, the legislature gave both union and non-union court employees a COLA that restored parity with the salaries that had been approved for union employees in the executive branch. The unionized court employees subsequently voted to decertify the IBEW as soon as the first collective bargaining agreement expired. Workers organize for different reasons. For court employees, the main driver seemed to be equity in compensation rather than changes in working conditions. With respect to our judges, salaries were ranked first in the nation in 1982. Today, however, the National Center for State Courts states that the salary of a th superior court judge in Alaska ranks 49 when adjusted for cost-of-living. Normally when we talk about states th that are 49 in something, we're referring to Mississippi or Arkansas; not in this case. The average annual increase in salaries for general jurisdiction judges in other states during the period from 1992 - 2004 was 3.1%. In Alaska, it averaged less than 1%, well under half the rate of inflation. Unlike other state employees, judges do not get annual longevity increases; the salary of a new judge is identical to the salary of a judge with 15 years of experience. Thus, there is no longevity increase to help compensate for a failure to provide adequate cost of living adjustments. In addition, the geographic differential received by rural judges is generally much less than that received by other state employees. In Barrow, for example, a union employee gets 43%; a non-union employee gets 31.5%; and the local judge gets only 17%, Moreover, the geographic differential is limited to the first $40,000 of salary, unlike other state employees who have it calculated on their entire salaries. Because of the lack of longevity increases and the limited geographic differential, there are actually long-time prosecutors in rural Alaska who make substantially more than the local superior court judge. MR. CHRISTENSEN continued: HB 98 would give the non-judicial employees of the Alaska Court System a salary adjustment in FY 06 that would place their salary schedule approximately on par with the salary schedule approved by the legislature last session for members of the APEA. Even if they get this, court employees will still have lost substantial ground to inflation over the last decade. Judges will get a salary increase equal to the percentage salary increase that HB 98 proposes for a Range 28E in the executive branch. With this increase, Alaska's judges thth will leap from 49 place to 47 place. This bill sends a message that the legislature does value court employees as much as it values union employees in the executive branch, and that it does not take their hard work for granted. Thank you for your consideration. 9:38:41 AM CHAIR ROKEBERG asked if pages are Range 10A. MS. VARNI replied that this was correct. She noted that the janitors are Range 8, but they may move to Range 9. She commented that Range 9 is really the lowest pay, so if the legislators do not get a raise, they will be the lowest paid people. CHAIR ROKEBERG explained that the bill has a schedule that reflects a 5 percent increase, and on July 1, 2005, the salaries raise automatically [an additional] 2 percent. MS. VARNI commented that if this bill was passed the legislators would probably be down to a Range 6 or 7. 9:40:57 AM CHAIR ROKEBERG asked if legislators were Range 10A before 1991. MS. VARNI replied yes, although back in the 1980s, legislators [received an annual salary of around $46,800 and there was no per diem]. CHAIR ROKEBERG remarked that there is public outcry whenever there is mention of a raise for the legislators. 9:42:29 AM REPRESENTATIVE MCGUIRE stated that the people in her district recognize that [legislators are low paid]. She commented, "There's always a risk that when you take on issues like this that there will be some type of backlash from someone, but I think it's an education process and I think it's something I personally am willing to take on." 9:43:49 AM MS. VARNI stated, "Alaska is so unique from other states; there are not other legislatures that move their legislators because ... the states are so small that they can drive home at night. ... The salary that is set right now for legislators is so low, considering the unique circumstances that you have...." 9:45:03 AM CHAIR ROKEBERG inquired as to why changes were made in 1991 so that legislators were no longer Range 10A. MS. VARNI related her understanding that the changes were made because the legislature wanted to cut the budgets of the executive branch and the judicial branch, and the legislature wanted to show that it was cutting its own budget as well. CHAIR ROKEBERG calculated that a readoption of the Range 10A for legislators would result in a $4,500 [or more] annual salary increase. He remarked that the issue then would be if the legislators could handle "the heat" from the public for giving themselves a raise, and whether it would be worth pursuing. 9:46:22 AM REPRESENTATIVE MCGUIRE asked if Chair Rokeberg was open to discussion with regard to other ranges. She stated, "If you're going to take the heat, you might as well take it once and do it the right way. And I think there ought to be some analysis about what range we think the work that we do here is associated with." CHAIR ROKEBERG replied that he was open to this discussion. 9:47:38 AM REPRESENTATIVE COGHILL stated: The issue to me in this bill is the equity within state workers and the marketability of our jobs. But that's not the issue with the legislature; ... I think that's a little different discussion, so the way I would look at it is: "What's reasonable compensation for living expenses for me?" because I still see us as a citizen legislature. ... I wouldn't want to look at it as a career step so much as a reasonable compensation. CHAIR ROKEBERG reiterated that there have been no adjustments to [legislators' salaries] for 14 years, and therefore he thinks it warrants examination. [HB 98 was held over.]
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